1. 42 April 2016
SPECIAL REPORT design
half-hour into our appointment, it’s clear that Noah knows a lot about
me. He’s discovered how much ankle I like to show (just enough to
see the pattern on my socks), diagnosed an old shoulder injury (“Your
right shoulder slopes about a half-inch more than your left”) and
beheld my dismay at learning that my waist is actually four inches
rounder than I’d believed. Noah is a style guide for Indochino, one
of the tactful employees at the retailer’s downtown Toronto show-
room who measures, fits and counsels men looking to buy a custom
suit. It’s an unfamiliar undertaking for many Indochino customers,
so Noah provides some gentle guidance. “Face the mirror again, and
cross your arms. And then just keep them crossed for the rest of the appointment,” he
instructs me. “I find that guys don’t know what to do with their arms, so I just tell them.”
Style guides like Noah are a key part of how Indochino, which began as an online
retailer selling made-to-measure suits, plans to expand into the bricks-and-mortar world
in a big way. The company was founded by two university students with no fashion
expertise, but they managed to design the perfect way for men to buy a custom suit
online at an affordable price. After years of optimizing that process, Indochino is mak-
ing an aggressive push into the real world, with plans to open 150 bricks-and-mortar
locations by 2020, in addition to greatly expanding its product line. To guide this growth,
Indochino landed one of the biggest rounds of financing in Canadian e-commerce his-
tory and recruited a management team of fashion and retail veterans, led by a new top
suit with experience scaling businesses. “I want to create a multi-billion dollar company
by 2020,” says recently installed CEO Drew Green.
The Indochino suit itself is fairly standard. You can get the jacket with one, two or
three buttons; with wide lapels or narrow ones. Pants come with pleats or without them.
For a personal touch, you can add a monogram. But what the company’s success to date
shows is that designing a simple, fast shopping experience is just as important, if not
more so, than designing a standout product. The question now is whether Indochino
can meet its audacious growth targets and bring its finely tailored customer experience
As Indochino prepares to go global,
designing the perfect customer
experience becomes just as important
as crafting a well-made suit
UPUIT
By MURAD HEMMADI
Photograph by CARLO RICCI
GroomingbySoniaLeal-Serafim/THEYrep.com
CEO Drew Green is spearheading
an expansion of Indochino’s product
line and retail footprint

2. 44 April 2016 45
SPECIAL REPORT design
to the physical world—without comprising
the model that made the company success-
ful in the first place.
IN 2007, UNIVERSITY OF VICTORIA
student Heikal Gani needed a suit for a con-
ference. But he couldn’t find one that fit well
at a price he could afford. So Gani and class-
mate Kyle Vucko decided to start a company
to solve that problem. Indochino began as
a website offering a small selection of suits,
priced around the $300 mark, as well as
shirts, accessories and outerwear.
There were some early issues—one poster
on a menswear forum reported that the
elbows on the company’s shirts were sus-
ceptible to giving way, and another noted
that his jacket didn’t quite accommodate
his“funkysquareshoulders.”JefferyDiduch,
anindustryexpertonmade-to-measuresuits
whoregularlyordersandevaluatesgarments
from different brands for his blog, last put
on an Indochino suit in 2012. While he was
impressed by the company’s approach, he
was less enthused by the garments. “They
knewthetechnology,butknewnothingabout
making clothes,” he recalls.
If Indochino’s garments weren’t quite a
perfect fit initially, its timing was. Men have
been moving away from the decidedly casual
style of the early 2000s to something more
polished. “There’s this generation of guys
who want to dress up and to look better,
and who associate that with images of suc-
cess,” says Diduch. Menswear is growing at
twice the pace of the market for women’s
clothing, according to the NPD Group Can-
ada. Tailored and business clothing racked
up$4.83billioninsalesin2015,a3.7%increase
over the previous year. Beyond dressing bet-
ter, men are simply buying more to keep
their wardrobes current.
Indochino also offered a compelling value
proposition: a made-to-measure product at
a ready-to-wear price, delivered in about
three-and-a-half weeks, almost as quickly as
buyingasuitofftherackandhavingitaltered.
To make the process painless for men, Indo-
chino designed the online shopping experi-
ence to match the way men shop. Plenty of
them own only one suit, usually bought for
a wedding or a funeral, and have little—if
any—experience with made to measure. A
suit could be the most expensive garment
they’ve ever purchased. That’s why Indo-
chino guides new users through the cus-
tomization and measuring process. The
website is filled with helpful descriptions
about options like lapel notches and pocket
flaps, and features 14 videos to show cus-
tomers how to take accurate measurements.
An algorithm alerts the customer service
team to follow up if the numbers don’t make
sense. The site continues to evolve (visitors
can now toggle between fabric swatches,
and search by colour) and the process can
be completed in five clicks, down from 30.
These changes have helped boost the com-
pany’s online conversion rate.
The day after a customer places his order,
it’s reviewed by a team of pattern makers
at Indochino’s Shanghai office, and then
allocated to one of the company’s four pro-
duction partners. Indochino represents a
significantcutofthesemanufacturers’made-
to-measure volume, which allows it consid-
erable control over the tailoring process.
In the early years, production took as much
as 15 days. But through frequent visits to
China and changes to the production pro-
cess, such as conducting quality assurance
on the line to spot and correct errors, Indo-
chino cut it down to an average of five days.
Once the finished garment is assembled,
it’s returned to the Shanghai office, where
it’s checked against the customer’s mea-
surements, and shipped out. (Indochino
offers a $75 alteration credit if the suit doesn’t
fit perfectly out of the box.)
Having found success online, Indochino
is branching into physical retail. It’s part of
a wave of e-commerce players opening up
storefronts, a shift motivated by the grow-
ing competition for consumer attention
online, according to Sucharita Mulpuru-
Kodali, vice-president and principal analyst
for e-business and channel strategy at For-
rester Research. “It’s very difficult to gain
brand recognition in this crowded land-
scape,” she notes. “You have to either pay
Google or Amazon to help people discover
your products, or you have to engage in
brand advertising, which can be very costly.
Stores are valuable to drive awareness and
for the trial of products. They can be viewed
as a marketing expense that in part pays
for itself.” E-commerce brands see store-
fronts as more than just another point-of-
sale. Physical spaces are an opportunity to
showcase products and connect with cus-
tomers in a way that a digital ordering pro-
cess, however refined, simply does not per-
mit. “It’s a tactile experience—you’re feeling
the fabric, you’re draping it over yourself,”
says Pilar Catala, Indochino’s director of
e-commerce and product development.
“Online, you don’t have that luxury.”
The company first moved into physical
retail in 2012 with Traveling Tailor, a series
of pop-up shops in high-traffic locations such
as Chicago’s Union Station and at King and
Spadina in Toronto. The concept was “wick-
edly successful,” then-CEO Vucko said in
an interview with Canadian Business last
year, helping Indochino measure the bricks-
and-mortar retail opportunity and connect
with customers in person. Today, Indochino
has seven permanent locations in cities like
in Vancouver, New York and Boston. The
showrooms provide a high-touch alterna-
tive at the start and end of the custom suit
process—you can get measured at a boutique,
and then take your suit back after it arrives
to be pinned up and altered if necessary.
That’s a comforting option for many cus-
tomers. (“We’ve had guys that were trying
to measure themselves with a ruler, and
that doesn’t really work for going around
cuffs,” quips Catala.)
During my session with Noah, the style
guide peppered me with a series of obser-
vations about my figure that I wouldn’t have
noticed on my own, like the fact that my
shoulders rotate forward, causing fabric to
pile up behind them—a problem fixed by
rotating the jacket sleeves a half-inch for-
ward. As Indochino dramatically expands
its showroom count, that kind of individual
attention and expertise is set to become
available to a lot more customers.
THE MOVE INTO BRICKS-AND-MORTAR
retail prompted a reshuffling of Indochino’s
top ranks. “I don’t want to say we had to
put a little more grey around the table, but
we recognized the need to bring in some
really great perspectives
and experiences,” says
Faheem Gwadry, Indo-
chino’s senior vice-pres-
ident of operations and
chief financial officer.
Despite only joining the
company in 2013, Gwadry
is a Indochino veteran—
most of the management
teamarrivedinthelasttwo
years from organizations
like Louis Vuitton, Kit and
Ace, and eBay. Indochino
also brought in a new CEO,
tapping Shop.ca founder
Drew Green.
The first task Green
undertook upon arriving
in November 2015 (the
switch was announced the
following month) was to
draft a five-year business plan for Indochino,
based on a deep dive into the company’s
historical data, conversations with the team,
and an extensive schedule of travel and cus-
tomer outreach. To put that plan into action,
Green needed to raise capital from a stra-
tegic investor, and on March 9, Indochino
announced it had secured a US$30 million
investment led by Dayang Group, a clothing
manufacturer based in Dalian, China, and
one of Indochino’s existing production part-
ners. The deal is one of the largest single
rounds of financing in Canadian e-commerce
history. Dayang’s involvement is integral to
Green’s plans for Indochino. Working with
its strategic investor will reduce Indochino’s
production costs by around 20%, which is
“an incredible number,” boasts Green. “All
of that flows to our bottom line.”
Indochino announced its 150 showrooms-
by-2020targetthesamedayasGreen’sappoint-
ment, and he admits the goal has elicited
some incredulous reactions in light of the
broader trend from physical to digital—a
shift Indochino helped set in motion. The
scale of the company’s bricks-and-mortar
ambitions dwarfs anything its emerging
omnichannel competitors, such as Mon-
treal’s Frank & Oak, have attempted. Store-
fronts are expensive, and there comes a
point at which the value of increased brand
loyalty doesn’t justify the real estate and
operational costs. But Indochino sees its
showrooms as more than an awareness play,
Finished orders for North American
customers are consolidated and
shipped via FedEx. Packages are sent
to logistics hubs in Memphis or Winni-
peg, and are then delivered to the cus-
tomer or to an Indochino showroom.
The finished suit goes back to the
team in Shanghai for quality control.
They check that the garment matches
the customer’s measurements and
that all of the customizations are in
place. The defect rate is less than 1%.
Fabric, sourced and supplied by
Indochino, is cut to fit the pattern.
Garments pass through some 80
stages on the production line prior
to final pressing and inspection.
In Shanghai, a team of four, led by a
master pattern maker, reviews the
order against the customer’s body
type and measurements. A pattern is
created, and the order is packaged
with others and allocated to one of
Indochino’s four production partners.
A customer chooses from hundreds
of styles online and customizes the
suit by adding suspender buttons,
monograms, pleats and other fea-
tures. Fourteen 45-second videos tell
the customer how to get properly
measured with the help of a friend.
Indochino’s supply chain is
designed to minimize costs and
maximize speed. Here’s how one
custom suit gets to your door in
as little as 12 days
BEHIND THE
DRESSING
ROOM
CURTAIN
The scale of
Indochino’s bricks-
and-mortar ambition
dwarfs anything
its competitors have
attempted, eliciting
some incredulous
reactions
IllustrationsbyRemieGeoffroi

3. 46 April 2016
design
Indochino;Lunchbox
SPECIAL REPORT
HEAVY
METAL
Sixty years on, this rugged
Canadian classic radiates
durability—in bubble gum
pink or any other colour
The year was 1956, and Leo May
was fed up with having to choose
between sitting on a boulder or the
cold, damp floor of the nickel mine
where he worked in Sudbury, Ont.
So he designed a lunch box that could
double as a seat: Made of steel-riveted
aluminum brushed with Sudbury
nickel, it was larger and sturdier than
the then-common tin variety. And
that’s how the L. May Mfg. Miners
Lunchbox came to be. May is said
to have sold over a million units in his
lifetime just by word of mouth. Today,
May’s daughter, Catherine Langin,
runs the family business. Sixty
years on, the design is essentially
unchanged—other than the fact that
the boxes are now available in a range
of designer colours, including special
limited-edition paint jobs (rocker
Randy Bachman ordered one with
a custom Union Jack design). “Why
change anything?” asks Langin. The
lunch box’s distinctive shape can still
be spotted today under the arms of min-
ers on every continent. They prize its
tough practicality; white-collar urbanites
buy it for the authentically rugged vibe.
Says Langin: “I’ve heard someone once
say it looks futuristic and retro at the
same time.” –ALEXANDRA BOSANAC
and besides, they’re designed for maximum
efficiency, just like everything else the com-
pany does. Indochino doesn’t necessarily
need to locate in prime, expensive spots,
says Dean Handspiker, the company’s direc-
tor of retail (North America). “We’re desti-
nation retail,” he notes. “We have the ability
to draw the client to the showroom.” The
current Toronto space, for example, is out-
side of the downtown retail strip, but con-
veniently located for the Bay Street and
condo-dwelling crowds. Most of the business
is appointment-based, allowing Indochino
to staff more efficiently than other retailers.
The company’s made-to-measure model also
allows it to save big in another area. “We
don’t have millions of dollars of inventory
on our floors or in our factories,” Gwadry
observes. Rather than pay upfront for prod-
uct and risk inventory obsolescence when
styles or trends shift, Indochino charges
customers up front and then fulfills orders.
As its retail footprint expands, first in major
North American markets, then in Asia and
Europe, the company will also defray show-
room startup costs through distribution
partnerships and perhaps co-branded stores.
Indochino’s deal with Dayang is set to
drive another kind of expansion, too. Day-
ang is one of the world’s largest manufac-
turers of ready-to-wear suits, producing
garments for the likes of Ralph Lauren,
BCBG and J.Crew, giving Indochino access
to a wealth of expertise and enabling a huge
upgrade of its product catalogue. As of July
1, the company will offer customers a choice
of three different suit silhouettes, up from
the single, slim-fit style it currently offers.
Customization options will increase from
some 45 to 190. And the number of fabric
variations (a particular material in a par-
ticular colour, print and texture) will jump
from 90 to 300. Such an array of choices will
addcomplexitytothecompany’smodel,Green
admits. But Indochino has proven adept at
managing complexity. “If you pull back the
curtain, it’s an extremely complex business.
There are thousands of moving pieces,” he
says. “Our job is to make the complicated
very, very simple for the customer.”
Indochino will also be moving into pricier
segments of the menswear market. The com-
pany tends to attract an older millennial
customer, and as members of that cohort
climb the income ladder, they could leave
their Indochinos in the closet in favour of
premium labels. To keep them, Indochino
has to shift upscale. “We’ll have fine Italian
mills providing us some of the best fabrics
in the world,” says Green. “If you want to
spend $1,500 on a suit, we’ll
have that opportunity.”
Considering Indochino’s
most expensive suit is $799,
targeting the upscale client
could represent a challenge
forthecompany.Price,after
all, is about brand. Indo-
chino doesn’t carry the fast-
fashion stigma of H&M or
Zara, but it’s still known for
value—not luxury. As men
have grown more interested
indressingwell,they’vealso
become more conscious of
fashion brands. A decade
ago, most men “wouldn’t
have known an Armani if it
sat on them,” jokes Diduch.
“They were buying it for a
label, not because there was
a particular aesthetic to it.”
That’s no longer the case,
and this new contingent of fashionistas might
balk at dropping four figures on an Indo-
chino over a brand more closely associated
with luxury. Green emphasizes that while
he admires premium suit makers like Hugo
Boss and Tom Ford, his aim is to “serve the
masses.” Loyalty and value will ensure cus-
tomers for his company, he says.
None of these goals will be easy to achieve,
but Green is already making progress: Indo-
chino achieved 60% year-over-year sales
growthfrommid-Novembertomid-February.
With the company’s early entry into e-com-
merce, there’s no doubt that Indochino has
been ahead of the curve in the retail and
fashion industries. Still, to become a billion-
dollar company, Indochino will need to
learn to thrive both online and off, and stitch
together a brand that appeals to a wider
group of shoppers. Green believes he mea-
sures up. “I like to build big companies, and
frankly I know how to do that.”
Indochino plans to open 150
showrooms, up from seven today