It is really difficult to scale a couture creative business. Creating something wholly custom takes enormous effort and requires, by definition, that you “reinvent the wheel” each time. The moment you use previous design as a baseline to become couture, you are really not couture any more. The fleet of talent needed to make this a reality as the business grows often exceeds the growth. Given this intensity of (human) capital and fluctuations inherent in this kind of creative business, making a consistent profit is also incredibly difficult if all you focus on is couture. Just ask Vera Wang about her couture wedding dress business. So why do couture? Because there really is no better brand statement than something completely original and iconic to what you are all about. From there you can distill that brand ethos into more semi-custom or standardized offerings that are still trend-forward, but also scalable and much more profitable.
And lest you think I am only speaking about fashion businesses, I am not. By couture I mean the highest end of your creative business – where the budget and project justify (or the client demands) your complete originality. Even if you are fee based, you will still have to invest far more time and resources to bring this project to fruition than to work on something that would be a permutation on what you have already done before.
As pricing pressure, competition and the desire to grow increases, the inclination is to bastardize the model. You introduce permutations on things you have done before or even the same elements. You “standardize” so you can scale. Since you have done “it” before, you know what “it” costs and how to do “it”. You might even be able to do “it” better the second time around. And, at a level,”it” is okay (not great, but okay — we all have to live in the real world). If, in your million dollar project, there are $100,000 of items you have done before, then, no, it is not 100% custom, but it is also fair to say that it completely original and iconic to you and your client. Where you start to get in trouble is when you take on smaller “couture” projects that can only afford semi-custom or standard. Then the percentage might flip and you are doing 10% original work, 90% things you have done before. Of course, you might say there is not a problem so long as the client is happy. However, if you sold couture, but deliver off-the-rack I am not sure that is a message you want to send or a viable long-term strategy. Much better to split the two businesses so those who want couture get it and those that want couture but can only afford semi-custom know they are only buying semi-custom.
All of the above is pretty straightforward. However, what might not be so obvious is that by bastardizing the couture model, you actually sabotage the viability of both your couture and your semi-custom business. You hurt couture for the reason I said above – you are selling it but not delivering it. You hurt your semi-custom business because you do not give your couture business the chance to set the stage for semi-custom. This is where the fashion business provides such a great study. The products and trends that come from fashion couture set the stage for just about everything that follows, even if there is only a hint of couture in the product sold.
The scalability of ANY creative business is based on the value of its intellectual property. Couture creates the intellectual property, everything else in your creative business increases its value. However, put scale into couture and you will inevitably watch what is most valuable about your creative business disappear.
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As a photographer, I strive complete originality and couture quality for each of my clients. Offering packages creates a conundrum of course. Something to think about….
I completely agree with this. It is hard for a lot of creative businesses to come up with “scale-able” offerings. It took me four years to come up with an idea to sale my business that I actually liked enough to pursue. The timing of this post is perfect for me! Thanks. 🙂
Great post. thanks.
You are very correct. We are a couture design firm and we have had to expand and contract several times due to supply and demand. It’s difficult, but we’ve made a name for ourselves doing this and to abandon it now would be “selling out”.
This post gave me a lot to think about. I’d say that my company offers a “couture” service (onsite Mac IT support) in the sense that we do customize every single project to exactly what our client needs, which means that we never do it the same way twice.
We’re working on figuring out how to expand what we can offer, but instead of going the “semi-custom” route we would like to provide something that will be useful to our existing (couture) clients–so it would be an “off-the-rack” piece of software that could be purchased by anyone, and that is different from yet complementary to the couture service we offer to our clients.
Is this a way to expand our business without ruining our couture model? Curious to hear others’ opinions.
Great advice Sean! It’s all about being an honest business as well isn’t it? If you promise originality but you can’t give it to the client, you’ll definitely damage the relationship. In our wedding photography business we make sure to meet each and every couple for a creative collaboration session so we can keep our ideas fresh and be true to who the couple are. Makes a big difference!