Thursday 24 April 2008

Identity Crisis ... Part Three.


The final part in the trilogy.

After much consideration to this problem (whilst enjoying some St. Georges Day beers) Rob, Peter and I have come to a conclusion. The indentity (the image and the brand) of Jack Bunneys is a very simple formula.

Peter + Marc + Rob : Jack Bunneys.


What it all boils down to is simple, everything that we do, every outfit we create, every hire we do, every customer we serve is a reflection of 1, 2 or 3 of us. The Jack Bunney brand has been created using our experience and our knowledge of the business.

All three of us are capable of making suits, we all tailor on the premises. However we also have been "brought-up" on a diet of formalwear.

Our brand is a fusion of classic English Bespoke Tailoring/Morning Wear/German expertise and Correct Dress Ettiquete.

That was our conclusion (however we did drink alot)

We are in GQ.



GQ has approached us about being in GQ magazine in July. The July issue (released on the 5th June) will carry a feature about Grooms Wear and accessories, called Groom for improvement. In the article they will be taking the readers through the proposal and in to the wedding day, showcasing a selection of rings, wedding venues, entertainment and of course a offering the readers some guidance on where to purchase that perfect suit and where to buy the accesories to impress. They will also feature one of our Pictures and a few words about our company. This development has excited everyone! and it is potentially an entrance to a whole new world for Jack Bunneys.
Our goods and services have featured in a number of magazines over the last 12 months, interest from all over the world has been shown in our unique brand hopefully the inclusion in a prestigous fashion magazine will be our first step into the world of Fashion.
We will now also be listed in the GQ Tailors Directory.

Monday 21 April 2008

Identity Crisis ... Part Two.

Why the crisis?

It is not so much a crisis (crisis maybe an exaggeration!?!) rather more of an issue. Over recent months I have been attempting to market our brand of service and clothing across the UK. The difficulty I have found is altering preconceived ideas about us. Essentially our business is in three main parts:
Hire
Retail
Made-to-Measure.

However it has become increasingly complicated recently:
Hire,
Wedding
Evening Wear
School Prom
Other ceremonies and special occasions

Retail,
Formal Wear
Casual Wear
Business Wear
Corporate Wear
Made-To-Measure,
` Made-to-measure suits
Bespoke Tailoring
` Made-to-order
Made-to-measure shirts.

Obviously not only does each individual service stand alone they also intertwine. A bespoke suit may be used for a Groom, whilst his ushers may hire morning suits and the guests may buy ready-to-wear suits. And then they may all hire dinner suits for the evening!
It is this array of services which we provide which cause the identity problem. Each customer who uses each service only ever truly remembers the service you provided and never really considers you for the others.

Sunday 20 April 2008

Identity Crisis ... Part One.

What on Earth is a Jack Bunney?
A. ? ? ?

The question of what Jack Bunney's is and what we do has come up in conversation repeatedly over recent weeks. I have given some thought to what should be a rather obvious question and have decided that the answer is a lot more complicated than anticipated.

Jack Bunneys was originally founded as Men's Bespoke Tailors, in 1958 by Jack himself. The original incarnation of Jack Bunneys was a representation of Jack. Jack dressed impeccably and was a perfectionist in everything that he did. Although he carried this perfectionism easily and although dressed immaculately he was always relaxed in his Barker shoes and Shooting Jackets.
Jack's perfectionism marked him out in the East-End of London. Jack always aspired to West End standards and modelled his business on Saville Row tailors like Huntsmans. To understand why this made Jack and indeed the business of Jack Bunneys unique in the East End you have to understand the difference between West End and East End Tailoring.
The East End has always been t he poor cousin to the West End. Saville Row with its prestigious address, royal warrants and livery, was where the upper classes would shop. Choosing their tailor how they would choose their banker or barrister. The other customer who would frequent The Row was the Dandy and Gentleman. This type of customer (although sometimes of breeding) were your dedicated followers of fashion, this customer would choose a tailors by styling and trend. Work from these historic showrooms was often shipped from West to East for the Coat (jacket) makers in the East End to actually make.
East-End Tailoring however was without history, prestige, royal warrants and the regular income of military livery. The foundations of East End tailoring were built on immigration. Immigrants settled in the East-End and with immigration came tailors, from all over the world. East End Tailoring was about working-class tailoring. The East-End never had the upper-classes, or the Dandys or even the Gentlemen. The East End had Barrow-boys, entrepreneurs, Cab Drivers, builders, scrap –metal dealers and your factory workers. This limited your business to the Saturday night business. Whilst you had a regular clientele of professional people’s who would regularly have suits made for work and business. The majority of your trade was the hard-working man who would wear a suit for Saturday night out with the boys (maybe with the wife). This not only meant the fabrics you were working with were of a more unusual or showy nature, it also meant that budget was always an issue (not a problem Saville Row has ever had).
In short East End Tailors relied on the working man to have suits made for an evening out, which is why most East End tailors no longer exist.
Jack stood out though, his relentless pursuit of perfection made his product comparable to a Saville Row Bespoke Suit, this inevitably led to Jack Bunneys having a higher starting budget than other East End tailors. This also led to Jack expanding his client list, Jack had clients from all over the world. East-End entrepreneur’s who had “done-good” and were now reaping the benefit of their hard work and risk-taking business practices.

Jack Bunneys as a business is certainly multi-faceted but one thing I know for certain is Jack Bunneys is unique. We are a traditional Bespoke Tailors built on the principles of Saville Row. But without the history, or tradition, without the pretention, without the ceremony, without dandies, fops or toffs. Jack Bunney’s is about working-class honesty. The workmanship, the craftsmanship, the salesmanship are all working class and this seeps into our styling and design. We are traditionalist’s looking for an ideal England. In our ideal England a barrow-boy from Barking can be seated next to a Lord in a Soho Gentleman’s club both wearing a suit from Jack Bunney both comfortable and at ease in each other’s conversation.

Monday 14 April 2008

A Bespoke Suit


Some Tailors may say that a suit is Bespoke if that suit has been cut and made just for the customer. Those Tailors would be correct! However I consider a Bespoke Suit to be much more than that.
I call a Suit Bespoke if that suit has been cut by-hand (by a skilled cutter) and then made (again by-hand) by a skilled Bespoke Tailor.
This method requires both the cutter and tailor to work together at various stages of fitting to ensure a correctly fitting garment.


A Bespoke suit is a hand-crafted garment which requires many measurement and a number of fittings and a period of 8-10 weeks to complete. A bespoke suit will use age old methods of construction and required many labour intesive hours of hand sewing.


A well made bespoke suit sits at the very pinnacle of English workmanship.


Our Made-To-Measure Suits



Our Made to Measure Suit service is a new service which we recently started in 2008.
This new service was created to compliment our Bespoke Hand-Made Suit service.
There are many reasons for choosing either service. A Hand Made Bespoke suit speaks for itself and needs no further explanation as to what that garment is.

However a made-to-measure suit does need a little extra explanation. A made-to-measure suit is precisely that a one-off made-to-your specification suit in any style, cut, fit or size.

However unlike a bespoke suit, these suits are not made on the premises. They are made in a factory. All made-to-measure suits are made in a factory of some kind, and this is an important fact to remember when choosing a made-to-measure suit services.

When we were deciding who we would use to make our made-to-measure suits we only really wanted to use one of two factories in the whole world. Both of those factories are German. In the end we decided upon Odermark.

A company which has both the history and reputation of the world finest ready-to-wear suits. Odermark are widely regarded as the very first of the ready-to-wear suit companies to produce a suit which was comparable to a Bespoke suit. An Odermark ready-to-wear suit will retail from £399.95 up to £995.00.

But the most important factor in our decision to use Odermark as our made-to-measure partner was the technological advancements of their prestine factories. An Odermark Made-To-Measure suit is made of only the worlds finest lightweight fabrics, and is cut by computer controlled laser (allowing fittings to the millimeter) and created by the latest textile technology. With all this technology we could not resist!

We know how to make things by hand, we know how to produce bespoke suits in the age-old methods. What we could not do was produce a light-weight fashion suit, in the worlds finest and lightest fabrics, using all the latest technological advancements which have occured in manufactoring recently.

Our 50th Anniversary seemed like the perfect excuse to put this right. And since then we have had some wonderful success with our new made-to-measure suit service. Using some fantastic light weight fabrics, such as Holland and Sherry, Barberis, Lora Piona and Cerruti. All made by those wonderful German engineers at Odermark.
www.jackbunneys.co.uk

Monday 7 April 2008

Changes No. 2 (APPOINTMENTS)

Hi All!,

As you may or may not know, we have currently been experiencing a ridiculously busy period!! Which is great for us as a small business and great for our customers too! However because of this busy period we have been forced to change our policies slightly.

We now have a policy of APPOINTMENTS ONLY on SATURDAYS.

We apologise for any inconveniance this may cause. However we hope this change will allow each and every customer to receive our usual excellent customer service.

Thank You
Marc

Changes No1. (alterations)

Hi All,

Due to the high demand for our services we have been forced to make a few changes. The first of these is regarding alterations.

We will no longer offer an alteration service on garments which are not purchased from Jack Bunneys.

This is because of our current tailoring work load. We regret the inconveniance caused by this change.


Thank You
Marc

Saturday 5 April 2008

Wednesday 2 April 2008

We are in the Papers again.

Ok so we are in the Locals again. This time because we are in the running to win Retailer of the Year Award for Barking and Dagenham. I must admit that the pic is not the most flattering and it does seem to give the impression that both Rob(left) and I, are a little special. But the story was done really well and both the B&D POST and Anna Turvey (Journalist) have our thanks.

Thank You