Boutique Infant Wear Designers, Where Are You?

A decade ago small family run businesses of infant wear and children’s clothing was booming. The stay at home moms or other talented women had the perfect way to earn a living by designing and stitching precious little clothes and selling them to their regular customers, or over the internet. These small home run businesses would buy the material from the markets and over the years created brand names for themselves. The little dresses were very professionally made, with labels and tags, perfect finishing etc. The label makers catered to them by selling them woven labels, or heat transfer labels, or even the hangtags. These businesses had their own names and logos that were printed on custom hangtags and printed fabric tags.

Nowadays, you see a rapidly decreasing trend in this market. You see very few small businesses advertising handmade clothes for children. Most of the big corporations have taken over. Everything related to children costs a lot more than it does for grownups. The price you have to pay for children’s apparel is premium. The home owned boutiques were affordable and unique. But they seem to have disappeared over time. Now, people have no choice but to buy from these large department stores, that charge triple the amount it costs to actually make the clothes.

Let us explore the reason for this declining trend.

Increase in Costs

The cost of production of the clothes at a small scale was increasing as compared to the prices. Home based businesses could not charge premium prices for their products, as a particular client base was set and they only believed in paying the prices that had been decided since the start of the business. The overhead cost steadily increases, but the customers don’t realize this and criticize any increase in price by the entrepreneurs, who have to pay increasing taxes and costs with the same amount of money they were earning before.

Decrease in Talent

The talent and passion of stitching has died down over the past decade. The women who knew how to sew and design could not pass on this talent to the new generations, as they were probably not interested in learning this skill.

Social Symbol

Making your children wear designer wear, or brands has now become a social symbol. No one wants to tell people that their children are wearing a dress someone stitched in their drawing room. They would much rather boast about the fact that their toddler is wearing a $80 pajama suit. The custom hangtags and cotton labels have become more important than the dresses themselves. It seems like the infant clothing does need to be with brand name. Is worth it for the baby as is grows super-fast? We have asked our customers about their opinion: Would you buy a brand name clothing or brandless clothing, comfy and less expansive for your newborn? The answer was: BRANDLESS clothing. About 90% of the surveyed said that they prefer less-known/boutique style brands. The reason for that is that they feel the clothing is better quality. The other aspect of babies clothing is clients prefer less imprint on the garment. They also care more about high quality, non-scratchy clothing label. If you read this blog, please give us your feedback. Mention: word <brand> and we will give you 10% discount on any orders from our website www.rapidtags.com

Increase in Competition

The home based businesses could not compete with the big companies that came in the market, sensing the profits here. They realized that this market is not saturated and there is a lot of potential in it. The small businesses struggle with multimillion-dollar designers and batch productions. Some companies produced in bulk, lowering the costs and making the home boutiques look expensive. Some brands used their influence and brand name to charge a premium price and push the home based products out of the race.

There are still enough babies in the world, but the circumstances for small home based businesses have changed and become more difficult.