The Clothing Lab: One Entrepreneur’s New Experiment
We all know business is unpredictable and is a definite defining term for risk taking and one business owner certainly knows this. After venturing into the clothing business with his own labels working with leading wholesalers, Tony Singh talks about his many years in the clothing business. We find out what it was like having a start-up production label company, the leading to its downfall and the lessons learnt along the way. And why now, the clothing entrepreneur, is looking forward to the online world, with his new company, The Clothing Lab.
Tony Singh and his brother first set out to achieve their prospects of opening up their own clothing business and labels, with Hazel Fashions, near to 20 years ago. They would design themselves and told of how they would roam around their local city centre to help spawn ideas. “We used to look at designer brands [...] and introduce it into our own workshop”. He talks about the different designs they came across with the V-neck and Polo looks with particular fondness of the jacquard fabric design, where the fabric has intricate designs woven in itself.
Speaking about the early days of the company, he tells us, “we ended up buying, designing, making and then selling [straight to the end consumer]” and how he came to the labels Occhi, Guizzo and Vincent Marcotti. Taken from the Italian dictionary, ‘occhi’ is Italian for ‘eyes’ and ‘guizzo’ means ‘flicker’. Tony tells of how ‘guizzo’ “is like a second glance”. The Italian words sounded good to them and so that is why they gave their brands the foreign names. This is not unfamiliar in the clothing world as the likes of Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Dior are all foreign brands that together with their names give that high fashion aura when spoken of.
When producing the clothes, the entrepreneur would make a sample of fabric, take it to the suppliers who would then mostly make their alterations in order to sell on. With Hazel Fashions, Tony also made sure his products were regulated, “before it goes into production, you’ve got to get it all passed through the lab”. They then spoke of how they would travel to the major cities like London, Manchester to Birmingham to see customers on a weekly basis and where the problems arised. “We did have a big customer base but they weren’t paying” and when he went around these cities “you couldn’t see all of [the customers] you had that many”. Soon after, Tony began to cut down his customer base, profoundly the negative ones that weren’t paying on time. This move would be the pinnacle one in bettering his business and would see him introduce his brand, Occhi. “We introduced our brand [Occhi...] and started giving that to a selected few customers”.
With their brand, they then saw a positive turn around where the suppliers were coming to them and were showing them fabrics before going to the manufacturers “because the relationship I had brought up with them, the rapport and because they knew that they were getting paid”. Now that they were getting better relationships and in turn, better products, other manufacturers were starting to copy their design which Occhi didn’t find as a negative “we were always ahead”.
After the surge in business with the brands, then came the downfall, as it happens commonly in business. “Slowly, slowly it started going [down...] the profit margins started coming down, your production levels started coming down [...] you could see what was happening”. Tony also proudly says “we did it the right way” when closing down as he saw many other businesses changing land-line numbers, declaring bankruptcy but opening up the next day under a new name, “I've never had to hide” and are pleased to have morals.
Speaking of the highlights of the brand Occhi, Tony told of how they were taking orders from well known wholesalers of Topman, Littlewoods and Blue Inc, “we got a lot of business from Blue Inc”. At the peak of his business alongside these highlighted orders, he also spoke proudly of how they got rid of the bad business to deal with “decent people” where when they dealt with a fewer reliable customer base, they were actually producing more, “cutting back our customer base really helped [...] I loved it”.
It was then after the downfall of Occhi and Hazel Fashions that lead to Tony’s new venture of The Clothing Lab, he then begins to tell of why he came back into the clothing business. “The reason why I wanted to do The Clothing Laboratory was because, you still keep your contacts and once I’ve done something, I didn’t want to do it again and thought let’s try retail, I enjoy selling”. The difference here though is that, Tony has taken the store online rather than just retail as such on the tangible local street. “With retail, I was getting a bit of negative feedback [...it was mentioned that on top of retail it was good] to have an online shop, [...] online definite”. After the shop fell through, Tony is now hopeful of the recommendation of the online business and says “the website is a totally new thing for me” and believes he can make this work just as he made manufacturing work.
With near to 20 years in the clothing business, Tony has had some “hard lessons learnt”, has seen his business peak and seen it fall. The enterprising risk taker of what entrepreneurship is, Tony has definitely taken this role. With his moral, paternal leadership styles, which he believes is a key successful trait in business, and the evidential business experience in the clothing field, Tony Singh is now taking to the world wide web and is excited for his new experiment in... The Clothing Lab.
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