About Buying Brand - Again

Whilst I didn’t envision myself returning to this topic, I am going to talk about buying brand newsome more.

Photo by magicprincess707.

In response to the poll on Lolita Amino about whether brands should introduce sizes, I created another poll asking the community how often they purchase Japanese brands new. Although at the time of writing both polls are still ongoing, the results are already pretty interesting. To save on writing, I put them into the two pie charts below.

 

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* For reference, poll 1 results are out of 188 votes and poll 2 out of 165 votes.

The first thing you notice is that while nearly 60% of participating Lolita Amino users agree that brands should offer more sizes, over 2/3 of them only purchase brand new once a year or less. Now, I cannot stress enough that this is a very simplistic comparison and as a piece of research holds no reliable value. For one, poll no 1 assumes a common definition of brand without specifying one, while poll no 2 separates brands by country of origin. For another, poll no 1 focuses on clothing (because it questions sizing) and poll no 2 is open to all purchases, clothing, accessory or otherwise. Thirdly, although the polls are from the same platform, that doesn’t mean they share exactly the same sample. Lastly, on their own neither poll goes into details about the reasons (although some were given in the comments) and it would also be interesting to analyse these results against the users’ Lolita Amino rank or, better still, years actively wearing the fashion.

However, until an actual study of lolitas’ shopping habits is carried out, let me use these two results for the sake of a slightly ranty commentary. Assuming that the answers from Lolita Amino users reflect the overall trend of the whole community (or at least of the Western community), this shows either great ignorance on how business works or great sense of entitlement within the community. On the one hand, lolitas expect brands like AP and Baby to cater to their needs, such as size. On the other, that same lolita community only purchases brand new items from Japanese makers once a year or even less often than that. I almost want to write this in caps, but will resist and put it in a separate paragraph for emphasis instead:

Regardless of what motivates your lack of brand purchases, no business will alter its stock or influence its future releases based on a community 70% of whom hardly make direct purchases at all. No, they will focus on regular customers. And at the moment the majority of those are based in China and, you guessed it, don’t require different sizes.

Yes, when we talk about Angelic Pretty specifically, then they do have some insight into Western market demands through their branches in San Francisco and Paris. They are able to see which releases sell out during preorders and which end up being sale stock, as well as look what kinds of cuts are popular. The information they get from direct purchases from those two branches (and let’s reinforce that: direct purchases!) is how they gather market information which influences their decisions regarding future releases and what Western lolitas want from them.

And let’s be quite objective here for a second: Angelic Pretty already is doing more to accommodate a wider range of sizes (probably as a result of feedback from their overseas branches, but that I can’t be certain of). Between 2016 when AP Paris opened and now, there have been at least 25 releases of shirred tops (1 cutsew, the rest are either fully or partially shirred blouses). There were also at least 16 releases of cutsew OPs, which tend to be a little bit more forgiving thanks to the more stretchy nature of the fabric. And while we may bemoan the high waist cuts, they often feature full back shirring, which in turn can accommodate up to 100cm bust and usually up to 85cm waist (not exactly a large plus size waist measurement, but thanks to the higher seam placement it can fit more like an underbust, so as long as your underbust/ribs fit that, you should be good to go).

The gist of it is (again) that if you want your favourite brand to cater to you, you need to buy from them. Not own their stuff – that will only get you flattery points at meet and greet with the designer – actually put your literal money where your metaphorical mouth is and purchase from them. You want more shirred OPs or skirts? Buy the one you like that was just released. You want a lower waist JSK cut to come back? Buy that when you see it! You want them to keep making fully shirred blouses? Frickin’ buy them! You can send messages asking for more of this or that all you like, but it holds no actual worth unless you (and a whole load of other people) actually buy that later on. If you can’t afford to buy brand new items regularly, then buy them whenever you can, by shopping during sales and saving for longer. Encourage your friends to do the same, because the more of us buy from a brand, the clearer our opinions and needs are heard. If you don’t see any main pieces you like and still want to support the brand – buy their smaller bits: socks, wristcuffs, jewellery, novelty items, whatever you can.

And if you genuinely can’t afford brand new purchases
and genuinely don’t like anything that’s being released,
and genuinely can’t fit into anything they release without alterations you’re not prepared to have done,
then at least don’t complain that your ‘favourite’ brand caters to all the nouveau riche standard size lolitas from China instead. That’s just how capitalist businesses works. And if all of the above is true of you, then the brand you complain about probably isn’t really your favourite.

Rant over. I wish you all a lovely day and promise to write about Dublin as soon as I have more photographs to share with you.