What does fully booked mean? and why are we fully booked?

Our little shop here in Barking is unusual. I think we have always been a little different to every other shop but recently (over the last 3 years) we have become increasingly estranged to our peers in the same profession.

We offer a 'Wedding Suit Hire' just as many other menswear/tailoring businesses do, we just try our utmost to not be the same as these other businesses. We try to not hire the same suits as everyone else, we try to not hire out sub-standard products, we try to offer the latest designs we can imagine and hire them in the best possible condition, with the best possible fit. I guess this makes us different.

We are very lucky because it seems the general public of the U.K. agree with our ethos and we are busier than ever. But this success coupled with this ethos means that not everyone can hire a suit from Jack Bunneys, for this I apologise but I am afraid this is just the way it is.

To continue to offer the same quality of service, we have to personally oversee every single hire suit which leaves our shop. We have to alter each suit by hand and hand press each one. We have to custom make each silk cravat, tie and handkerchief ourselves.
We also have to have each suit custom made for us in top European factories. This of course means we cannot exceed our stock levels without having more suits made, which can take up to 14 weeks in the summer (European factories shut down over August). We do have plentiful stock of course and we try to plan for each and every eventuality. If a suit gets stolen, lost, damaged or simply over booked (maybe an unusual size has been booked numerous times for the same date) then we do have contingencies. These contingencies however are not limitless. There comes a point when we have to look at a particular date in the diary and say 'we simply cannot prepare any more orders this week'

We could of course book more if we wanted to, we do turn away a considerable amount of business. But this would go against our principles. If we were to book more we would no longer have our contingency plans to fall back on. What would we then do if something did go wrong? This would also allow less time to be spent on each suit, less time to do alterations, less time for pressing and less time dealing with our wonderful clients in the first place. For us the quality of what we produce is paramount.

Jack Bunneys is also a working tailors where we make suits on the premises. This work still has to be completed to our usual impeccable standards regardless of our hire department. We also have a corporate clientele, which requires our attention and a regular retail trade to boot! All of these other aspects (although not a priority for couples getting married) are still very important to us personally and we simply cannot neglect this portion of our business.

We would rather never become millionaires but sleep well at night knowing it was a job well done.

Marc