holy shit, there is a new direct competitor entering the landscape every couple of weeks, there are slightly more established yet still fast moving companies looking to move into the space, and we still haven't woken up the massive sleeping giants with hundreds of millions of marketing dollars to deploy. the thoughts of an entrepreneur in the co-created custom men's dress shirt market?
strangely, we're still relatively calm about it. we always go back to seth godin's challenge to be remarkable. if you can't be truly remarkable at something, it means you're either not trying hard enough, or you're trying to do something too big.
we try hard everyday to be a leader, not only in design it yourself men's dress shirts, but in our vision to fundamentally to change the relationship between producer and consumer through the process of co-creation. that's godin's first point. we endlessly speak to customers of the label, users of the site, apparel industry professionals, user-design experts. we work hard. there's a dedication from the team to extend our reach as far as possible, to deliver the best possible experience whilst you're on our site, to make sure the product is quality and timely, and to connect with them a sense of community. but we work hard, smart, efficient, honest, collaborative, transparent. not just long. we work hard.
and man we're focused. we want to deliver the most compelling online design-it-yourself men's dress shirt experience and product anywhere online to a young male consumer. we've been asked if we do pants. no. do you do women. no and if you don't fit into the narrow vertical of guy who cares enough about individual style to possible read a men's fashion and lifestyle blog or go to the effort of trying to seek out a design-it-yourself dress shirt, then we probably don't care that much about you. we care about the guys who see the world is changing, that believe personalization is the new norm, not mass-production, that individual style is the new black. and we want to do everything we can for them.
the hardest opportunity to turn down was putting our split personality shirt in department stores. we instantly would have more reach, but it was such a diversion to the customers we had promised ourselves to serve. it was us imposing a design on you, rather than providing the right online dress shirt creation platform for you to design something unique for yourselves. it'd be doing the exact thing we're fighting, and for what? a quick buck. no thanks.
so competitors can keep piling up. this will give us opportunities to develop partnerships with the ones we think have noble visions. but we're not worried about the others. we'll remain dedicated to being a leader by working hard and staying focused. if we keep listening, we think we can get it right. so we're listening, let us know what you think?
[courtesy of la ciudad visible]
