There has been a lot of debate within the team lately on exactly what it is that we do. At the moment, when most people who know Blank Label think of Blank Label, they think CUSTOM DRESS SHIRTS. And this is fair enough. After all, for as long as the young company has been in existence, we've introduced ourselves as the e-commerce custom dress shirt company. In all honestly, I never really liked the term. I never wanted to create a company that was about custom dress shirts. Custom dress shirts exist. You can get them on Madison Ave in NYC, Magnificent Mile in Chicago, Fashion District in LA, Saville Row in London, Oxford Street in Sydney. But we're online. Yes, that is different. But that's still not what we're about. So we're not just about bringing what already exists to an e-commerce storefront.
It's more than that. It has to be. Not just because there are other companies doing it, but because we just don't think it's that COOL. So what if we're saving you the convenience of buying a custom dress shirt on High Street, and you might save 20% by having it online. It makes it all pointless when we make you go buy a measuring tape and watch a 10 minute instructional video on how to measure your back. That's somewhat compelling, but still not totally awesome to us. So what are we really about? We want to provide something that you truly can't get anywhere else. They are three principles.
First, we want to be about EXPERIENCE. From the instant you come onto the Blank Label site, we want you to have fun, and go, holy shite, this is really cool. We want to show you an online shopping experience you've never had before. Second, we want to be about SERVICE. We've found the better we are about service, not only do we get more sales, but we get better as a company, because people are more open about giving feedback. We're a sponge for what customers tell us. Third, it's a philosophy around CO-CREATION. Blank Label is CO-CREATED MEN'S DRESS SHIRTS ONLINE. INDIVIDUALLY DESIGNED BY YOU, INDIVIDUALLY MADE BY US. We don't try and make custom dress shirts. Partly because our shirts are not wholly custom in fit. We make it super easy by asking your body shape, your standard size and your cut preference, with a couple of other details, but it's logical, and it's frankly good enough. On the second shirt, you can make tweaks to what exactly wasn't right on your first one. But what we're really about is the ability to design a really unique, interesting dress shirt that has your own style, that can have your own label.
And we're going big too. It starts at men's dress shirts online, but it doesn't end at apparel. It's a fundamental change in how individual people interact with what they consume. It's no longer mass produced goods, it's about co-created products that changes the fundamental relationship between producer and consumer. This shit is going to be big!
See what we're all about --> Dive Into Design
This post was written by Chief Shirt Maker, Fan Bi, who started Blank Label in 2008, launched it in 2009, and has been pushing co-created men's dress shirts online ever since while occassionally writing for the company's Co-creation Blog.
