Dressed for Success | Hacker News Reader

Dressed for Success

entrepreneur.com

62 pointsbond53 comments

I hadn't heard of Blank Label before, and fell in love with the idea after seeing this.

The price is very good if you're used to buying shirts from a quality label like Emile Lafaurie, Paul Smith, Burberry, etc.

For me, though, I've switched to shopping outlets like Nordstrom Rack, Century 21, and Filenes - so I've gotten used to getting those kind of labels for about $20-$40 per shirt. I have to be a little less picky about exact styles, but I always end up with nice shirts.

I tried customizing a couple shirts on Blank Label. The cheapest I was able to get was $50, and that was essentially a standard shirt, nothing I couldn't get at any store, and I don't know how it will look or fit.

When I started playing with it and having fun, I quickly ran the shirt up to $92 - and could have easily sent it far higher.

It's a wonderfully well-designed web site, and fun to use, but hard for me to see the value in buying shirts there.

Best of luck to the Blank Label guys, I just thought I'd give my "why I didn't buy" feedback, since they seem to be here on HN.

thanks, that is massively helpful. so our core value proposition is providing an affordable option for the various long-tails; skinny tall guy, french cuff guy, monogram guy, etc. we have an incredibly high customer retention rate because once we get someone in, they usually don't want to order from anywhere else. and the best part, a good percentage will tell their friends because now they're proud custom dress shirt owners :)

You're welcome. I'm glad you took my feedback in the spirit it was intended. I really like what you guys are doing.

I know for myself it's just as helpful to know what people don't like as it is to know what they do like.

Website needs some work. The "wide" and "narrow" collar choices are backwards! (the shirt image on left doesn't match up with the button selection) which was enough to make me instantly lose all confidence in my order.

Thanks, that's something that we're fixing on the next release.

The main thing I expected from this when I first saw it, and the thing that excited me about it was the possibility of interesting fabrics--possibly arbitrary fabrics that I could choose out of a huge library. I was disappointed to find that there are only a few, relatively tame choices, and that's why I was never interested in buying. I understand that sourcing a billion different fabrics is probably difficult or impossible, but if you can figure it out, you'll make a customer out of me.

That's great feedback; to optimize pricing, we buy fabrics in bulk, so as we grow, we'll definitely be building our fabric inventory. Look out for some really awesome choices this Summer.

Any mailing list I can get on for notifications about that? I'd be all about a seersucker short-sleeve button-down or something.

this is our general landing page, there's an email collection point at the top right http://hello.blank-label.com/hi-5/

Seems like a someone could put something together using a kinect to make in-home measurements.

Maybe if you're nude in front of the camera. Maybe for a sloppy fit, but the purpose of tailoring is defeated.

have thought about it, but am not sure there is a significant overlap between dress shirt owner and kinect owner?

Here's at least one Kinect hacker, who also wants to buy quality clothing. It'd be pretty cool to have an app that automatically takes your measurements. Of course, you'd have to be wearing tight clothing for it to be accurate.

Edit: it might also be possible to get a rough personal preview of a shirt using skeleton tracking.

As for camera owners overlapping with shirt owners, there are millions of Kinect cameras out there hooked up to Xboxes, and as people start buying them for PCs, that number will grow.

If it ends up making sense, I think you should do it.

"Of course, you'd have to be wearing tight clothing for it to be accurate."

Effectively-no clothing would be much better. It's not like a human is looking you over. You'd also need to hold a known calibration image, too. I'm still not sure you could do it even then to the requisite accuracy, that's asking an awful lot, but maybe. Would take some clever work and a lot of testing.

I agree that it probably wouldn't be practical, but I think it would be awesome!

agree that it is very interesting; and something we are thinking about. if anyone happens to want to help us work on it, we're definitely hiring!

Aren't we looking for a future shirt owner?

Anyone know of sites like this for a "big and tall" guy?

we have a microsite for big and tall - http://www.blanklabelbigandtall.com hopefully that should help

That's the most unlikely but awesome response ever.

haha, thanks chris :)

Is there a gallery somewhere of designs people have done? Can I enter mine in the Ugliest Shirt Of All Time category?

This seems like it has great gift potential. Is there any way we can load a gift card so that when entered it comes up with a shirt design the giver prepared as a suggestion? That way it's a step closer to a personalised gift but without the difficulty of returning it is not liked!

Edit: No I wont be sending out the Ugliest Shirt Of All Time as a gift...

Re link in e-gift cert of designed shirt - that's actually a great suggestion; have just loaded it up to the team.

We don't currently have a gallery feature, although will be adding that very soon.

Being from New Zealand the first thing I look for on e-commerce sites is the currency of the quoted price and the availability (and charges if applicable) of international shipping.

I could find neither on your site.

Apart from that it's a great site and lots of fun designing different shirts. Hopefully I can buy something from you in the future :)

Got it, that's great feedback. Everything is in USD, and we do international shipping for $17 including duties.

During my 6+ year stay in Taiwan, I regularly went to a tailor for custom shirts and trousers. I usually paid about 750NT/shirt and about 2500NT for the trousers. that comes out to about $25 and $75 in USD. Strangely, prices were pretty much the same in HK (which has a higher per capita GDP than the US).

I love having tailored clothes and if I could buy them over the internet, all the better! Even if I left Asia, I don't think I'd use such an expensive service, though. At least not until after achieving some business success myself. :)

I love this idea, years ago I tried ordering from Target's custom tailored shirt site (measurements were pretty inacurate, but concept was clever, it unfortunately was discontinued).

As someone who has a tough time finding properly fitting dress shirts (big neck,broad chest/shoulders, narrow waist) I would be curious as to what the return policy is. Some custom shirt sites seem to cater to certain crowds.

I've had several friends ask me if any companies make clothes tailored to bodybuilders physiques.

We have a how-to sizing guide here (http://bit.ly/e7q8La) and we do free remakes if your shirt doesn't fit as you'd like :) Free returns, remakes and even refunds on a custom product, we think that's pretty risk free.

So, like http://www.asuitthatfits.com/ but for shirts not suits?

.. just seen that they also do shirts.

Nice one. I'll likely be a customer for this firm too...I have to take my shirts to a tailor anyway so I might as well cut out the middleman. Next, suits.

I've heard good things about IndoChino: http://www.indochino.com/ but I haven't tried them myself.

I just ordered a suit from them because I kept reading about them and had to try it out myself

they really specialize in two-piece suits. blanklabel.com more on dress shirts

You can also check http://eduardo-xavier.com , they have some good designs and prices are affordable...

Danny Wong is a pure hustler. I've seen his Mixergy interviews and read many of his articles on high pagerank sites like Huffington Post, ReadWrite Web, Mashable etc.

I have no doubt that Danny Wong will be going places, even if it isn't with Blank Label.

Is there no https at checkout?

depending on which route you take, https is not forced. will be fixed on the next release. thanks for the feedback.

Bug? In chrome when I try to design a shirt, I can't figure out how to change the fabric design. Mouse overs show the description, but then I don't know what to do.

There used to be (still is?) a business that did this for jeans. It's a neat idea.

But the site design is cheesy, to put it nicely.

I actually like the design, fwiw.

Anyone know a site like this for pants?

People already do this, just without a website. My tailor was based out of Hong Kong. He flew to NYC every 3 months and rented a nice hotel room for 4 days. You went there and were fitted, picked out fabric, etc. Somewhere between a week and 12 weeks later, clothes arrived in the mail. Paying $80 - $100 for a custom shirt is a pretty good deal.

In 1994, would you tell Jeff Bezos "people already buy books, just without a website?"

agreed, but isn't part of the point of the web to allow you to do things at your own convenience? i agree that some definitely prefer the physical tailor visit, we're just providing a web-enabled offering

Sorry, my comment wasn't clear -- I thought it was interesting that you were closing the circle to bring it solely online. The outsourced clothes isn't interesting, but solely online is. Your website is cool and I like how you see the clothing combo you pick out, but I'd be concerned about getting the wrong measurements and ending up with not the shirt I want... In particular, I have a power lifters build so it's hard to find shirts that fit my shoulders that aren't far too big in other areas, and eg j crew's slim fit is just too tight for my biceps when it fits my shoulders.

thanks for the clarification, that helps. getting the sizing right online is a concern for any e-commerce apparel company. we have an online sizing guide here (http://bit.ly/e7q8La) and if doesn't fit you great, we'll remake another one with new sizing for free.

Congrats Fan

I'm curious why anyone thinks $350,000 a year for two people is a lot of money and impressive.

Seriously, $175k a year and you get an article in entrepreneur magazine and 26 points on hn? Really? They must not live in the bay area!

I find it odd someone would just denounce others achievements.

Out of curiosity have you done better than this, or are you speaking purely from where you want to be? If anything this is a great point to build off of for them.

Doing something they love, building their own business, controlling their own destinies, and making a healthy income to boot.

Sounds like success to me.

If your only measure success is raw numbers, you might be happier in finance or real estate.

$175K a year is a LOT of money in most places, so I still think it's impressive.

thanks - for a 23 and a 19 year old, we think it's decent for our first year online. we should be able to triple that in year 2.

Revenue != value ok?

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