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Suitsupply hired actors to pose as customers for its initial London store
“So then I started hiring actors to be in the store, to sort of browse around, and sort of, we had some dynamic happening”
De Jong forged municipal zoning blueprints to save first Suitsupply store
“And so then I thought, ok, I took a pen, I practiced as long as I could, To, you know, have almost the same handwriting as the unit where it was store written in, and I just penciled store in my unit. And then I went back to the municipality and said, but guys…”
De Jong claims Suitsupply's Chinese factory surpassed Italian factories in quality
“This was, you know, something I'm like, I've never seen some, so much quality and so much detail before. It was probably one of the best factories I've ever seen. Better than ever, anything I've seen in Italy.”
Dutch luxury retailer Oger sued Suitsupply over a cheeky directional advertisement
“And then we had an ad that says, For a beautiful suit, you go to Auger, and then you'd take a left and a right. All right, basically just a route to go to our store. And it was sort of a little bit of a pun and we're joking. And it was a little tongue-in-cheek…”
Suitsupply is now the largest customer of major Italian luxury fabric mills
“And now our business is by far the biggest customer of all these mills in Italy.”
Simultaneously expanding US stores and launching womenswear damaged Suitsupply's growth momentum
“We did a year when we opened I think, We have 10 or 12 stores in the U.S. When we only had 10 or 12, then, you know, at the same point, we started, you know, figuring out and opening a women's line, and it was few women's stores, and we did too much. And inste…”
De Jong argues elevated casual wear makes menswear coordination harder than suits
“People still want to have looks, right, and it's just going to get a lot harder for them, because before it was a blue suit and a white shirt, and now it's suddenly, you know, trousers, chinos slip-ons. White sneakers or slip-ons or whatever, five pairs of dif…”
Suitsupply secured its first Soho lease for $250,000 with a six-month break
“And this landlord was very happy to give me a year lease with a six-month break, and if I couldn't make it after six months, I could happily walk away. 250,000 dollars.”
Suitsupply trains its retail style experts to become Instagram influencers
“You can become a style expert in, in, in training other people, but you can also become what we call a key opinion leader, where we train you in how to represent the brand on social media or on outside of the store, where you basically become sort of a I would…”
De Jong personally visits 80 percent of Suitsupply stores every six months
“I go to my stores.
Every six months.
I'm not saying all the stores, but probably 80% of them.
And, of course, we celebrate everybody's success, but everybody has to name two things that we can do better.”
Logistics and customs nightmares in China nearly bankrupted Suitsupply early on
“So everything was, you know, the quality was great, the craftsmanship was great, but everything else around it was a nightmare. I almost tanked the business with it.”
Suitsupply raised cheap debt to sit on $50 million in liquid cash
“When those rates were so low, and money was abundant, you could, you know, suddenly from a constantly cash-strapped business, we raised a lot of debt, and suddenly we had a lot of cash. You know, I've never had, like, you know, let's say just a fifty million s…”
WSJ blind test rated a $600 Suitsupply suit equal to $3,600 Armani
“There was a piece in the Wall Street Journal that did a blind test on suiting. And we got out of that contest with a headline that a 600 dollar suit supply suit was better or just as good as a 3600 dollar Armani.”
Suitsupply's sales dropped by approximately 40 percent in 2020
“Your sales fell initially about 40% in, in that year.”
Suitsupply requires new retail hires to complete nine weeks of structured training
“We have a relentless high-end training program where we bring everybody to our one-week onboarding program. When you finish that, you're brought into a store, and you're paired with what we call a style expert, and you're getting, for two months, more and more…”