Dive Brief:

• Tailored Brands' decision to speed delivery times for custom suits by a week led to "positive results" in the first quarter of 2018, CEO Doug Ewert said in an earnings call.
• The parent company of outlets like Men's Warehouse and Jos. A. Bank announced it would quicken its custom suit delivery in February after seeing "growing customer demand for personalization in men's tailored goods." 
• "We know the faster we can deliver a custom suit, the more customers will give it a try," Ewert said. The same approach led to a new omnichannel service, LIVE!, which allows clients to engage wardrobe consultants in-store "via chat, imagery and video to receive the same expert guidance we provide in store."

Dive Insight:

Tailored Brands' decision to boost its custom clothing's speed to market highlights one of the chief challenges for modern supply chain managers: as customer experience grows in importance, so does the complexity of the job.

The decision to slim delivery times by seven days came because of $100 million of revenues in the custom clothing category, placing the product among the top priorities for the company. With the various stores adopting LIVE!, Tailored Brands is pushing more customers to try a personalized outfit. However, retailers in the last step of the shopping process getting customers, online or in-store, to purchase is a perennial problem.

If retailers have learned one lesson as they adapt to e-commerce, it is that time is money, especially in the supply chain.

The one-week lead time improvement for Tailored Brands "was the culmination of many continuous improvement projects that allowed us to decrease the cycle time," Jamie Bragg, EVP and Chief Supply Chain Officer, told Supply Chain Dive in a statement.

The faster deliveries are limited to custom products, rather than across-the-board. This may be because the custom clothing — part of Tailored Brands' Made-in-America apparel campaign — are made in a "vertically integrated domestic factory," according to Ewert's comments to investors.

Tailored Brands isn't the only retailer using a vertically integrated factory (i.e., sourcing directly from a factory): Kirkland's recently reported it was sourcing direct from factories as a means of cutting costs and controlling inventory and Walmart is building its own private label factory in Indiana.

Sourcing directly from a factory is an increasingly popular tool being deployed by retailers and brands alike to boost supply chain speed.