Like many young professionals, I needed a new suit and decided to go for a ‘made to measure’ one. I heard an advert for Suitopia on Spotify and decided to investigate. I had heard about online ‘made to measure’ suit making businesses like A Suit That Fits directly from Warren through the Collège des Ingénieurs, but found his prices a little too expensive for my budget. I also appreciated Suitopia’s ‘package’ deal where you get a reasonable suit for €165 without having to make decisions about what you want i.e. perfect for someone who just wants to get a suit and doesn’t mind how many pockets it has.

Despite the website’s Web 1.0 looks, it offers ways of choosing from different fabrics, number of pockets, number of buttons… pretty much everything you could want! I decided to upgrade mine to a different fabric and tweak the jacket buttons and inside lining. It all came to a total of €195, not bad for a ‘made to measure’. Yes, delivery was included using Fedex.

I tracked my parcel using the Fedex number provided and my parcel left from Tan Binh in Vietnam. Vietnamese tailors have a reputation for quality but I was still surprised that my suit would be shipped directly from there without first going to the Suitopia headquarters. I expect all the quality control is done in Vietnam and has been tested many times over! My suit travelled from Vietnam to China and then straight to France giving a total shipping time of 2 days and a total delivery time from order of 28 days exactly, not bad at all. If I take away shipping (2 days) and order processing (say 2 days) and payment processing (they say you can have your suit in 20 days using Paypal (instant payment) and 3-5 weeks using a credit card, so payment delay is about 0 to 2 weeks), it took them between 22 and 24 days to manufacture my suit. Now, I expect they had more than just my order and more than just one person to make the suit so I can only but estimate how quickly this suit was made.

So, what about quality? Well the quality is excellent, I received my parcel, opened it up (before signing anything) to check for tears, rips and poor sewing and, well, I could not find any at all! I checked all the seams, slightly pulling on them along the way and everything was fine. I tried my suit on and, well, it’s a perfect fit!

Is it a good business to invest in?

Well, let’s start with the basics. According to my friend Google, a tailored suit in South Korea or Vietnam costs between $60-$85, which is about €40-€60. This includes the fabric, the tailor’s margin etc. Fedex from Vietnam to Paris is between $70-$80 (€50-€60) giving a COGS of €90-€120 per item. Let’s deduce from that SG&A of about €10-€20 for paying a webmaster, running the ERP etc. (this is based around a total monthly cost of $1000 for 100 suits at €165) leaving a gross profit of €20-€50/suit for 100 orders per month or a total of €24,000-€60,000/year. Remove 30% tax (and no debt repayment), this leaves you with a net profit of €16,800-€42,000/year. This is not a bad business to be in, for which some of the profitability levers will be:

• The total cost of each suit for each custom element (there could even be a profit per element perhaps?)
• The transport costs currently hacking away nearly half of COGS
• Volume, in this business clearly ‘the more, the merrier’

Associating with an already-established distribution network would clearly help to raise the profit margin. We could imagine Suitopia creating suits under their own brand name or working as a ‘white label’ for a large distributor…

About Suitopia : Suitopia.com is a Swedish company that has been in existence since April 2008 (or thereabouts) created by Aleksander Lund. They sell customisable made-to-measure suits. According to their website “Suitopia Scandinavia AB is a company which aims to harness the benefits of globalisation and the Internet era and mold these two pillars of the modern business environment together, in order to offer superior products to our customers at good prices.”

“I read the article you wrote about Suitopia, and it was really good! Very happy that you liked your Suitopia suit.”

Aleksander Lund – CEO, Suitopia