Last week we introduced you to the Berkeley-based menswear line AlbertMing, and co-founder Albert Shyy was kind enough to answer a few questions about his work.
How did the idea for AlbertMing first come to life?
We actually first came up the concept when Ming came out to visit me in Singapore, where I was working at the time. Wearing nicer clothing for work or play was challenging there because of the weather there: hot, humid, and often rainy. At the same time, we realized that a lot of the slimmer fitted suits that people in Asia and Europe liked to wear were a lot harder to find in the US, and it was personally very frustrating to go to retail and department stores and not find the styles I was looking for, at a price more affordable than than the $2000+ suits from Europe that sometimes had the style I liked. We thought there was a great opportunity to do something a little bit differentiated in tailored apparel and make clothing that would hopefully resonate with young guys who are looking to dress up.
The core concepts behind AlbertMing seem to be tailoring, functionality, and affordability. How do you find that perfect balance, and have you ever been forced to sacrifice one aspect for another?
Fortunately we haven't yet, although we're always trying to improve on each of these aspects. It requires some patience, as we have to look for the right partners who can offer what we're looking for in terms of quality and performance - for example, when we both went to Shanghai looking for tailors last year, we spoke with over a hundred, made samples at around a dozen, and ended up with a couple of tailors that we were happy with, but this process continually evolves and we need to invest a lot into our relationship to ensure that the quality and output remains consistently high. In a sense, we've had to make some sacrifices on speed to market by making sure we have the right product, but I think that's a trade-off I'm more comfortable making.
Could you please give us a rundown of what a typical day as the manager of a fashion start-up looks like?
Given our current size and scale as a very young start-up, it's probably more diverse than ideal but I have my hand in almost every part of the business. Ming and I split up our responsibilities so he would focus on web development and managing our supply chain, while I work on general business administration and marketing & sales, but given how often we talk we've both very up-to-date on the various parts of the business and do a lot of planning together.
Thus, my day-to-day varies a lot but broadly speaking involves significant amounts of communication and coordination with the people on my marketing team, with our various business partners and potential partners, answering inquiries from potential customers, and planning for / executing on the different projects we've got going on to help build our brand and expand our business. We've got some great undergrads from Berkeley who are working for us, mostly in marketing, it's been a fun team to work together with.
