What is DressMonkey?

DressMonkey is a custom-apparel startup, with operations in Shanghai and California, with a target market in the United States. We’re currently finalizing our factory agreements and working on our website with a scheduled release by the end of 2006. Our current website design is being completed in two stages: Dressmonkey.com has become operational, and will function as a blog until our retail site can be developed by the end of the year. DressMonkey will be a custom-apparel site, where customers can design their own clothing depending on a defined set of variables. Initially, our site will only have one product, mens blazers. Eventually, we plan on adding an assortment of additional clothing types, all of which will follow the same model as our flagship line in terms of customer interaction and decisions.

Why a blog?

Because everyone else seems to being doing it, right? Well, yes and no. The industry-wide consensus that a blog can be an effective and cheap marketing tool for a business makes perfect sense to us. However, besides the obvious motive of attracting visitors to our store, we're also turned on by several of the less-obvious benefits that a blog naturally provides: it makes the framework of our site easily changeable and expandable; it allows us to gather comments and feedback in postable, searchable form; its text-based format is indexable by search engines; and most importantly, it is an interactive medium we can use to communicate directly with our customers quickly and openly, thus forcing us to think about our business in new ways every day.

What to expect from our blog?

Marketing of our products of course. However, that's just the tip of the monkeys tail.

Think of our website as your all-access pass into the mysterious world of textile retail manufacturing.

In our attempt to position ourselves as an anti-brand alternative to high-priced designer markup brands as well as "add value" for our potential customers, we're going beyond the traditional role of blogs as simply a marketing tool and offering up things that the majority of our apparel manufacturing competitors intentionally keep a secret from the general consumer: how textile products are produced, who produces them and where, actual costs of production and materials, pricing new products, cost analysis, and basically anything else that we feel factors into the production equation for an apparel company based in China. We'll also be writing as much as we can about the ins and outs of starting an internet retail company as it pertains to our experience: our presence in China and the US, dealing with the Chinese, understanding international trade laws and customs compliance, incorporating, our thought process in making important business decision, new ideas that come to mind, breakthroughs, setbacks or failures, delays, marketing, promotions, developing an online presence and so on.

You will discover that we at DressMonkey are loathe to follow our competitor's model of brand secrecy and markup.

Check out our archives packed full of spoon-fed content in:

Sophomoric humor
Male-opinionated points-of-view
Honest reporting from our factories in China
Men’s fashion tips
Transparent textile retail manufacturing
Playful cynicism
Calls for action
Heavy use of alliteration and internal rhyme
Rants about particular business shortcomings
Competitors' secrets
Featured guest columns (coming soon)

What not to expect?

Stiff corporate talk or any true sense of formality.

Phase I is the blog. What is Phase II and when should we expect to see it?

Phase II of dressmonkey.com is the build of our online store and back-end system as well as its delivery and integration with the rest of the website. This is really the meat and bones of our Monkey because it will finally allow you all to design and purchase your very own DressMonkey and show us the magical color green that turns red into black. Simply put, if our blog (Phase I) is your all-access pass into the underbelly of retail textile manufacturing, then our store (Phase II) and its working components will be your tool that connects you to your DressMonkey and allows you to follow its creation from the minute you design it up until the moment you receive it and try it on.

Phase II remains very much a work in progress. Rest assured, however, that we are working around the clock with our team of graphic designers and web developers to build a truly custom online store-front that we hope will offer a truly unique e-commerce experience for our customers. The build process is chugging along, and by December we will integrate blog and store to create an online retail website that will have you all dancing like a chimp. And remember, the progress of the store -- like all other things related to DressMonkey -- will continually be chronicled on our website, so be sure to visit us regularly.

We greatly look forward to your involvement in the early growth stages of our young company. Remember that the bloginess of our website creates an interactive medium you can use to communicate directly with us in an informal and timely manner, as often or as little as you want. Feel free to talk to us whenever you like.