A new online men's wear store called Combatant Gentlemen created by cousins Vishaal and Mohit Melwani offers men tailored suits and shirts at affordable prices--a Super 140's wool suit (term to define the weight and twist of fabric) can be bought starting at $160. The Melwani's tailor and create the suits themselves in their Los Angeles based location. Men can give their own measurements online when they order the suit or shirt of their choice. There will even be training courses called "Cadet Training" so men can better understand how a tailored suit or shirt can make any body type feel comfortable and therfore be successful. The Melwani's believe the Combatant Gentlemen wants to look his best but can't afford an ultra expensive suit with other monthly expenses.
They know they can help and they answered a few questions for examiner.com:
1. Explain how the cadet training sessions will help lay-gentlemen understand how to take their measurements? Our goal with Combat Gent is to equip men with all they need to succeed and get the job done. This includes their garments too. Therefore we are continously looking for avenues to solve the pain point of garment measurement for the guy. Through customer support or some potential Fit technology, this is something we hope to continue to teach our clients.
2. What does a professional wardrobe mean to you in today's casual wardrobe era (casual friday's, khaki pants, pre-patterned suits)? Due to the current economy and varying dress codes in the workplace, a "professional wardrobe" today could literally mean anything. We have our core consumers who purchase our suits and shirts specifically for their corporate or finance enthused jobs and then we have guys who are working in the startup scene who wear our more casual shirts (ginghams) and team it up with denim jeans. We feel that our initial collection (what's on the site today) has given our clients an option to mix and match their wardrobe to any occassion. Multi-purpose wardrobes are key to our Gents right now and we are very aware of that.
3. You're both in your late twenties. Can you explain your motivation to have entry level professionals look better than they do? We are our clientele. We know that there are other places where money needs to go when you're a twenty-something (e.g. rent, social events, etc.) Salaries of the early 2000's are now a myth and the cost of living continues to go up. At the same time, our client is a go-getter. Nothing will get in his way and he knows that if he wants to succeed, the perception of him from others must be on point. He knows that his wardrobe and first impressions are a key element to long-term success and that if he dresses the part, he has a better shot to get ahead than the guy next to him. This was our motivation behind the line.
4. Tell me a bit more about the BETA rollout and the next events for your company. As mentioned above, we launched in May 2012 with our initial BETA release and were looking for two things: Is there clientele out there who can really use our site as a tool for their own personal success? If so, what do they really need? We spent the first six months spending a lot of time with our initial customers and listening to their needs. Since supply-chain is something we have covered by buying the fabric and making the suits ourselves, we knew we could create anything; however, we were more focused on the items our clients needed to succeed.
Whether it was semi-spread collars or French cuffs, we wanted to hear it all from our clients and we found that our clients were more than happy to share their needs with us. Since we manufacture all of our samples in-house in Los Angeles, we found that we could throw our samples up on Facebook and wait for feedback. This would then aid us in our mission to keep inventory under control as a young startup. Combat Gent is looking to take a stab at increasing our product offerings over the next few months. We can't go into specifics yet though, but our clients are going to be super pleased with what's in the works.
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