Harnessing Technology for traditional Industry

It has been a busy month for Butterfly kisses as we are bringing our company to the next phase. We have incorporated our company as of Jul 11.

Would there be changes to our company… The simple answer is no. We feel that by incorporating our company would give our business partners and customers our commitment that we are here for the long run.

So much about the company… Amidst all this, it allows us some time to talk to our sales team and one of the common complaints we heard from our customers is that in our uniform industry lead time and promise delivery date are always slipping. This gives the customer very little confidence when we provide a promise date. This caused our customers to put a buffer period when providing a request date. This results the available lead time to be shorter than actual required date. This puts unnecessary stress on our manufacturing line and may result in rush work. This a common problem in many industry however many industry has moved on to use technology like Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software to ensure better accuracy in promised date. However, in our industry this was not adopted as especially in Singapore. In Singapore uniform design and manufacturing is a sunset industry and most of the businesses in this industry have very traditional manual methodology that had served them well but are unable to keep up with our ever increasing pace of tHe world.
Our company believe that we should always embraced technology when it enable us to have a better relationship with our customer. Our company has an ERP system to ensure that we can keep to our promised delivery date. Further, Butterfly Kisses does the pattern drafting using computer aided drawing to ensure our product is precise and accurate repeatablilty. This is what we promise our customer and we harness technology to fulfill this promise.

However, we still believe in the traditional methods of making uniform and we continue to manufacture our uniform with the traditional high standards. In fact we stress to have our uniform manufacture in traditional method that no short cuts are tolerated.

Please feel free to contact us on how much we believe in providing a different experience when working with a uniform supplier.

Your Blog Team
Butterfly Kisses Pte. Ltd.

Cut Cost Don’t Cut Corners

As a staff of a company, I know that we are constantly reminded by our managers to cut cost. Despite having put up an earlier blog that touches on how uniform can help your company growth, I know that the directive to cut cost still hangs over our head. One would wonder how could we cut cost but yet ensuring the staffs that wears the uniform still continue to maintain the high standards. That’s the reason I decided to follow up from my previous blog on how to cut cost for our uniforms and do not cut corners.

Use Existing Design
The first reaction from many when our sales proposed this would usually be met with opposition. The common answer would be my company wants to be unique, we do not want to copy from other company’s design. However, if you understand how a piece of clothing is built, most of the setup cost is due to the draft created by skilled workers. Thus, if you have a small order quantity, the cost of the draft would inflate of the cost of per piece uniform significantly. Thus to reduce this cost, taking an existing design would mean that this cost would not be added on for small orders. The next question that comes to mind is how then can it be unique to your company. The easiest and most significant way is to change the material of the uniform. You can consult the sales to ask for the range of colors available to the same material. You can choose to use other materials as well. With this change of fabric, you have successfully created an unique uniform to your company but without incurring the cost of making new drafts for your company uniform.

Order Only Required Quantity
Always order sufficient quantity of uniform as keeping extra uniform usually incurs unnecessary expenditure and takes up unnecessary precious office space. You may have experience with many uniform supplier telling you that they have a Minimum Order Quantity (MOQ) of 100. That’s makes ordering redundant uniforms almost a necessary. However, if you follow my advice to modify from existing design of your uniform supplier, they may be able to reduce the MOQ. Further, like Butterfly Kisses, we do not have Minimum Order Quantity for even new unique designs. Although the per unit price for your uniform may be higher for those who offer uniform without minimum order quantity but the only most important is the overall cost of the purchase order.

We have discussed different methods of helping you cut cost but yet continue to have new and unique uniforms for your company. We intend to share more methods of cutting cost of your company in our next blog … So stay tuned…

If you like to explore with a company that always put you and your company interest first by helping you to lower the cost of uniform, please contact us at sales@butterflykisses.com.sg or call us at +65 87446505.

Thanks
Our Blog Team
Butterfly Kisses LLP

Increase Your Revenue with Uniform

Just like we always say in the company when a guy walks in and wearing purple.. The FEDEX guy is here.. Do you want your company to be just as identifiable?

When you do business you are told that you need to come up with a value proposition and you need to decide on your target market and you need to differentiate yourselves from your competitor.  All this sounds great but one thing that governs everything is still dollars and cents.  Everything you do for your business boils down to increasing revenue for your company.  You spend a good percentage of our revenue on marketing as you believe that this would make your business ahead in the competition, but did yourealize that one strong and cost effective marketing tool is to dress up your employees.  When your staff dons the uniform, they are walking advertisement for your company. If your uniform is designed trendily and effectively, people they interact with would notice your company emblazon on their uniform.  When interests are stirred among these people, they would approach your staff to find out more about your company and your products.  Isn’t this effective marketing?

Is that all uniform can do to help increase your company revenue?  It is common knowledge that dressing smart makes a person more vibrant and thus giving a good impression to customers.  That is why so many sales folks spend both time and money dressing themselves up.  Can you imagine your staff wearing your fashionable uniform when meeting your customers?  Your uniform will make them feel vibrant and confident when meeting your customers.  You are confident your staff would always meet your customer with that extra edge because you are providing them with uniform that are trendy and comfortable.  This is equivalent to you spending money to arm your staff with the right tools to increase your company revenue.

Back to dollars and cents.

Myth: Uniform are required to purchase in large quantity.

Fact: Butterfly Kisses DO NOT have minimum order quantity.  We believe our mission is to help any size company to have fashionable and trendy uniform.

Myth: We need to invest a few thousand dollars for fashionable uniform even I have a handful of staff.

Fact: You can get fashionable uniforms below one thousand dollars for your handful of staff.  Best of all, it does not need to be the boring Tshirt or Polo Shirt but it can be any beautiful design.  You can check our products if you would like to see what we can offer you.

Myth: Uniform for small quantity order means you need to take off the shelf and this does not give identity to your company

Fact: You can design and modify existing design from Butterfly Kisses library of designs and we would gladly help you.  Best of all the cost are still kept at a very reasonable amount. 

Myth: Polo shirts and Tshirt are the only type customizable via embroidery and printing for any quantity ordered.

Fact: Butterfly Kisses can customized all sorts of uniform (shirt, blouse, dress) by changing the fabric, fabric color plus embroidery and printing with No Minimum Order.

What makes Butterfly Kisses able to do all this?

We have a dynamic team that has the know how to make your company dress up and make an impression and still fall in line with your budget forecast.  Most importantly, we believe that we are able to make your company have that extra edge with our uniform and we want to share it with you.

Feel free to contact us and we can share with you even more idea to make your company stand out by dressing up…

Our Blog Team

Butterfly Kisses LLP

 

What makes clothes comfortable

Ever wonder why one shirt feels better than the other… Ever wonder why the branded labels always fits nicer. I am sure many of us just knows that the clothes feel better but we do not know why??
We in Butterfly Kisses would like to show you some insights to choose clothes that suit you better without breaking your bank.

Fabric dictates the feel
In general, the more the cotton content in a fabric means that the clothes feels more comfortable. However, the downside of having high cotton content means that the fabrc would crease easily. This would be a maintenance nightmare for people always on a rush and still need to look smart. There are crease free high cotton content fabric and this is done by soaking the fabric with certain types of chemical. However, these chemical would get washed away after a number of wash and it is all dependant on the fabric. It is usually recommended to use fabric that have 65% polyester and 35% cotton.

The other property to watch out for fabric is te weaving of the fabric. Some weaving would results in diagonal patterns and give a rough feel. Other type of weaving would weave two different color threads being weaved together to form a dotted color fabric. Therefore, if you have a preference for certain type of weaving, it would be good to ask your vendors and remember it for future purchases.

Cutting of the Clothes
How important is cutting of the clothes… It is the most important part of making a piece of clothing that makes you feel good. Ever wonder why pants of the same size fro different brand feels different. Some pants can be so uncomfortable that even buying 2 sizes bigger it still feels uncomfortable. The secret to it is that the cutting of the pants is non ideal and thus makes wearing it a real pain. How can we find clothes with good cutting? Generally, cutting of the clothes is an art and it is really dependant of each company. This is where the company can differentiate between the man from the boys. We in Butterfly Kisses can guarantee excellent comfort for our uniform as we have a veteran draftsman that was manufacturing for fashion label. You can alwyas request for sample pieces to try us out and you would know the difference once you wear our product.

If you want to learn more about clothes and fabric, feel free to contact us at sales@butterflykisses.com.sg and we can help you unravel the mystery further…

Cheers

Our Blog Team
Butterfly Kisses LLP

Yes, we have shifted!

A piece of good news to share with everyone this month. Remember I was mentioning a few blogs back that our office space is way too small…Yes, we have found a bigger unit!! Well, thank God it was a pretty good deal in terms of space versus rental cost. Although the overhead has grown slightly higher,  it is worthwhile so long as it provides some form of motivation to the team working inside.

We moved into our new office on 13th Oct o9, on the same day that I flew to USA. It was only 2 weeks back but in my mind, it seemed like a long time ago. Probably because time seems to pass slower when I am away from home.

As I  sat in my hotel room writing this blog, a lot of thoughts and ideas continue to mingle in my mind… There is little need for fire-fighting due to time difference between Singapore & US, and this opens up a window for me to literally sit down and focus on the business plan. This period is in fact more stressful and intense than those times when we were physically tired running around to do fulfillment and clinching deals. 

Much as you would like to know about the insights I have gained from this long trip, I will  update more in my next blog when i return early next month.

Q3 Business Results

Time really zoom by especially when one gets so busy…Butterfly Kisses has already progressed into the next quarter since it starts to operate on a full scale.  I would like to share with you a very brief summary of the results for Q3, with Q2 data as comparison.

Information                    Q2 ’09                        Q3 ’09

Sales Revenue                  S$21K                    S$54K

New customer bases        10                            9

In the next quarter, more focus and funds will be parked under marketing campaign and advertising effort as our business and operation becomes more stabilized and learning curves become a lot less steep.

 In other words: YES! We are ready to fight for the local market share with our competitors. It is time to market our brand and take a bigger step to reach out to businesses and consumers out there.

I will also be travelling to US next month to explore the US market and hopefully, get to meet up with  some of our potential customer. I am really looking forward to my 1st business class flight experience! Hopefully, I can bring some good news back with me.

In the pipeline

In my previous blogs, I have been updating what has happened, so for a new change, this month’s blog will be all about what are the activities going forward.

Butterfly Kisses has been progressing well and we have been working with many corporate industries on our design proposals. These customer bases will be our cash cows who will make significant impact on our sales turnover, as they will order uniform from us consistently instead of the usual once every half a year or yearly order.

However, typical corporate culture, there will be many rounds of approval before we will be shortlisted as their preferred supplier. We have a couple of formal presentation lined up next month and these have been keeping our team busy on the preparation work. Our design proposal will include:

• Designs in wireframe model
• Design Concept from our Fashion Designer’s Viewpoint
• Actual Fabric material proposed by our experienced Operation Manager
• Best Lead time proposed by our factory
• Price Range

Having said all these, the main presenter will be Yours Truly here but of course, my support arms will be around to provide the technical and IT support during the presentations. Best of Luck to our team in the coming months….

Stay tune to my next blog for update and outcome of these important deals.

Facing office space constraint

Hello,

This month’s blog has been published slightly later than usual because I have been caught up with numerous things on my plate. 

The most crucial issue that I resolved lately was negotiating with one of our long term customers on taking back their uniform.  Out of good will, we have assisted them in this area for the past year. However, as our business picks up and with greater inventory movement during our daily operations, there was an immediate need to maximize our current office space.  All discussion was smooth sailing and we really appreciate the fact that our customer has been very understanding towards us. In terms of resource planning and allocation, our next target would be our office space expansion.

I would also like to share with you an interesting branding workshop that I attended last month, organized by Consulus Cato Partners, a branding company. The topic is “If Insiders can’t embrace your brand, Outsiders never will”. Branding is indeed a big name and requires the effort of each individual in a company in order to make branding a successful one. To create a brand for your company, it must begin with the employee of the company. A successful implementation may take years to complete, subjected to the openness of the employee and the culture of the company.

After the session and group presentation, a few of us were requested to give a testimonial of the workshop….It was so impromptu but I gave a shot at it just for the experience and the fun of it You can view my video clip at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6zDMbRWvzo. 

So much for this month….

Q2 Business Review

3 months into focusing full time in developing the business in Butterfly Kisses, I would like to share with you the progresses made by me and my wonderful team for our Q2 09. Here is the overview:

• Sales Revenue                         : S$21K
• New Customer Base                  : 10 new companies
• Location of Customer base        : Singapore and Malaysia
• Sales Team Recruitment            : 1 Sales manager in July. With him on board, I am confident that the sales revenue will continue to grow exponentially in Q3 and Q4, towards the overall sales target that I have set for Year 2009.

 

Here is one of completed work which we have done up for one of our customers. Initially, they were wearing dull grey off the shelves overalls that they bulk purchased from china.  However, the management faced many problem in the sizes inconsistency and wide color tone variation.

Butterfly Kisses came into the picture to help revamp their overall image and my fashion designer created this customized overall that brings out the image and brand of the company. The staff are excited to wear them….You will be pleasantly surprised by the great difference made to the office environment although it seems like a simple change in attire.

 

 

 

Ok, so much on work…..

Now, let’s talk about some interesting recreation. In the midst of these busy schedules,  I managed to spend a day out on the green off Marina Bay Country Club…It was the first game that I played with “strangers” to make it 4 in a flight and the pressure was kinda tremendous especially during tee off time. Nonetheless, it was a good game and I enjoyed it a lot! (Despite one of the sole of my shoes came off after the 15th hole, that i need to secure it with the pathetic string from the bunch of banana we bought, in order to complete the 18 holes…how embarrassing can it be? ha ha)

If you have any topics that you are interested to find out more, feel free to drop me a note. I will try to answer your queries as much as I can. Catch you in my next blog.

Lessons from the Annual SMEs Conference

I was invited to the 11th Annual SMEs conference on 21 May 09, organized by SCCCI (Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce & Industry). The topic of discussion was NAGIVATING THE GLOBAL STORM.  Thinking it will be just another conference, my initial intention was just to go and take a look, distribute some namecards, enjoy the teabreak and good lunch buffet spread and then call it a day. However, to my pleasant surprise, the turnout crowd was more than 1000, and the content of the topic discussion was so captivating and practical that I stayed till the end….and looking forward to the next annual event.

It started with a short ”lecture” by Dr Wee, a professor of Strategy and Marketing at Nanyang Business School on how to apply Chinese classics into modern business practices, followed by the juicier part of the conference, whereby 4 invited speakers (Famous SME founders – Mr Roland Ng from Tat Hong, Mr Kang from Super Bean, Mr Arthur Wang from Bon and Mr Kenny Yap from Qian Hu….Come to think of it, how come no female CEO was invited to speak?) were invited to share with us their successful stories on overcoming downturns.

Let me share with you the takeaways from the 8hrs conference. Personally, these are very useful tips and I have started to put into practise the knowledge that I have gained.

• One must be self sacrificing and set a good example as a leader
• Must be decisive and have vision
• Must have the confidence level
• Must know the right person and have good relationship with customers
• Fast in response
• Learn to turn downturn into opportunity (This is an Art!)
• Ability to chase for payment (Cashflow is essential)
• Communication (Banks/Customers/Suppliers) for insight news
• Always aim to improve and move up the ladder
• Be excited to take up challenges
• Be sincere and honest in your business dealings
• Be optimistic and have a positive outlook
• Evaluate the weakness of the company especially in times of downturn
• Learn to utilize available grants
• Learn to say “No” in some situations
• Learn to diversify and be creative
• Continue to maintain your normal lifestyle even when business is not that great (Life goes on…)

I hope these pointers will be of use to you in one way or another…