There are a variety of Made to Measure / Bespoke suit operators that sell suits online. The attempt at innovating by bringing Made to Measure / Bespoke suits online is admirable, but unfortunately at this stage the product, process and offering isn’t there, below we will explain why.
There are various operators out there from Hockerty.uk to the more premium Lanieri, these services have varying levels of fit, product and customer service available. Our main disagreements with online Made to Measure suiting are threefold; large margins, poor fit and the lack of advice that a usual made to measure fitter / tailor would provide.
The dirty secret of mass online shopping is that no one knows or talks about the large return rates that exist with online e-commerce, especially in apparel. E-commerce apparel return rates sit at 30-40% in western markets, fuelled by “free & easy” returns policies. The effect of this varies from segment to segment, with large swaths of bought and returned apparel having to be disposed of. This return rate from industry reporting holds up with the online Made to Measure / Bespoke suiting segment. With such large return rates these suiting companies have to have much larger margins than exist in traditional retail based Bespoke / Made to Measure suiting companies. Online based Made to Made suiting companies are estimated to have to charge 7-8x the cost of making the product to get their model to work, while traditional retail based made to measure bespoke suit companies charge 2-4 times the cost of making the product. So what does this mean for you as the consumer? It means you get a lot less value for your £££ with an inferior price/quality ratio.
One of the other main reasons consumers buy Made to Measure / Bespoke suiting is because they are looking for a superior fit to what they can find off the rack. Although online made to measure / bespoke suit companies allow you to enter your measurements and some figuration observations (posture) online these rarely properly capture your shape and posture correctly. The result is a high return rate of orders (wasted product that often ends up in landfills) and poor customer satisfaction.
So the long and short of it: buy off the rack if you have to buy online and get it altered by an alterations tailor, if you can get into a made to measure or bespoke suiting house, use our easy made to measure guide to help find a local tailor