April 30, 2010
By the ZippyCart Ecommerce Software Reviews Content Team
The world of ecommerce is filled with online stores dedicated to women’s fashion. From shoes, to purses, to dresses and more, it is clear that women are a target audience for a vast majority of online sales. With all this focus on women, men almost become a small niche rather than 50% of the market. Blank Label is changing this by joining the few ecommerce sites that provide clothing for men only. And they’re doing this with a twist: Blank Label provides extremely affordable custom designed dress shirts for men… that the customer gets to design! They are making fashion a must for the male online shopper and also making it easily accessible. We caught up with Danny Wong of Blank Label and asked him a few questions about what makes this online venture a success.
1. Can you tell us a little bit about Blank Label and your ecommerce model?
Blank Label allows you to make your own custom dress shirts with our online shirt creator. All of our dress shirts are individually made to fit your preferences. We’re pushing the concept of co-creation, empowering you to be your own designer, giving you final say in the product you are purchasing. We also identify our product as affordable luxury because our made-to-order dress shirts start at $45 and average at $60-$70 after adding a few really neat customized options. Our prices are comparable with mass-produced products because we are trying to encourage you to adopt co-creation over mass-production without there being much friction in the change. You can get a really awesome shirt you designed, that no one else has, that fits you for the same prices as a dress shirt at most department stores.
2. What have you done so far in 2010 to improve the Blank Label experience.
To improve the Blank Label experience, we launched a new website, with more content focused on dress shirt stylization and more text pushing the co-creation revolution. We also released a few big updates to our dress shirt design app, such as a newer, better navigation feature, and a virtual dress shirt that was twice the size as our original!
3. Why do you feel co-creation, and customized apparel has become so popular over the past few years?
Co-creation and custom apparel has become so popular over the past few years because of the Gen Y consumer, the entitled consumer who wants something catering to their needs and their wants. Businesses are realizing more and more that they should be more user-oriented, and how can you get more user-oriented than through co-creation – the collaboration between business and consumer?
4. Do you plan to ever expand outside custom dress shirts at Blank Label?
We have thrown some ideas around. Once we nail down custom men’s dress shirts, we may move onto men’s suits again, men’s pants, or even men’s jackets.
5. Can you tell us about any plans or improvements you have planned for the rest of 2010?
We’re a bit hush, hush about the rest of the year. You’ll just have to find out!
6. We heard you have a sample kit with some swatches of your fabric, is this becoming increasingly popular for new customers to Blank Label?
Yes! We are privately offering samples of fabric swatches to our customers to check out before they purchase their own dress shirt. You only have to cover the cost of shipping which is probably around $6 to receive your sample of swatches to get a better sense of our shirt fabric types and quality.
7. Can you tell me a bit about what a typical day is like for the Blank Label team in Boston, Orange County, and Shanghai?
Having the Blank Label team split across the world is crazy. We typically confer via email, IM, ooVoo, and Google Wave. But our roles are fairly independent so the need to be in an office, chatting constantly isn’t necessary. In fact, we may even be more efficient this way because we are not in the same place chatting our days away to each other.
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While the idea of co-creation is very tempting, I’m still afraid of room for errors. I might design stuff wrongly or end up disappointed with so many hidden charges. I’m a traditional buyer, I go to stores to buy my thing. I will try the services of Blank Label and see if it works.
get back to you later