The rent and rates in the west end around Jermyn street, Saville Row I would estimate to be £150-200k a year for business premises at least.

One way of looking at it is that the revenue needed to cover just the rent and rates for the premises would be equivalent to 67 pairs of shoes (or suits) .. (200k/3k).

If it took you 30 man hours to produce 1 item, each item would take roughly one working week to complete (5 * 6 hours at day). So in other words it would take one shoemaker (or suit maker) working for 67 weeks  or 1.3 years to just cover the rent off.

In reality as I said the tasks would be spread amongst many, in the case of suits they use cheap outworkers and so on, with the expertise of the cutter needed for only to manage the cutting obviously and checking the work when it comes back. I don't know if a similar system works in bespoke shoe making. However if we assume the cutter (or equivalent in shoe making) spends only 20% of the above time, it will take him 4 months working every day just to cover off his rent and rates (52/(67*0.2)).

Bottom line this isn't a good business ... because you have high fixed costs in keeping your premises and a highly labour intensive process in production. Unless you change the dynamics in the model i.e. work from home (doesn't that ex A&S guy do this? why doesn't he cut the prices proportionately I wonder) or make the process quicker (mechanise), or charge far more (like a lobb bespoke shoe) its not going to pay you much. Even if you scale everything up and have several cutters you still wont be able to mitigate the cost of the amount of labour necessary. I really would like to build a valuation model for a saville row tailor .. when I've got some downtime I might do this for a laugh and post a link to an excel spreadsheet! God Im sad.

Knowing this I don't know why tailors insist on basing themselves in a concentrated bit of the west end. I frankly wouldn't mind travelling to a zone 2 or 3 in London if it meant the price was a little cheaper (& perhaps the tailor could take more margin too & stay in business not having to go through a constant state of changing hands ala huntsman).

fruity

Last edited by Oldfruit1 (2013-11-16 11:45:53)

well I worked in the financial services industry, as recently as the 90s in the city it was wise to stay in the square mile, as you still had some of the open outcry floors in action as well as a lot of social & business activity being done in the wine bars and restaurants in the area. however since then because of technology & telecommunications there is no reason to be in the area, canary wharf was built and after that hedge funds especially moved into the west end which I suspect they preferred as most of these guys could then roll out of bed in mayfair and into the office. Frankly you could do a lot of this activity anywhere. In fact I have a hedge fund friend who has an office in Hertfordshire of all places.

In the bespoke tailoring world where there isn't massive margin, everything is tight, I don't understand why the top cutters insist on staying in located on or around Saville row. if huntsman or even more so some of the more boutique operators moved their customers would follow, they are well informed enough to not be anchored to that particular area. Why not try and move en masse to some of he disused warehouses in the run down parts of London? East London, Shoreditch & Hoxton which admittedly have become 'trendy' could be a good bet and there's a fashion college round there too. If the old boy customers complain about time to get to fittings, a) fuck 'em b) cutter could go see them in their home of office & charge a premium for the travel. Simple. Now you have a business model which works well.

Now if City financial services which had a stronger cultural identity attached to the square mile, the Old Lady & all that .. but moved out due to practical considerations like not wanting to pay higher and higher rents .. why on earth are bespoke tailors who are scraping by reticent to do the same. Some of these grand old institutions like Huntsman, are hardly making any profit whatsoever, its a total joke.

fruity

Last edited by Oldfruit1 (2013-11-16 15:38:17)

xenon - that looks like a great pair of shoes - it must be tremendously satisfying to be able to do that - irrespective of the time it takes.

On another note - I do like the higher heels - I often wonder why we don't see slightly higher heels on higher end shoe s- they add a bit of rock n roll to sedate shoes in an insider way. Who doesn't have a bit of the inner Willy De Ville they want to strut occasionally?

shooey - I've been flat out like a lizard drinking - I'll get back onto that stuff.