I’m a shopper, and I love to get a good deal. I’m one of those people that if you complement my shoes, I will proudly tell you I got them for next to nothing in a special “extra 25% off clearance for email subscribers only” discount code sale. When I was single, this invariably led me to having a lot of stuff that I kept in the closet for a while before donating it or giving it away. Then I got married. My husband, blessedly, is a saver, so I had to change the way I shopped and think more carefully about purchases before jumping the gun. He would say that it didn’t matter how sweet the deal, what was more important was the value that I placed on the item. So, I would look at a pair of shoes that originally cost $200, but with markdowns and discount codes they were now down to $45 and I would be so excited at the deal I was getting. He would challenge me and say, “if you took all that away and someone just showed you this pair of shoes, how much would you want to pay for them?”. It may seem like a simple exercise but for me, changing the thinking around and just pausing for a bit to think what value an item had for me versus what the item cost has stopped me from making so many impulse purchases that were “an amazing deal”.
One of things I always wanted, but the cost didn’t align with the value I placed on the item, was a caftan. I had visions of myself floating around the house holding a cocktail, luxurious, voluminous fabric pooling at my feet. I could be vacationing at my villa in Positano or just at home with my kids, you wouldn’t know it by what I was wearing. I had the vision; the problem was that I couldn’t justify to myself paying $400 for what was essentially an oversized piece of fabric that I’d only wear at home. Along comes COVID-19 and quarantine and my mom decides she wants to buy a sewing machine and wants to get some projects going. I found a vintage caftan pattern on Etsy and we were excited to get started. What I came to realize after she finished the first one was that I hadn’t understood the cost associated with producing a caftan or the awkwardness of making a very large garment that uses a lot of fabric. The volume of fabric translates into a significant amount of time spent on each one.
In my mind I only wanted to pay maybe $100 for a caftan. In reality the fabric, zipper and trim alone cost $50 and that was buying closeout fabric on clearance! The labor was free, but of course if I was a business that would not be the case. When your selling an item, if you just cover your replacement cost you’re left with no profit and no ability to expand your production. If I thought about our project as a business, we had $50 in materials for the original garment, $50 if I want to be able to make another one, and on top of that I would have to determine how much to charge for labor and shipping costs, let alone the cost of the new sewing machine. This is all before considering any profit! All in I would probably charge $150 for our bespoke caftans once wages and fixed cost for equipment were considered. I easily came to see that products with more luxurious fabrics or embellishments could very easily drive up the cost to the $300-$400 level when you have wages and profit to consider.
I share this because I remember I once approached a jewelry designer to do some custom work for me on something that I thought would be very simple. When the quote for the work came back, I was astonished, almost offended at the price! Like the caftan, I thought I wanted something simple and straightforward, while for them making something look simple meant it needed to be crafted by hand, which of course meant a lot more labor and attention to detail. As a customer, I didn’t feel I had seen enough of their work or knew enough of their reputation to align with the cost they were asking for the work. Not that I thought they were inflating the cost, but the value just wasn’t there for me. Now though, I wonder what could we have done differently to ensure that we were more aligned?
Yes, the first part of the conversation could have been “What do you want to spend?” but anyone who has worked in retail knows that sometimes this can limit your opportunities. What you really want to do is create value in the customer’s eyes so that they are willing to spend more. There is such a shroud of mystery surrounding the jewelry industry that it can be hard to build trust with potential clients who have no idea the complexity involved with bringing designs to life. You can try to explain to customers the quality of materials that you use and the complexity of what seems simple, but like my caftans, unless they try it for themselves many may not be convinced. I think if someone told me that a caftan could be tricky to sew, I wouldn’t have believed them. Since it was my mom telling me about the problems, and I wasn’t paying her anyway, of course I listened to what she was saying. Obviously, my mom is someone that I trust, so how does my jeweler become someone that I trust?
Even in this environment with so much being done virtually due to coronavirus, it all comes down to reputation and relationships. I recently committed to my most expensive jewelry self-purchase. I had never seen any of the designers work in person, but when I saw a photo of the piece on Instagram, I knew I had to have it. So, what was it that created value for me and lead me to make this commitment? Why did I trust that not only would the jewelry be excellent quality, but would also meet my value expectations? It happened like this. I watched an Instagram Live where a jewelry blogger that I follow was interviewing a gemstone cutter who is well-known and has an excellent reputation. During the Live, the gemstone cutter was asked to name a couple of designers that he felt were doing good work with colored stones. I wrote down the people he mentioned and browsed their Instagram feed and watched their Stories over the next few days. One in particular caught my eye, she posted the piece, I fell in love and the rest is history. So, based on the recommendation of people I don’t know personally, I purchased a piece of jewelry that I had never seen, all executed online via Direct Message, not even a phone call. Does that sound crazy? It shouldn’t, we let celebrities tell us what to buy all the time on products they don’t know any more about than we do. This was a jewelry industry veteran that I had been following for a few years and his opinion, for me, had value. In this case that value translated into me spending money!
In closing, we balance cost and value every time we spend money whether we are conscious of it or not. I tend to think that people that are good at saving money do it as more of an intentional exercise. We make substitutions on our grocery lists when items are too costly or we pay for our favorite brands even when the competition is on sale. While we can’t give our customers the opportunity to make their own caftans to understand why our products cost what they do, we can reach out, share pieces of our lives, and let them get to know us, so that they can come to trust us through virtual interactions. With that comes a comfort that we are using the best materials, supporting communities sourcing those materials, taking care of our employees with fair wages, all of which add value for the mindful consumer. This may lead to some of the best long-term clients that you’ve never met.
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