“Christian English is a bespoke tailoring Firm set up about 18 months ago, they offer exquisite hand tailored shirts; custom made designs to suit clients from 50 Pounds”.

In this interview with PETER OBIORA Online Editor at InvestAdvocate, at the African & Caribbean Business Expo in London, Julian Octave, Director at Christian English shares an insight into the activities of the Company and the bespoke tailoring Industry in the United Kingdom (UK). Also, discussed is the Company’s intention to expand to Africa; starting with Nigeria. Excerpts:

On Christian English London

Christian English was designed to deliver brand new top end bespoke shirts to its customers. Our concept is to deliver a quality product for less than a 100 Pounds; which in the United Kingdom (UK) is still very difficult to do.

Here, the bottom of the range tailored made shirts is 180 Pounds. It’s a big Market for tailored shirts, people like to have nice fitted quality tailored shirts, and they don’t want to pay 200 Pounds for it; so our concept is to deliver that shirts for less than a 100 Pounds which is what we have been doing over the last 18 months.

Assessment of the tailor made shirts industry in the UK?

It’s a huge Market like I said earlier and London is one of the Fashion Capitals of the world, I mean we have been tailoring since the 1800s and London is known for its bespoke and top notch tailoring. So, it’s really the centre and the place to be; particularly the bespoke and we have a great reputation mainly in the shirt making industry in the world.

What is the current size of Christian English?

At Christian English we have about five (5) people working for us at the moment, but in the factory, we have over 30 people. We have two factories, one in Thailand and the other in Turkey.

Your profit margin in the review period

We haven’t broken into profit as we have spent a lot of money setting up the factories; our profit projection is another 12 months; when we will start making profit. We have spent about 200,000 Pounds in setting up.

Is 200,000 Pounds not too much as startup Capital?

We did a lot of research before we started the business and we were completely confident that there was a Market for our business and there were growth projections for our business, so we weren’t frightened at all about going into business because of the research that we have done.

Where do you intend to expand to in Africa?

We plan to network and partner predominantly next year in Nigeria, that’s exactly our first port of call and then we will see where our network will take us from there; but we definitely want to hit Nigeria as our first port of call. This will be in the first Quarter of 2013.

Your future outlook in the next three (3) years

We have plans to develop our shorts and sports ranges, so we want to develop tailor made sports wear ranges and we are looking at basically just growing the business in those lines. So, we want to have three (3) to four (4) different lines of garments, as I said it’s a casual business and tailored sports wear which doesn’t exist right now and we intend to grow that business. Also, this is particularly for Golf and Polo Players and we have already hit that Market and there is an interest in having the tailored sportswear range.

On the Challenges of Christian English in the last 18 months

To be honest, our challenges have been really around setting up the infrastructure. Therefore, all the management, distribution network and so on; haven’t been really challenges as such; but have taken longer than expected. We have revamped our website; which was a big one for us, we have taken it down and we have revamped it and introduced some brand new technology to make us standout above the crowd. Therefore, our challenges have just been the time taken to do things; we had expected things to happen a lot more quickly.

FACTS CHECK:

“As at the time of publishing this interview, InvestAdvocate can confirm that the official website of Christian English London http://christianenglish.com/ is still under development”

What’s your Market share in London?

We have certainly got good traction and I think the next six (6) months in the UK will be really good for us and what we want to do is to start positioning ourselves to be in Africa. We certainly haven’t conquered London; but I think in the next six (6) months to a year, we will make a massive impact here and we don’t want to leave it to others to start dominating, we have to take our rightful place in the industry here in the UK.

Advice for those seeking to come into the Industry

Do your homework I will say, it’s a good industry, there are lots of players, the barriers to entry are very low, so many people can get into the business, but you need to have a niche and be a specialist in the area you are going into.

End