Igigi Plus Size Clothing: The story of a labor of love, and maybe, more; IGIGI goes brick and mortar by Ozlem Arpaci
One Tuesday morning I came to work, went up the stairs to the marketing department at
IGIGI, put my bag by my desk, turned on the computer, clicked on email, turned to Masha, my manager, and saw her looking at me.
"I need to talk to you" she said.
Not having had my second doze of morning caffeine yet, I thought to myself, "She looks serious, this can't be good."
Well, I was wrong. It actually marked the beginning of an adventure that turned out to be more than good, a great experience of a life time, for everybody involved.
"We are going to open an IGIGI store, and Alex wants you to take an active role in it since you have worked at a women's fashions store before" she said.
I took a deep breath and sighed. "Sure" I said. "I would love to do that."
The rest is a blur now, full of meetings on design, logistics, marketing, and
merchandising which felt more like a nine-month pregnancy squeezed into a month of
inception, development and labor all together. A blur now since the time passed so fast
and so much was accomplished in such a short period of time that it is hard to go back
and pick out the details of every step, but I am here to try anyway.
When I was doing my MBA, Creativity and Innovation was the only class I truly enjoyed. It is one those classes that showcased the softer side of business school and one that
everybody, at least everybody focusing on marketing, took to get an easy A. However, the class proved to be one of the most difficult to actually get through and complete, let
alone score an easy A, since creativity does not have a unique formula where you can plug in the variables and have the end product pop up with a high percentage of success or within a -2 or +2 margin of error rate from the desired result.
Fashion is all about creativity; being creative enough to design something
unique and inspiring, and creative enough to tap into the right audience so you can take
home bread at the end of the day.
Creativity, as it happens, has five stages: preparation, frustration, incubation,
illumination and evaluation. And we have gone through it all in bringing the first IGIGI
brick and mortar to life in downtown San Francisco. |
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Marketing, merchandising and customer service departments all came together in the
beginning of August prepared to pour their hearts out and communicate what was at hand and how it could be accomplished in as little time as possible with as small a budget as possible.
Naturally, every department, and every person in each department, had his/her own agenda including his/her own needs and desires :-)
The incubation starts. After we divided up the workload, everyone went back to work on their portion of the ordeal. Master of controllers, Masha started putting the numbers together. She called contractors to get ideas and assets what we could do and not do both safety and money wise, and gathering the list of furniture we would eventually need to furnish the store.
Jen and I started working on design, which proved very intuitive and easy at times, and
extremely challenging at others. Obviously we knew our customer and what her expectations would be in coming to the IGIGI store. We had to provide for an elegant and welcoming atmosphere where the customers could move around comfortably finding as much of the merchandise we carry online in the store.
We wholeheartedly wanted to build spacious dressing rooms with a nice mirror and a cozy sitting arrangement, equipped with plenty of garment hooks on the wall so she could hang her purse and coat as well as the merchandise and not worry about having to put anything on the floor. We wanted to have a sitting area immediately outside of the dressing rooms so her companions could rest as she enjoyed trying on the clothes.
We wished to have as much of the collection we carry online displayed on the floor, but had to be very careful not to create crowd and achieve a clean, crisp, elegant look and feel. It was decided that the operation would initially take off with one person on active duty, so we also had to consider the fact that she had to be centered in the store so that she could be the wonder woman we expected her to be and monitor the door, the dressing rooms, the merchandise and the register simultaneously.
We started putting our ideas together and started to craft a design which we thought would fit all these needs and desires and answer all our reservations as satisfactory as possible. We came up with three different designs to present to the team.
Eureka, eureka! A meeting between the departments determined the final layout of the store down to the furniture we would be getting.
A one person army on her own, Jen made several trips across the Bay to the one well-known Swedish store, and assembled most of the store herself. I spent hours listening to music and becoming ever so friendlier with my Ipod as construction went on, and I imagined how it all would come together.
Masha and I interviewed several candidates for the sales associate position and practically had our mouths hit our ears as Megan showed up dressed impeccably, on time, looking pretty in plus-size! After she left, Masha and I looked at each other and we knew who we would be opening the store with. The rest of the days were spent setting up the register, hanging artwork on the walls, opening packages, putting the merchandise on hangers, and organizing them on the floor.
The end and a beginning.
Based in the heart of San Francisco, IGIGI designs, manufactures, and distributes apparel and accessories for fashion-loving women in sizes 14-32. IGIGI understands and strives to fulfill the needs and desires of the under-represented modern, voluptuous customer. IGIGI apparel and accessories can be found online at www.igigi.com, at specialty boutiques and stores, and now in downtown San Francisco at:
IGIGI
1545 Mission Street,
between VanNess and 11th
San Francisco, CA 94103
Connect more with Ozlem on MySpace at, www.myspace.com/thefashionistique
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