Justifying your price
Pricing is one of the hardest things to do for apparel companies, whether it be a startup or a century-old heritage brand. Here’s how you solve it.
Justifying the price is difficult. You have to take into consideration the investment you’ve put into each garment, and get the extra margin, so you can make a profit.
I’ve always believed that if you do something, and you do it with quality, you shouldn’t have to justify anything.
For small companies, it’s easier to do, because the head designer, or the owner, could come and explain things to you, and justify the cost.
What happens when you grow? I’ve written about this before, which is often brain-dead stupidity on the retail floor, in addition to the lack of transparency when shopping online.
If you want to justify your price, be transparent. Transparency will allow your consumers to understand the reason for your price. Let us say that you are buying a jacket. It looks great, it fits great, it feels great. You immediately get a sense of joy, and then you look at the price tag, and your happiness turns to ashes in your mouth.
To be able to properly justify your price ranges, without going around prostrating yourselves to the masses, you need to be transparent. You need to provide real-time information about a given garment or a pair of shoes, that tells the customer the “story” of that item of clothing. Just like a good movie costs more than a bad one, the story of the garment is what determines the price.
From designer to inspiration to construction to fabrics to manufacturing.
Here is a story:
If the designer was Tom Ford, and the inspiration came from his love for English style tailoring, the fabrics, which happen to be merino wool & linen are sourced from two prominent mills, one in Scotland, the other in Italy. Finally, it was all assembled at a bespoke manufacturing facility in Naples.
If this were the case, then there is no justification needed. The jacket is worth what it is.
See www.boardwalktech.com/products/story
Cheers,
Roh
