Placement Evaluation

The company, workplace and implementation

Company Profile

Belles Bridal Boutique is a bridal boutique that offers a wide range of dresses, wedding accessories and shoes. There wedding dresses are made by multiple designers including designs from Agnes, Ritva Westenius, Jesus Peiro, Charlotte Balbier, Alessandra R and Amanda Wyatt. The aim of the company is to give the perfect experience of shopping for the perfect dress whilst giving customers the best possible quality.

Company Market

The company market is purely based on those who are getting married, therefore offer women’s dresses, shoes and accessories for their wedding day. The boutique has a lot of competition with bridal boutiques situated all over the city including Brides of Liverpool, Cloud 9 Brides, Society Brides, Brides World Liverpool, and that’s just a few! However, although the competition is high with each bridal boutique offering different style dresses, they all offer dresses from different designers.

Workplace and Implementation

Belles Bridal Boutique is situated on Henry Street, Liverpool in a building that covers 3 floors. The first floor being the office, second floor where the brides have the opportunity to try dresses on and third floor where all the dresses are displayed. There are a total of 6 staff. Geraldine, who is the owner of the boutique, who also is in charge of buying the dresses and choosing each style. She has also been able to build a very good relationship with each designer having worked in the bridal industry for a few years. Carol and Paula who are the boutiques seamstresses. They are in charge of any alterations that the brides may need when their dresses have arrived which could be things such as hem or bust adjustments. Abby, who also helps in the running of the business and offers help and advice in picking their perfect dress and Chenille who works of a Saturday offering a helping hand. There is also Charlotte, who runs the social media. Each Tuesday she will come to the boutique to take various pictures of the new styles of dresses, shoes and accessories that have arrived and put them on Facebook for everyone to see.


There was not any major health and safety issues within the boutique as it is only small and there are no fire hazards. The boutique was always kept tidy and no objects in the way of customers. The only issue of health and safety for customers may have been when pinning the dresses when fitting them to the brides the pins would have been sharp so extra precaution would have been taken.

Your Role, Responsibilities and Jobs Availability

Role and Responsibilities

My role in the boutique was to help with everyday tasks which overall was to help with appointments, help with deliveries, make the customers feel welcome and maintain the boutique and dresses. A more detailed description of my roles are in the week by week descriptions. One of the projects I was given was to check each of the sample dresses that had been discontinued which were getting sold ‘as seen’ and to start repairing them which included sewing buttons or embellishments back on or repairing any holes.

The Production Chain from Design to Market Product

Design and Textiles

As the company is a bridal boutique that buys their dresses in they do not have to design them themselves. However, some inspiration does come from bridal shows when it comes to picking a certain style. For the designers of the dresses, they would use things such as catwalk trends for their inspirations. The company retrieves new styles twice a year, one for Autumn/Winter and one for Spring/Summer. The fabrics that are used on the dresses include, silks, nets, satin, chiffon, organza, rayon, tulle and charmeuse. The designers use a lot of embellishment techniques as well as embroidery patterns. Which is all created by hand by the designers/manufacturers.

Pattern

As the shop is a boutique, they buy all their designs in which means the patterns are already created by the designers and cannot be seen in the boutique.


Although Belles does not use CAD or CAM, the wedding dresses would be manufactured by using these types of software. CAD would be important for the designing of the wedding dresses as it enables the designer to design as many wedding dresses as they want without creating a sample as this would cost much more as the materials are more expensive. Larger companies and big designers may use Gerber software to create the dress patterns as it is much more time efficient.

Production and Costing

The company manufactures their products at source which means the designer of the products will have them manufactured and then sent over to the boutique. For each bride, they will take their specific measurements using their designer’s measurement chart where a deposit of half the amount of the dress will be taken, they will then be given a copy of the receipt and their measurements will then they be sent to the designer and the dress will be made for their specific measurements. The manufacturers will use industrial sewing machines but hand sew embellishments and embroidery.

 

Quality Control

The quality is controlled throughout the boutique. All dresses are kept neatly on rails and are dry cleaned for any wedding show events. For a person’s actual dress that has been ordered it will be delivered to the boutique in packaging. To ensure quality control the dress is taken out of the box and packaging wearing white gloves to ensure no dirt or marks get on the dress. Then the dress has a detailed inspection making sure each button, zip, embellishment is intact as well as making sure there are no hole, mistakes or any lose thread. As the dresses are made for specific client measurements, the client will have fittings after the dress has arrived. The amount of fittings depend on how much extra work is needed on the dress.

The final garment is dispatched after the client has had their final fitting then the dress can be taken away with them when it is ready. Most of the dresses are made in the UK depending on the designer. The garments from Jesus Peiro are produced abroad as he is a Spanish designer and Alexandra R who is an Italian designer. The other designers are produced in London and Manchester.

The pricing of the dresses, shoes and accessories vary depending on their fabric, design and technique.  As their dresses are bought off the designers they then put their own price on the dresses to make profit, this will be Geraldine’s decision. Each price depends on the design and fabric, for example, a dress made of silk is more expensive than the same dress made in satin. The price range of the dresses are £500-£2500. The lower price of the dresses are usually the samples that are being bought as seen which will be sold at half the price of its original cost because they will be the actual dresses they are trying on. The more expensive dresses are those that have specific requirements or are made in a more expensive fabric. I think the pricing is realistic as a lot of work and quality goes into manufacturing wedding dresses.

 

Marketing and Promoting the Product


As Belles is only a small boutique, it is much harder to promote their business. Their main marketing and promotion tool they used was the use of social media and their Facebook account. Charlotte would run their Facebook account and each Tuesday would promote a new dress by posting an image and a description. As well as this there are wedding fairs which occur every few months where the dresses in the boutique would be showcased on their own stand giving the boutique a chance to market and promote their dresses and chosen designers. From my experience I also realised that a lot of their custom came from word of mouth and that the boutique had been referred to by their friends or family, therefore it is really important for the boutique to keep up their welcoming atmosphere as the company is majorly marketed and promoted by previous customers.

Placement - 20 Days, Week by Week

Through my placement I kept a day to day diary where I wrote each task down at the end of the day. However, as most days were pretty much the same I decided that a day to day update of my placement would have been pointless so I have given a weekly diary of how I got on.

 

Week 1

I started my first day at Belles Bridal Boutique on the 5^th August where I went to meet with Geraldine, the boutique owner, to have a chat and discuss my role. I also met with Abby and Paula, one of the seamstresses. As they were having a busy day in the shop I was asked if I could help that day so my first day began. As it was a day of fittings there was a bride who came in for her final fitting before taking the dress. When she tried her dress on there was no need for any further alterations as it fitted perfectly from having the previous fittings. It was a tea cup length dress with a bow tied around her waist and meshed straps that covered her chest, it really suited her! Her face lit up when she knew there didn’t need any other work to it and her and her mum started crying. It was a really nice experience to see someone so happy over her perfect dress.

For the rest of the week I basically got to know how the business worked and made myself familiar with everything that went on. For brides to visit the boutique they had to make an appointment which meant they were given the full attention and help from whoever was running the shop that day. Each appointment was given a 1-2 hour slot where they would go to the top floor where all the dresses where kept and place a red heart around the hanger on the dresses they wanted to try on. The brides and there family/friends who they had brought with them would then be offered tea and cake while the dresses were brought down when they then tried them on.

In the first week I spent most of my time with Abby so I help to assist her with bringing down the dresses to the changing area, help making tea and cake and basically just helping to make the brides feel comfortable. I also helped the brides with the wedding dresses, as some of the dresses had so many layers, they needed a hand getting them on. As the dresses are only sample dresses and are made to order, the majority of the dresses didn’t fit the brides so I had to clamp the dress at the back to give a better idea of the fit. The brides then shown their dress to their family/friends and we helped and gave advice while also choosing different veils, shoes and accessories. Though this week I feel as though I learnt a lot about how that specific boutique worked and started to get familiar with the different designers and styles of dresses.

 

Week 2

Week 2 began on the 12^th August, so when it came to this second week I felt I was fully aware of the boutiques daily appointment routine. It was a busy week of orders as everyone was buying their dresses for the summer 2015 weddings so I got to overlook a lot of orders that were being taken. When a bride had decided on her dress, I took her required measurements and they were placed on the order form along with their details and date of the wedding as the dresses took 6-9 months to be made. I was surprised at how long the wait was for the dresses and never would have thought it was that long!

Through this week I learned more about the designers and started to recognise what dress was designed by who from certain elements each dress had. My favourite designer in the boutique was Jesus Peiro whose dresses were absolutely stunning and looked really elegant and sophisticated, they were also popular with the brides.

This week I also helped Carol and Paula, both the seamstresses with more fittings and they explained how they would alter the dress. I found out that wedding dresses allowed more seam allowances to add a dress size, so if a bride had ordered a size 10 but was too small, the dress could be let out and into a size 12. Unfortunately I didn’t take part in any of the alterations with not having enough experience it was left to the professionals to alter such expensive dresses. Although I did help with the delivery of each dress. When the dresses were final dispatched and arrived at the boutique they came heavily packaged and wrapped in paper, we then had to check the dress to make sure there were no mistakes or anything missing. To do this, I had to wear white gloves to prevent any marks on the dress, it was scary to think how expensive each dress was and how careful I had to be whilst handling them. I had to make sure each dress was perfect with every button, no missing embellishment and no holes or extra thread anywhere.

 

Week 3

Week 3 began the 19^th August which wasn’t as busy as the previous weeks and didn’t have as many appointments and fittings. However, as I was now a lot more comfortable and aware of how everything ran, I helped to answer the phone and take appointments and answer people’s queries which was good to be completely involved.

With the boutique not being as busy, this gave me a chance to spend more time with Charlotte who was in charge of marketing the boutique through social media. This was a good opportunity as I helped her take new pictures of the new arrivals that hadn’t already been put on Facebook. I was able to ask her questions about how she markets and get to know her previous experiences which was really interesting and I learned a lot. The marketing through social media is really important for the boutique as well as word of mouth and she explained that a lot of the customers they had had found them through Facebook.

As the week wasn’t busy there wasn’t much to do so we had a top to bottom clean of the shop and tidied everything.

 

Week 4

Week 4 beginning the 26^th August was again a quiet week. As the shop wasn’t as busy as usual Geraldine gave me a task to complete which was to check all the dresses which had been discontinued and make note of what needed repairing to them. The dresses that designers had discontinued meant that there could be no more orders for them in which case the sample dress would be discounted and sold ‘as seen’. As a lot of the dresses had been tried on a lot, there were things that needed repairing such as missing buttons, missing hook and eyes, missing beads, holes, the dress needed dry cleaning or the hem needed tidying. I had to make a note of all this with each dresses code and was given materials to help repair them ready for a sample sale which Geraldine was organising to help sell the ‘as seen’ dresses.

I enjoyed doing this as I felt more productive and had originally wanted to better my sewing skills. So for the rest of the last week I mainly continued with repairing the dresses as well as the appointments we had through the day.

Overall I enjoyed my placement at Belles Bridal Boutique and learned a lot about how a small business is ran. I got familiar with a lot of bridal wear designers and introduced to new styles. I also enjoyed learning about the marketing and how social media is a big help to attract customers and without marketing there wouldn’t be half as many customers that visit the shop. I loved seeing each bride and hearing their different wedding plans which I was genuinely interested in, it was nice to see them so happy when they had found a dress they loved. The boutique was really welcoming and made every bride and their guests feel comfortable. A disadvantage in my placement would have to be that it wasn’t hands on. Unfortunately I didn’t get to make anything or better my sewing skills which I would have liked to have given me more experience.