Working with Retail Stores
Retail Store Benefits
1) Customer's not coming to your house is nice.
I dislike customers coming to my place because my studio is in my basement. A client has to walk through the house to get there. I wish I had a separate entrance like I did at our last house.
And because they don't come to you, they also don't call you at any time they please. I do give customers my number on the receipt they get at the store, but they never use it. I can better keep my home life and business separate this way.
2) Steady work with no advertising.
The store does this for you if they are on the ball and you are doing a good job on your end. The work load does vary from season to season when working for a store, but the slow times are usually when you would like them- mid-summer, and holidays.
3) Little hassle about charges for work.
I keep a price list at each store and refer to it when writing out the receipt, even if I know the particular charge. I hardly ever get questioned about the fees because this creates an illusion that the fee is out of my control. (This may be true if you have agreed to let the store determine the pricing)
4) Great tax right offs.
If you are doing pick-up and delivery, your mileage is tax deductible. It's not exactly like driving to any other job which is not tax deductible. You are driving from your place of business to a customer's and back. This is deductible. I do enough driving that about 50% of my car expenses for the year are deductible. And if your vehicle is new you also get to depreciate it by the percentage of deductibility, which could end up being a few hundred dollars your business did not spend, but it gets credit for.
5) Getting other work.
If you are good, customers will return to you when they have items they have bought from other stores.
6) Getting out of the house.
I like my days at the stores because it gives me a change of scenery and also gives me a chance to run errands while I'm out. Working at home can get so boring and lonely.
7) It helps my reputation.
This is one of the things I like about this job. Talbots has a good reputation already and it bolsters mine. I get a better class of customers because of it. And I don't get hassled about my charging much because their customers are used to paying for quality.
Starting off Working through a Retail Store
An independent vendor service will certainly be of great benefit to a store in many financial ways that do not include taking a cut of the money you will collect from the customer. The manager may not fully realize all the reasons for him to have you as an independent contractor, so you may need to be prepared to enlighten him as to why you are asking for the details you decide you need.
1. Explain that the store does not "need" to make money off of you
As long as you are doing the fittings, pick-up, and delivery, he is not spending any time, money or risk on you. He saves on unemployment taxes (federal and state), worker's comp fees, paid holidays and other employee perks, health insurance, social security, and all the time spent in paperwork to keep tract of all these.
I have worked for places that took a cut of the money and it is not a very good deal for the vendor. You end up having to charge so much extra for his cut that the high alteration fee discourages customers from using the service. You get less work to do and it thus makes it less worth the trip to the store. The particular contract I had stated that I had to charge the same for the service at that company as I did for anyone else. I could not add a surcharge to the customers because of the cut the store would get. (I worked around this by giving discounts to my other accounts that came to me for service)
2. Explain Benefits to the store
If he does want to do the fittings and have you pick-up, do the work, and deliver, you could consider letting him take a cut. But this is risky. You will need to have a policy in case a customer changes his/or her mind about the work done and refuses to pay unless it is done over. Will you get paid again? or will you have to redo for free?
And if he does get a cut, what happens if a customer from his store wants to come to you privately, not at the store? Does he still get his cut because the item was purchased from his store?
The benefits aren't all his too, the customers benefit from being serviced by an independent vender as opposed to an employee. An employee, especially a commissioned one, will be trying to make that sale no matter what. Alterations to a not-so-right-fitting garment will often be suggested to make that important sale. Even if the alteration purposed may not be right for the garment. An independent vender automatically has the trust of a customer because she can give more honest opinions. She is working for the customer, not the store.
3. Figure how often you will to do pick-ups and deliveries?
You can't spend all your time in the store doing fittings. You'll have to have time to do the work too. I have settled into once a week for each store I service. This is the most cost effective for me. Since Sandy's store is close to her, twice or three times may be worth it. The more trips you can do the more convenience you offer the customer and therefore the more work you will pull in. And your turn around time does not have to be the same as your frequency of trips to the store. Just because you may make a trip every day does not mean that you have to have work finished in one day's time. Most alterationists I know do a week. You could certainly offer less for an additional fee. It's a question of how much pressure do you like working under. Some people need that adrenaline rush to do their best work, I do not.
4. Figure how to charging for your time and gas.
I do not charge for these things specifically. I tell the customer that the fitting, pick-up, and delivery in 7 days is free. People love getting something for free, but, of course nothing is truly free. I have over the years determined how my prices need to reflect the time I spend on travel and fittings. I am afraid that I can not easily answer this for you by giving you my price list. My time spent driving as compared to doing the actual sewing will be different from yours. And the cost of living in our areas may also be very different.
What I did when I started this is to raise every price on my list by $1.00. As I kept tract of my time traveling, fitting and sewing, I began to see patterns of where I needed to charge more and less. If you see that you get a lot more hemming then you do waist sizing, you can lower the hemming fee a little and raise the waist fee because it is more cost effective for your travel time to be getting more hems. But you also need to keep in mind that hems are one of those items that you can automatically charge more for to compensate for those tasks that you will get few of but that are so very labor intensive that you will not be able to charge enough for.
You can't spend all your time in the store doing fittings. You'll have to have time to do the work too. I have settled into once a week for each store I service. This is the most cost effective for me. Since Sandy's store is close to her, twice or three times may be worth it. The more trips you can do the more convenience you offer the customer and therefore the more work you will pull in. And your turn around time does not have to be the same as your frequency of trips to the store. Just because you may make a trip every day does not mean that you have to have work finished in one day's time. Most alterationists I know do a week. You could certainly offer less for an additional fee. It's a question of how much pressure do you like working under. Some people need that adrenaline rush to do their best work, I do not.
It took me about 2 years to find that right formula for pricing according to my style of working and the tasks I was getting. I do not feel like I lost money during this time though. It was time spent learning which is never wasted.
5. You set the prices
One last word on pricing. Demand that it be only up to you. If the store wants to set the prices I would say no deal.
6. What kind of a guarantee will you offer?
At first I offered only a limited guarantee on the quality of my work. If a customer coming to pick-up an item was not pleased with the stitching I would redo it, but if she gained weight or simply changed her mind on the hem length, I charged to do it over. Now, I do anything over for any reason. It gives me a much better reputation automatically. Which makes it possible to charge more for my services. If course I am very careful at the fitting to get my pinning correct with what the customer wants so I will lesson the chance of having to redo it. And I rarely have to do things over anyway.
7. Will the store allow you to do work on items not purchased in that store?
Say a customer is coming to the store for a fitting appointment with you and has a pant hem she also needs done. Will the store let you fit the pants also? It is a question of liability for the store, but if you have worked up a good reputation, this could be a great perk for you and the store's customers. You get more work and the customer gets the added convenience of not having to make 2 trips to get all her alterations done. The stores I work with let me do this because they have found that letting my other customers make fitting appointments in their store usually means an extra sale now and then.
8. If you are doing the fittings in the store there are many things to consider.
I have set times on set days that I let the stores take appointments. But my deal is that I will be in the store for the whole 3 hours so that walk ins can be easily accommodated. I get many of these because professional business ladies can not always make sure appointments. When I worked by appointment only, I used to get a lot of cancellations at the last minute because a boss needed something or a meeting went long. Now I get more work because they know they can drop by anytime during the 3 set hours and get fitted.
In some ways it is a lot of effort. Some days I am just sitting around wasting time. I do often bring some hand work to keep the time filled and productive. But when the system works, I get plenty of work to make the 3 hours I spend in the store profitable. I can end up with 3 to 4 days of work from one session at a store.
9. Having Insurance is important.
Many sewing pros who work out of their homes depend on their home owner's insurance to cover possible losses to customer's goods. You need to check if this will also cover items in your vehicle. Maybe your car insurance will cover, but you probably will need to get an extra policy to cover you when you go to the store and the customer's items and you travel with them.
10. Plan to wear a name tag while in the store.
It gets a bit annoying to have customers ask you questions about stock as if you were a clerk. And they will do this often! Having a nice name tag made will solve this. Even if it is only your business card laminated with a hot glued pin on the back. Besides, it adds to the air of professionalism you'll be wanting to achieve.
My Experience Working through a Retail Store
The Issue
Something happened last week that I just can't get off my mind. I've talked to many friends and gotten mixed answers about what I should do.
And felt this could possibly be a good new thread. So here's the story - - -
I work for 3 Talbots stores here in Cincinnati. I work as an independent vender. Each store has an appointment book in which I have set times that I will come and do fittings. The store Associates make appointments for their shoppers, I show up to do the fittings, take the work home to complete, and deliver finished work when I return to do more fittings.The customers pay the store the amount I have asked for when they pick up their items. At the end of the month I submit a statement of work I have done. This gets compared to their receipts, sent to the home office, and I get a check. I do not charge the customer or Talbots for the time I spend doing fittings.
At the end of the year I get a 1099 from the home office which I use to file my tax return. To me this proves that Talbots realizes that I am not an "employee". I do not accept employee discounts or special gifts. I set my own work schedule and use my own tools. I even pay for my
mistakes.
But I seem to be having a problem with one of these stores realizing that I am not an employee. It's been my regular practice in all 3 stores, to keep a check-out and in log in the appointment book, where I list each item I am taking, work to be done and date I will return it. I initial each line and then get a manager to check and initial it also. I write the list while I am still in the dressing room, pack up my tools in my briefcase, bag the garments, put on my coat, and lug all this stuff to the front desk to get signed out. For some time now I have been letting this one store also search my bags (including my purse) before I leave because it's an employee rule and I don't want them to think I may be trying to shoplift. The other 2 stores don't ask to search my bags.
This past week, when I went to the front desk as usual to have my book initialed, I was told that I had to remove my coat and not put it on
until I was at the front door. I laughed and gave the assistant manager my log for initialing. She repeated that she wasn't joking. I calmly said that I felt this an extreme request and that since I was not an employee, I wasn't going to comply with it. Besides, it would be very difficult to do physically, probably creating a big mess at the front door as I drop the customers' garments on the floor so I can put on my coat. She looked at me indignantly and insisted that since I spent time in the store working I had to comply. I replied that Talbots does not pay me for any "work" I do while I am here and am therefore not an employee and do not have to follow any rules I deem silly. She continued to insist that it didn't matter. I asked if they were going to have Shoppers check their coats at the door. She said that was a silly suggestion. At least she agreed that it was silly.
I felt very insulted. I have served this store for 7 years and have never even taken a shopping bag without asking. I did leave the store with the work I had signed out, without taking off my coat. I'm sure the store manager is going to request that I comply with this new rule the next time I go in for appointments. I may have to choose between my eputation and the clients I get from this store. I would not mind loosing this one store so much because I don't really get enough work to make the time I spend there for fittings profitable. But I am concerned
that loosing this store may force the other 2 stores to drop me once the corporation finds out why.
I have another problem with this request, other than my aversion with being accused of shoplifting. The city of Cincinnati has tried to collect city taxes from me because I service this Talbots store that is within the city limits. I have proven to them that my business is not inside the city limits and Talbots is just one of many customers. Since they report my earnings by a 1099, I was able to support my self-employed status. But I am fearful that if the city of Cincinnati finds out that I am following employee standards at this store, they may try to uses it to attack me again. I do not wish to be stuck for 7 years of back taxes over this silly coat rule.
I have pretty much decided what to do, but would like to read your ideas on the subject.
Progress Report
All the responses to my question have been thought provoking. They have helped me calm down and think about this rationally. I can't believe how upset I got. It was not a good thing and I don't think it helped my image to get so upset in the middle of the store. I may have to
"swallow" a bit if pride to repair that one. I can't tell you how often I wanted to call the store manager and tell her where Talbots could stick their rules, but I'm glad I didn't. I'm still totally willing to give up this store if I have to, but I don't think this will be necessary. Besides, even though the financial gain for this store is not as good as the other 2, there are many other benefits to me keeping the account. I do get repeet customers on the side because of the good work I did for their Talbots items.
Your answers and those that other friends have given me seem to be clarifying that my choice here is a fine line between standing true to
myself and my own business goals and bending to the wishes of my Client because I am performing my job on their "turf".
Why did I go into business for myself anyway? It was mainly because I don't perform well as someone else's employee. I am egotistical enough
to want to call my own shots. I work better without someone watching over my shoulder to check up on my diligence. I like my sense of self-enterprise and think I should be let alone to do my job to the best of my ability because I wish it, not because some employer tells me to.
The simple question is: Where is the line between my responsibility as a Professional to do the job as I see fit and the rights of my customer to
"always be right"? I have had customers in the past chide me for following their wishes and ending up with a garment that I as a professional should have know better and done differently. Some customers just don't listen when you try to educate them on certain points and insist that they want it "their way" and when it ends up wrong, of course they are not the ones that admit it. But that's another topic.
I do realize that the stores I go to will have rules to protect themselves. And I need to comply to some degree if I have hopes of being
trusted ("covering my own butt" as one post put it). My main problem is that I do not have a devious mind. I don't stop to think how my actions
could be misconstrued because I am not thinking of how to rip off my customers. I am only trying to conduct my business in an honest manner. It would be counterproductive if I had to be forever thinking about how my actions could be brought under suspicion every time I went to
accomplish something. I don't wish to waste my brain power on this silliness. And the idea of security rules to "keep each other honest" is
just so much politically correct language to me. What it says to me is, "I don't trust you. You might steal from me so I am keeping my eye on
you."
I am sure that Kelly ( the assistant manager that asked me to put my coat on at the door) was not being personal. She was only trying to do
her job well and protect her store. I knew this when it was happening, but that did not stop me from getting insulted and upset. I did talk to
a manager of the other store and found out that this is a long standing company policy, but they don't follow it there. They do perform the
purse checks, but this is not an odd thing in retail. Many friends have told me of various places they have worked that inspected bags as you
leave from your shift. But all have told me that they think the coat thing is pressing close to invasion of my personal rights.
I've also found out through a friend of mine who runs a store in the same mall as the Talbots, that the downtown store has been scrutinized harshly in recent days by the home office because their shop lifting has been up. So they have been told to beef up security.
"Trust" is so important to me, maybe too important. I need my customer's trust to do my best work on their precious garments. Letting Talbots
inspect my bags at the front desk has always been difficult for me because I feel it throws a veil of suspicion on me that I do not want
customers to witness. I may be over reacting but I do think it hurts the trust I work so hard to protect. And I have never seen an associate have
her purse inspected at the front desk either. This usually gets done in the store room, out of sight of the customers.
So, I decided to offer this compromise to the store manager downtown. I would respectfully request, not demand that my signing out be done in the dressing room before I pack up my tools and bag the garments. I would not put on my coat until the manager on duty was able to inspect what ever she felt she needed to. Hopefully this would reinforce their trust in my honesty and gain me a more efficient way to leave, eliminating the stop at the front desk to unpack and repack all that stuff.
I had a nice little speech all ready when I got to the store. Unfortunately, the store manager was not going to be in and the assistant in charge for the day was Kelly. I really, really did not want to have to talk to her, but I guess I needed to. She let me in as if nothing was wrong and check my done stuff, then went about her business. Leaving me to mine without any extra supervision like I thought I might get. I was a bit shocked and had to rethink what to do. I felt I had to avoid another confrontation, so near the end of my time there I asked her if we could discuss a new check out procedure I'd like to try that I hoped would for fill Talbots' need for security. She said it sounded reasonable and she would do the check out in the dressing room for me. I felt awkward but it seemed to work well. I guess I was just shocked that she didn't give me a hard time.
So I guess the problem is solved unless the store manager doesn't think the new check out process is enough to for fill Talbots' rules. I'll
hopefully find out next week.
Our Visitors ask Questions
Advertising for Work
added October 2005
I have my business card to do alterations at a local bridal shop. When I first asked them to hand my cards out at their shop they asked if I would do work for them for free. Such as sew in a loose hook or a couple of beads. I didn't think that would be such a big deal, but since then they have approached me four different times telling me that their advertising is their biggest expense and that they are doing my advertising for me, so I should not be giving them bills for work that I have done for the shop. I have stated that I would not work for nothing. Sewing on a hook, or a similar thing that takes less than an hour, I will do, but anything more I want to be paid. I have gotten more than enough work from them giving out my business card, and they are very pleased with my work. I am not working for them. I am self employed. What do you think about this policy?
I would not agree to do anything they ask for free. But their argument about advertising for you has it's merits. The bridal store that I get most of my clients from has a system for the names they give out. I pay them $300 a year and am put on a list. This list is ordered by the area the seamstress service. My area used to be "Anderson" so I am first on the list. I get a lot of work from this list and figure it a fair deal.
~Lea
Working with Stores
added May 2001
What a great web page!! So much information. Thank you. I am trying to start a home sewing business with 2 parts actually. It would be bridal/evening wear with a focus on the bridal party but a split withlittle girl's wedding/party dresses. I would like to start with the girl's wear since I have several designs. My question though is - I would actually like to market my girl's dresses to a retail/specialty store so that I could keep control of the flow of clothing. Is this possible? I would like to take 5 samples for instance. But what if (hopefully) I am called from 2 stores asking for 4 dresses. Is there a way (a plan) in which I couldmake sure I am always ahead of the game with just myself working and maybe 2 helpers? Does this sound like a feasible business idea? Any thoughts? Thank you for any help you can give.
Your plan sounds great! As with any business endeavor, there is risk and it's usually all yours. The risk can bethat you won't get any orders and it can also be that you will get more than you can handle. It's hard to make plans for either possibility. Your idea to have 2 helpers ready is good, but you will be responsible for their quality of work. Having employees is a whole other problem.
In short the only way you can control the flow of orders is to advertise in as many stores as you can to hopefully create the situation where you have too many orders. Then set a limit of how many orders in a given period you will take and say "NO" to all others. I limit the number of bridal customers I take per month. Saying no is hard but it keeps me from going bonkers with too much work.
Hope this helps
~Lea
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