Support Local. Support Boutique.
I have to explain in behalf of why local and boutique brands are much more expensive than your Cotton On and Gap or H&M. Reason being they are big players, they do mass production. They have hundreds of boutiques around the world manufacturing thousands of pieces weekly if not fortnightly. There is just no way a local designer or a boutique brand could fight with these big players. They have huge capitals, big investment and yet each piece of garment produced are at such low cost because they can afford the quantity and ends up with very attractive price tag. For local boutique brands and designers, it's extremely tough. We have to worry about the min. order and storage, each colour comes in different sizes and we have to make them in different colours. We are basically one man show if not just a handful. We put in our savings to try to make this happen and just facing all these issues are enough to make anyone turnaround and say let's do something else. Because of the smaller quantity that we deal with, each order becomes much more expensive and eventually resulting in a higher price range for consumers. There's really nothing much we can do about.
Take for example I used to work and live in Melbourne and most of the local designers are extremely expensive because everything including the materials are produced in Australia where labour cost is super high and it ends up having consumers to pay for it. And yet the Aussies are happily paying for it because of Australian pride. They support local, they support their own.
I started BaeBeeBoo because I love fashion and after my daughter was born, I was inspired to create a range of apparels that were not 'mass'. I invested my savings and followed my heart all in the pursuit of passion for fashion. Basically it's a easy choice to go with mass market fashion and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. I do that too. However, next time when you are presented with a local or boutique brand and realised that their price range are much more expensive than what you are used to, think again. It's a lot of hard work, high overheads and many sleepless nights that result to the end product. Fashion is like art. It is very subject and if you like it, your support will fuel us hope and love to do better.
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