Ask Giles and/or Alex Anything
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1. What item did you expect to sell like hotcakes and ended up not doing well?
2. What item ended up being way more popular than you thought it would?
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The simple answer, is anything that we have to put in the outlet. This is a business, we need to make money, every time we have to discount something, is really an admission of failure. Another answer is Triple Works, it was amazing stuff, but because of what I can only put down to brand snobbery (end-user customers and retailers) it did not sell, but had it been tagged IH I am sure it would've sold really well. We launched the 14oz denim under the TW name, it sold really poorly, I asked H to rebrand it IH, so we did. When I asked for retailers orders, it was, at that time, the largest order I had ever taken. And I would guess, it is now our top selling denim weight.
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Shorts, IHC-16 and sometimes a UHF completely catches me off guard.
This is one of my mantras:
The art of being a successful retailer is not how often you get it right, it is how often you don't get it wrong.
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I just love the idea of Haraki showing G a pair of low rise, slim jeans, and he's like "Feck that, I'm not about that life"
So what happened is that I was in one of my first meetings with Haraki and Kiya in Tokyo. Haraki shows us a pair of slim jeans he had developed, but did not want to sell in Japan. Kiya said, "I like those, can SE have exclusivity on them?" Because slim jeans were not part of my heritage and not why I had got into the business, I said: "You bet". The cut was not perfect and it took a few iterations to get it right (mainly because I did not know at the time, but the Japanese do not include the waistband when measuring rise), it became the 301 cut. From a IHUK point of view, it was one of the worst decisions I ever made, but from a brand perspective, it proved to be brilliant.
As time went by, I began to realise the folly of my ways and that we needed a slim jean in the portfolio, I could not take away the exclusivity I had given Kiya without breaking my word, but I also could not develop a jean that was too similar to the 301, otherwise, it was effectively the same thing. So I came up with the 666, then we made the 555 initially just for the Indonesian market, and then at the suggestion of a customer, we came up with the 777. Which I 100% agree, is the best of the lot.
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Love those stories!!
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Fascinating IH lore!
Curious as to how the 633 cut came about. Is it an ‘improved’ 301?
The 633 is currently my best fitting cut, but I haven’t yet tried a 777. I feel most comfortable with low/mid rise bottoms.
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Thanks @Giles and as stated above, these are great background stories. I can imagine that it's hard to know ahead of time how many you will sell of something or what will be popular, especially if it's a less traditional fabric, design, color or cut.
It's easy for me to forget that your team has a focus on business and that we aren't all just here sharing pictures of beer, food, bread, and IH outfits from across the globe.
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It's easy for me to forget that your team has a focus on business and that we aren't all just here sharing pictures of beer, food, bread, and IH outfits from across the globe.
I'm really pleased that you think this way, and I hope that it is a common feeling amongst the members. Yes, it is a business, yes it does have to be profitable, and yes we have a duty to try and make it as successful as we can for the sake of Haraki, his business, the workshops, and not least of all for our staff.
BUT, at the end of the day, I want our customers to enjoy what we make and what we do and if this forum helps do that, then that is another tick in the box.
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Based on those long answers, it seems like Giles has lots of time to kill these days. Much different than the abbreviations you used to reply with
For some reason, Triple Works came across as Iron Heart Lite. Maybe you should have made it more expensive than main line IH instead of cheaper.
One of my favorite stories you've told is about when Haraki went to a denim party in the west for the first time and was surprised how many different ways people were wearing Iron Heart.
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when Haraki went to a denim party in the west for the first time and was surprised how many different ways people were wearing Iron Heart.
Yep, I think it was a a SELA party, though it could have been SESF. All these dudes came in wearing Iron Heart in all sorts of different ways. Haraki just sat, stared and took it all in. The following day, he said to me, "I never imagined my clothes would ever be worn like the way people were wearing them last night, I love it, I will think differently from now on"…
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Ironically @Giles - those photos from the SELA grand opening was what made me buy my first pair of Iron Hearts.
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I will admit it was a bad buy.. I bought some
“Two sizes too big” 9301 and tried to boil them.Funny enough, a few years ago someone asked for help identifying a pair of super black jeans, and based in the arcs, the forum agreed they were some 9301.
When I asked where he found them, he said he purchased them from a guy in Louisiana… I sold mine to a resale shop in New Orleans in 2013.
Kinda made me happy to think that one pair of mis-sized jeans help introduce at least 3 people the brand [emoji170]
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I hope that you start posting videos again. I miss them…(much love and respect)
I'm very sensibly not allowed into the office at the moment. We need to ensure the people who actually do something, are protected, as far as we can, from Covid.
So yes, I have more time on my hands that I used to…..
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It just never gets old
And serendipitous gold
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right at the end. "I was in the middle of a decent take"…
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Good question.
I am a complete and utter control freak, and "I'm always right"…
Alex is the only person who will say, "you are wrong", or you are a complete and utter tosser". That's hard for me to deal with.
But fundamentally, I know that often he is right. I have struggled to deal with that, and it has caused some real issues between us.
But, in my heart of hearts, I know I need to devolve responsibility to Alex, and I think I am getting better at letting go.
Alex will take IHUK to new levels, levels that I could not, or can't be arsed to go to.
But he has his fathers DNA so I'm comfortable with what and where he is taking us.
Haraki dotes on him, so that makes things a lot easier.