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Unorthodox
As son of a fashion retailer and with a economist and accountant background, in addition armed with a few years of experience at PriceWaterhouseCoopers Drs. Bas Possen works on developing the formula of making "Made to Measure" economical applicable.
His method of approach is unorthodox and is in the center of attention by knowledge institutes. He uses a Mobile Fashion Room to visit companies and events, in the Van Baerlestraat in Amsterdam Possen.com established the first flagship store, and this year stores will be opened across the street and in The Hague. The first one mainly for woman wear. The center of all activities is the head office in Nuth.
According to Bas Possen selling clothing trough the internet is not possible. There is no business plan for activities like Dressmart and Boo.com to be remunerative. Internet is the perfect solution to inform consumers and, after the first sale, give them the possibility to do repeating sales. But internet has no potential to be the carrier of the total activity.
Qualitative information
Possen.com works on Mass Customization. Body Scanning and other technological instruments to get to an economical feasible concept for the clothing industry is, at this moment, sufficiently developed. But an economically viable concept demands more then adjusting language barriers between industry and technology. As long as technicians think in measuring tables and numbers there language is parallel with the clothing producer, but it gets problematically when craftsmanship and tailor logics are brought into use. The bits and bytes from the body scanner supply quantitative input for the cutting machine, but no qualitative. For example if a person wears his waistband under or over his stomach, you want your fit “cut to the bone” or not tight, et cetera. This was just one of many barriers Bas Possen had to deal with during the founding of Possen.com. Tecmath, the developer of the Body Scan admitted mid- 1999, when Bas Possen was writing his business plan, openly that there where thousands of child diseases for working with the scanner. Spring 2000 this list had almost doubled. In practice tuning the scanner and the production is considerable taken care of, but it’s important to add a commercially-logistically dimension.
Transparency
The customer is being scanned and with care advised with his choice of fabric and model. But in practice the created order has to be placed into a “black box” of the manufacturers atelier. Maybe the atelier asks additional information by phone or fax, but that’s it. From there the fashion retailer has to wait until he finds out when and in what form the Made-to-Measure product is delivered. At POSSEN.COM the method is different. All orders endure an extra quality check. This check is to adjust the above-mentioned qualitative and quantitative information and to select an atelier. In this stadium POSSEN.COM places the orders directly with the fabric and accessories supplier. Because of that, possible problems are almost directly noticed, time is saved and the process stays transparent. Actually, the ordering could be done real-time by building an interface with the suppliers stock system. From the POSSEN.COM side there is already a large proportion of transparency. Fabric houses, ateliers, franchisers and shop managers have access to the on-going orders, everyone from it’s own perspective. But controlling the orders will be kept in the own organization.
Business-to-Business
From previous writing it may be obvious that the use of internet focuses on the back office. The method leads to shorter production cycles, but also eliminates unnecessary hindrance within the chain. This leads to a win-win situation to all companies involved, with exception off agents and importers. The method is not only an example for Mass Customization, but also for chain reversal “optima forma”. Developers like Tecmath and Lectra have followed POSSEN.COM’s method with a lot of interest. They realize that the large volumes, which are expected after a short term, will only be manageable by means of crystal clear protocols. Because for Mr. Possen it’s a fact that his Made-to-Measure concept will be the base for a large part of the production of top-end man and woman clothing. Within the traditional production method there are solutions to tackle problems like time-to-market, but at some point it will reach the limits. Trend watchers, designing, demo’s, fashion exhibitions et cetera are superfluous, after all the concept works from the source of new trends; the self-assured end-user. Innovations are successful only when there is a win-win situation for all involved. This is the case with mass customization. Meanwhile the POSSEN concept proves its viability with in the business-to-business market. Employees can have a personal outfit measured, whether or not uniform. POSSEN.COM proves Made-to-Measure works, and they will keep going on in an innovative way.
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