Regular Clothing, Pricing, FAQs
Regular Clothing & Projects
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Sewing, as a business venture and getting paid what your skill is worth is such a challenge. Pricing these tasks can be tricky, as the effort and expertise required to repair them can often cost more than the purchase price of the garment. There is a common misconception that sewing should always be capped by the purchase price of the garment and that's just not true. I've often said that one needs to have hostage negotiator level negotiation skills to survive the money conversation in sewing businesses. Many talented sewists choose to specialize only in formal garments for this very reason.
However, we completely understand that there is a need, based on the fact that clothes don't come shaped like humans and some folks will need alterations, regardless of the purchase price, to make the garment usable.
There never seems to be enough time for all the sewing work out there, and our team of sewists is constantly busy. To manage the demand, we've implemented a reservation system for all garments with specific deadlines, like bridal and formalwear.
Need your items by a specific date? Click here.
🚫Stay on this page and schedule below if you don't have a deadline!! If you DO have a deadline, then you need to head over to our formalwear section where we can ensure those deadlines are met. Just a heads up, our guaranteed slots are typically booked out 6-8 months in advance. It's a popular spot!
Because of market changes and high demand for our knowledge, we are NOT a "Next-Day Service" sort of business when it comes to regular clothing. If you can patiently wait for us to work through our regular clothing queue, the typical turnaround time is 8-10 weeks. However, please note that it can vary between less than 3-4 weeks and more than 12 weeks, depending on the workload. If you have questions on timing and what our current lead time is, please call and ask. 507-545-2071
Typical Projects For Us:
We have several contracts with various law enforcement agencies, fire departments - including the honor guard and task forces, ambulance crews, and we prioritize military uniforms for our service members.
Typical conversations that we have on a regular basis are the purchase price of the garment vs the cost of alterations. The following is a list of common repairs and we help you assess what is cost effective.
- Patches on Uniforms
- Patches on Motorcycle Leathers
- Pant Hems
- Jacket Zipper Replacements
- Jeans Repair
- T-shirt Hems
- Adding Darts so clothing is shaped more like the people wearing them.
There are a few projects that we politely decline to take on. We don't do drapes, fur is a definite "no," shoe repairs are not our expertise, crafting garments from scratch is not our particular skill set, and when it comes to leather, we have some limitations. If you have questions about these items, give us a call, we may be able to recommend someone if it's something we aren't able to tackle. 507-545-2071
Cost Factors:
Sew Time
Sewing takes time...
...aaand not just the time of fabric under the machine. Each piece is a puzzle to solve, because every fabric behaves a little different, and every garment is put together a little differently.
Not only is there a significant mental load to analyzing the steps to execute, the details seem to take more time than we anticipate on a regular basis.
Sewing is a task that was largely part of the invisible labor of housekeeping and caretaking done by women and marginalized folks. Consequently, there is this unconscious bias about the level of technical difficulty involved in executing the desired goal.
Part of fighting these unconscious biases is helping people understand that fittings and consultations with us are also skilled labor. Theses fittings are where a good portion of the mental load is spent on assessing the shape of the garment vs the shape of the person and deciding what method of execution we will use to solve the problem.
Somehow, many people think that this labor isn't valid to be listed on the bill.
Operating Costs
For starters, we have many machines after more than 30 years of business, which all have upkeep and/or replacement costs. Sadly, it is often more cost effective to buy new instead.
Next, ongoing expenses that add up quickly. Lighting, thread, fabrics, structure elements like boning and interfacing, zippers, hangers, packaging to send garments out, website expenses, credit card processing, accounting, insurance, sales tax, etc.
That's all before we talk about building and utility costs - electricity, heating and air, building (property taxes, insurance, maintenance) expenses.
It's a lot.
Somehow, many people think that these expenses aren't valid to be covered in a sewing business.
Fair Wages
Oof. This can be such a loaded topic.
There are so many factors into this conversation for anyone, in any business. For now I will leave it at this:
- the sewing trade is in fact a skilled trade that requires thousands of hours experience to truly master the skills.
- our labor cost isn't less valuable than other skilled trades.
- the dollar per hour metric we use to sort out pricing is not what any of us take home and 'line our pockets with.'
- the business expenses must be covered by the prices we charge.
- fittings and consultations with us is part of the labor of us doing the work for you. We must charge something for it.
- we do our very best to estimate the time it will take and provide you a bid for the job.
- our shop can't operate under $60 per hour for shop time and also pay the expenses and livable wages. We have as much or more education in our field as other skilled tradespersons to whom we expect to pay $150/hr or more. We understand this might make a project not worth doing, and we're happy to help you sort that out.
- All questions must be sorted out before you leave our shop. When you leave a garment with us, you agree to the bid we give for the price of alterations.
This is our chosen career. We have decades of skill equating multiple tens of thousands of hours, and varied knowledge from Carolyn's 60 years of sewing experience as well as Kristen's 20 years experience, which includes specialty sewing niches. We will be completely honest about whether or not a garment is worth fixing and we are happy to discuss budgeting concerns ahead of time. Ongoing budgeting concerns and expectations are your responsibility to manage by asking thoughtful questions and being engaged in what goes into the labor of your project.
Schedule an Appointment
When it comes to our sewing projects, formalwear reservations always come first. 🛑If you have clothes that need to be ready by a specific date, please check our formal reservation calendar for availability on your due date instead of using this appointment calendar.🛑
We want to be transparent with you: we cannot provide a guarantee on the completion dates for regular clothing items. These items are placed in a queue based on the order they were received, and the queue can have very unpredictable turnaround times, as little as under 2 weeks to more than 12 weeks. We work on regular clothing projects in between our commitments to formalwear reservations, so please keep this in mind when considering our services.
Having said that, you may call us to find out how busy we are and what our best guess is at the wait time. (507-545-2071)
We understand you might
not know how to sew,
but we KNOW you could learn...
I can't tell you how many times I hear people say, "I know how to sew, but I could never do... this!" They're usually pointing at all the stunning formalwear we have in the shop.
Wrong! You absolutely have the potential to do what we do, and we're eager to teach you how! Start by subscribing to our newsletter and explore the awesome courses we have to offer. Get ready to unleash your sewing superpowers!