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.