Thank Goodness It's Monday #421

SO? … SEW BUTTONS?

 

The New York Fashion District

("Garment Center" in my day) information kiosk

on the NE corner of 39^th St. and 7^th Avenue

with Needle-Threading-Button sculpture

in the background and

a sculpture of a tailor in the foreground.

The stainless steel needle is

31-feet long  with a 2-foot eye

threaded through a 14-foot button.

I can sew fairly well – which may be surprising to some.

And iron.

In fact you might say I’m a regular domestic wonder. (And others will disagree heartily.)

 

Those skills come about in part because, in my early post-high-school education, I earned a degree in Merchandising at the venerable Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan.

There the core curriculum required courses in textile and fashion design; courses that had a hands-on element as well as “book learnin’.”

So?

 

I became particularly good at making box pleats. But that’s not the point today.

This is: It was in those FIT classes I also learned a lesson that has informed my thinking for decades since. And it has to do with –

 

Sewing buttons. Every stitch that attaches a button uses a bit more thread, obviously.

• Use too little, and you’ve got a garment that risks coming apart before its time.
• But use more than necessary to securely fasten the button to the material and …

No, it’s not a “stitch in time” takeaway – as much as I like Ben Franklin’s homespun (intentional textile pun here) wisdom.

 

The TGIM Takeaway for today is –

 

There’s a cost associated with unnecessary “extra” thread. You probably don’t think much of it (as I did not) when you repair that dangling button using the hotel giveaway sewing kit. But in the world of manufacturing such goods, the little extras can add up.

 

Broadly speaking, that hotel hand-sewn button will consume about a foot – 12 inches – of thread.

Certainly industrial machine sewing would be more economical. However there are also thread-consuming issues of how many stitches … two- or four-hole buttons … a shank around the sewn button …. Don’t get me started. 

Point is: At the point of purchase it’s hard for the consumer to eyeball the extra holding power of more robustly sewn buttons.  So all that added thread comes at a cost in time and materials that ultimately add to the cost of manufacture and thereby may make a garment’s price point at least appear less desirable and competitive in the market.

The corollary to passing the cost along is, of course, to deliver a better made garment and hold the line on price. But then you may sacrifice profitability which doesn’t bode well for your enterprise in the long run.

 

TGIM CHALLENGE: Look again at the many elements that go into what you do and how you do it with an eye to opportunities where small savings can add big.

 

It’s not simply a “sew-sew” idea:

TGIM CHALLENGE IN ACTION: United Airlines, the top carrier out of my neighborhood’s Newark Liberty Airport, expects to save $200,000 a year by serving split cashews instead of whole ones in its hot nut cocktails for First Class passengers.

 

“Customers don’t care if it’s a whole nut or split in half,” CEO Jess Smisek told the Wall Street Journal earlier this summer.

 

“Well,” you may be thinking at this point, “while $200,000 is a big dollar figure, those nutty cashew savings seem like – uh – peanuts compared to the overall billions expended running an airline. And the same goes for the button-sewing.

 

“I question if the value of ‘small’ savings is really worth all the effort that must be put into discovering, then implementing, such cost-cutting efforts.”

 

TGIM ACTION IDEA: Go figure. To get a better feeling for how “small” savings can really pay off, consider the simple math of cold, hard dollars and cents.

 

Here’s a chart that dramatically points out what cost savings represent in terms of sales.

Sales Values of Cost Savings 

If profit margin on               Then savings of $100

sales before taxes              net as much as sales

is:                                        of:                

                                      10% ……………………….   $1,000

                                        9% ………………………..    1,111

                                        8% ………………………..    1,250

                                        7% ………………………..    1,429

                                        6% ………………………..    1,667

                                        5% ………………………..    2,000

                                        4% ………………………..    2,500

                                        3% ………………………..    3,333

                                        2% ………………………..    5,000

                                        1% ………………………..  10,000

Get it? If your enterprise earns 10% on sales, every operational dollar saved is worth $10 in sales. And if your profit margin is 5%, every dollar saved is worth twenty dollars in added sales.

TGIM Takeaway: Holding the line on costs is vital – especially with costs today beginning to swing upward with economic recovery. 

In our observations centered on self-improvement, time management and the like, TGIM and I often cite One Big Universal Law of Living that works like gangbusters in many aspects of life. And in doing so we regularly comment that, while it sounds too simple to be profound, to dismiss it would be short-sighted.

That One Big Universal Law of Living has its dollars-and-cents parallel in the thread and nuts examples and the chart above. 

Just to remind you, here it is one more time. Remember it as –

 The Law of Slight Edge

Small changes,

Over time,

Make a big difference.

So that’s what. Hope the “small” ideas in this TGIM make a big difference to you and your bottom line.

Geoff Steck
Chief Catalyst
Alexander Publishing & Marketing

8 Depot Square

Englewood, NJ 07631
201-569-5373
tgimguy@gmail.com

P.S. “Spare no expense to make everything as economical as possible.” That somewhat contradictory demand is alleged to have been made by Samuel Goldwyn (1884–1974). As well as his movie making acumen, the film producer/Hollywood legend was so well known for malapropisms, paradoxes, and other speech errors that they were called “Goldwynisms”. (However, a number of them were reportedly written for him by the likes of Charlie Chaplin.) 

And speaking of sewing, Goldwyn got his immigrant start at the turn of the 20^th Century in the bustling garment business in Gloversville, New York. Soon his innate marketing skills made him a very successful salesman at the Elite Glove Company. 

According to legend, at a heated story conference at the height of his Hollywood power, Goldwyn scolded someone -- in most accounts famed wise-cracking and witty writer Dorothy Parker -- who recalled he had once been a glove maker and retorted: "Don't you point that finger at me. I knew it when it had a thimble on it!"