Case Study: How well do tailored clothes fare in the market today?
In this project, I talk about my research process and the findings & insights that stood out to me in the course of interacting with users and stakeholders in the community. The data was collected in 2019 in collaboration with a partner.
Role: UX Research
Tools Used: Google forms, Fig-Jam, Figma
What’s the deal with tailored clothes?
For the longest time, getting clothes tailored was quite commonplace in India. Sewing skills were common in almost every middle-class home and you also had tailors that catered to the public’s more elaborate festive needs. As a result, tailor-made garments were cheaper and a more accessible option to people. Over the years, however, with the boom in fast fashion, there has been a rise in people opting for readymade clothes.
Aim of the study: I wanted to understand how consumers felt about the process of obtaining and using tailored clothes in their day-to-day lives.
I set out to explore this topic in the following ways :
Quantitative Research
- Consumer Survey
Qualitative Research
- Contextual interviews with stakeholders
- Phone interviews with consumers
- Clustering Qualitative Data
What do people think?
My first step was to create an exploratory survey to see how tailor made garments fared against readymade clothes in the market currently.
The preliminary findings of the survey that was answered by 77 people in a diverse age range (18-50+) in total showed that a majority of them, 80.5 % used readymade clothes. This was hands down, a win for fast fashion. But did this imply that this was the option people preferred?
55.8% of the people who answered the survey said that tailored clothes fit them the best. Clearly, nothing beats a custom fit. But with that being the case, why did people switch to using readymade clothes at large? Was it the cost? or the process? I decided it was time to talk to people, both consumers as well as tailors to understand where the frictions arose.
I conducted phone interviews with people between the ages of 20 - 45 to understand the user journey and get a clear picture of their preferences.
Sample Questions
- How often do you get tailored clothes?
- Do you prefer ready-made or tailored clothes? Why?
- Have you faced any issues with getting clothes tailored?
A typical user journey went as follows:
Buying fabric → Deciding the outfit design → Finding a tailor → Giving/ taking measurements → Dropping off fabric for stitching → Waiting for the final product → Picking up the stitched outfit
Starting with 1, for very easy and 5 for very challenging I was able to pinpoint the frictions in the process based on my conversations with the end-users.
Upon further investigation, I discovered some more bumps in the user journey. A majority of tailor shops in India especially those catering to the middle class often don’t have trial/fitting rooms owing to the lack of space. So a user can assess the fit of the clothes only after they get home. If a user is dissatisfied with the fit or the tailoring, they would have to give it for re-stitching.
Buying fabric → Deciding the outfit design → Finding a tailor → Giving/ taking measurements → Dropping off fabric for stitching → Waiting for the final product → Picking up the stitched outfit → Trying on the outfit→ Dropping off the outfit for alteration → Picking up the outfit after alteration
Clustering Qualitative Data
To identify the prevalence or frequency of a specific issue I grouped the data into seven broad categories.
- Finding tailors
- Price
- The time it takes to get a finished product
- Travel to get the product
- Quality of stitching
- Communication with tailors
- Knowledge of design trends
The Stakeholder side
I went to different tailoring shops and spoke to tailors as they worked. The Interaction design foundation defines a contextual interview as
A user research method specifically designed to provide insight into the environment or context in which a design will be used.
I felt that speaking to tailors in their shops/environment was crucial to understanding & prioritizing solutions that would fit them the best. Interacting with different tailoring shops, I noticed similarities and differences in their processes.
Similarities
- They get customers primarily through word of mouth
- The stores don’t stock fabric except for lining cloth
- Customers are only given a rough estimate of the pick-up date
Differences
- Some stores maintain a written record of customers
- Not all stores offer delivery, and some do based on the delivery location.
- Some stores have in-house designers, while others depend on the customers to guide them about the design
- Some tailoring shops have space constraints & find it difficult to stitch frocks or long dresses
- Some shops cater exclusively to women or children, while others take in all orders
Conclusion
Based on my research, I was able to conclude that the decline in the popularity of tailored clothes was because of
- Visibility: Customers were unable to locate tailors in their area given that most tailor shops got customers through word of mouth & didn’t invest in marketing.
- Quality: Customers did not have the assurance of a good quality finished product.
- Consistency: There was no organized process to obtain tailored clothes from start to finish.
- Time: The time and effort it took to drop off and pick up the product; multiple times if alterations were required.
- Communication: Customers weren’t given an accurate estimate of the wait time.
- Price: Customers were not given a cost estimate upfront.
An ideal solution would be a platform that bridges the gap in these inconsistencies in the process.
