About two months ago, the Twirl Girls and I came up with an idea to hire an alterations lady to come to the store to alter the bridesmaid dresses to acquire some extra money for the store. We had some interviews and had them alter an old dress on each of us to see their finishing work. After a two week process of seeing their work, we finally decided on Pam who has been working with us for almost two months now. Pam owns her own alterations company and works out of our store in which she gives us a profit for working from our store. At first it was a learning process because we had to completely revamp our dress process when they get delivered to the store. We had to accommodate with the little space we have in the back of the boutique to store the dresses, and our calling procedure to all the bridesmaids to make appointments for pick-up and now alteration appointments. We decided to do the alterations in the store on Thursdays and Fridays after 4pm. The first couple weeks was working out well, we were starting to get appointments and it was working out well until we started to get angry phone calls. This is where it took a big turn for our store, but in a bad way.
We started to get many phone calls that were upset bridesmaids who had received their dresses back from alterations and were not happy with what had been done. The problem with this is that we do not know what Pam is doing to the dresses, in which we reiterate to the bridesmaids. They are taking their anger out on us and we are getting penalized for this. We added up the total amount we have charged for alterations which to date is $1,052.00 and we have lost $504.00 because people have demanded their money back for the work that has been done. So this is coming out of the stores pocket and Pam is still getting paid in full.
After making another refund for an entire $350 dress, we came up with a new way to do alterations through our store. We are now going to have all the bridesmaids contact Pam when they come to the store to get their dress altered, so if they have a problem they call Pam instead us here at Twirl. This will ultimately leave us as the middleman who has no inclination about alterations out of the situation. We are also going to have the bridesmaids pay Pam instead of going through us. Again, this will leave us out of the alterations process besides making appointments and providing a facility for Pam. Hopefully this will solve the angry phone calls we are getting and let Pam know that she needs to pay more attention to her work otherwise we are going to have to Twirl her out of the store!
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That soulnds like a learning experience! Painful, no doubt, but it is always difficult when deciding to contract out sevices or bringing them inhouse. It seems like its better to keep Pam as an outside vendor that Twirl endorses and recommends her alteration services to bridesmaids.
ReplyDeleteOuch...After that I don't know if I would personally keep Pam, because it does give you guys a bad reputation. Hopefully she starts doing a better job, or else like you stated, twirl her out of the store! (I thought that was cute).
ReplyDeleteI've got to go with Sly on this one. I don't know if I'd keep ol' Pam around. If you guys recommend her and she doesn't do a good job, I think that still gives you a bad rep. But at least you aren't losing money. It's always something, isn't it!
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