Hey Dustin,
I am not going to make a habit out of this because we try to stick to Email, Twitter, and our Facebook Fan Page to keep our communication somewhat organized. Plus, like I said before I am not a big comment poster on this site because I like to listed/read what others think. But I will address your two questions. This is not the type of stuff most people will be aware of and as a result I am somewhat hesitant to even discuss it. But what the hell...
1. No. We still require a 1 hour drive between all Jiberish retailers to avoid saturation. We currently have to deny around 80% of the inbound retail requests we get because we are doing our best to ensure that we are sold in the right places in each market for the best of the brand at this stage. We still make less than 300 of each piece worldwide and sell the clothing to 16 countries to spread things out as much as possible. We decide how many pieces we are going to make each season well before any orders from retailers are placed. Once something is gone, it is gone forever since we only make it once. And we are conscious of the power we have to educate non-ski customers on what is happening in the freeskiing world. It is why we like working with stores like Flow in Milwaukee, Humidor in LA, and Identity Footwear and Apparel in Portsmouth in addition to snowsports related retailers.
Obviously we could sell a LOT more of each piece we design if we wanted to because our stuff sells out very quickly. The Jiberish x 5950's sold out in 1 day. Some sold out in 15 minutes, but we only made 40 of each color because we wanted to keep them limited. If we slutted out and made a ton of them they would not be special to the person who owns it. That would cheapen the brand, and for us, it has never been about the money. If it was you would have seen us blow this thing up and sell to everyone who contacts us. We don't even have sales reps. I handle International and my business partner handles the US and we don't actively contact retailers to open new accounts. We don't even publish a phone number to the LoHi store to avoid competing with our retail partners. Our approach is not traditional from a financial standpoint and most savvy business professionals would think we are morons. We don't expect everyone to agree with the strategy. But then again, we really aren't trying to appeal to everyone. We just do us...and for those who are into it, we genuinely appreciate it. For those who aren't....that's fine too.
It sucks that impluse buys probably happen and it sucks that some people buy our clothing to try and flip it. We control as much as we can to protect our customers but there is only so much we can do.
2. That is incorrect but I would be curious to find out who said they got half of their order. Could you email that to me so I can address it with them? Sometimes we will trim their order a little bit if they ordered too much of a specific piece but we explain that to them.
We actually put a maximum on what is allowed to be bought by 1 individual store to make sure it gets spread out across all retailers fairly. We have retailers that sometimes try to take on too much product and so we have to work with them to get an order that is right for their store and also fair to the other Jiberish retailers. It also helps to ensure that retailer sells what they bought. Most companies put minimums on orders. We put maximums on them. It doesn't mean we think we are cooler than other companies, we just do things differently.
Anyways, I hope my answers don't come across as us trying to justify our choices. Not the intention. But I do hope they explain things so others understand where we are coming from at least.
And to the question below regarding non zip up hoodies....yes we have them this year and we also have snap-up henley style ones.
So there it is....I hope I answered your questions. I will go back to the guy who logs on here hoping "Feschies" comes back to entertain us all.
Stoked for winter!
-Pete
