Former stockbroker Sarah Chessis, a Hong Kong entrepreneur, has co-developed software called Bespokify that customers anywhere in the world can use to order her bespoke professional women’s clothing. Customers input their measurements, generating a digital pattern for clothes manufactured in China, and receive their orders within two weeks of purchase.
Chessis’s brand, Isabella Wren, features customizable dresses that can cost as much as $500. Chessis said she is working on a more-basic line with less-expensive fabrics and fewer customized features that would cost about 40 percent less.
“Consumers are now shopping 24 hours a day and are being trained to expect new styles all the time,” says Mariana Kou, consumer analyst for the bank CLSA.
Big retailers also are looking into the click-buy-and-make model. A year ago, Amazon.com Inc. won a patent with which it could take a customer’s order, print a pattern on fabric and send it to be cut by a robot before being assembled by another robot. The company, which frequently files patents, not all of them resulting in new business developments, hasn’t announced plans to implement the technology. Amazon declined to comment.
