You’re scrolling through Instagram. You see the perfect outfit. It’s everything you ever dreamed of: cut, colour, style. Except its either way out of your price range or there isn’t even a credit. So you can’t buy it. But could you have it made for you?
Jonathan Kruger and Stephen Stroud are founders of The Drop, an on-demand tailoring company — and they say: yes (as long as you’re a man…women’s wear may follow in the future)
This online-only business offers bespoke, suits, costing between £300 and £400 each, delivered to your home in less than three weeks.
The Drop is the brainchild of Kruger, 29, from Harrow, while Stroud, 30, from Sevenoaks, designed the technology at the heart of the business.
In 2016 Kruger saw that “mass producing clothing doesn’t make sense any more” and wanted to find a way to produce clothing on demand in an accessible, affordable way.
He has a background in the clothing industry. After studying politics at Sheffield University, he went to work for his wife’s family business — a wholesale clothes manufacturer supplying big high street retailers. Working from the Chinese office, Kruger saw first-hand how clothes could be made quickly but disagreed with a system that he saw was “producing things in arbitrary numbers. The only way that works for the customer is if it’s sold cheaply and then thrown away quickly.” Sensing the zeitgeist for sustainable fashion (this was before David Attenborough’s Blue Planet sent the fashion world into a recycling frenzy) Kruger knew that creating good quality, personalised clothes that people would wear repeatedly was the way forward.
That is where Stroud comes in. After studying computing he moved into software development for a number of start-ups — so was up for the challenge of disrupting the fashion world. The two met online in a networking chatroom called We Work in Start Ups after Kruger posted an advert looking for a partner who could make a his fashion vision a reality.
“I challenged Steve to build a system to determine [body] measurements” which Stroud saw as “an exciting opportunity to use AI”.
Kruger married relatively young — at 22, at New London Synagogue — and had children quickly. He now has two daughters aged four and six, which, rather than being a detriment to launching your own start up with a guy you met online was actually a benefit.
Stroud also has a young daughter — a three year old— and says this helped the two men bond quickly in the office and outside.
Kruger and Stroud describe The Drop as “a menswear platform where you go to buy cool clothes”. They didn’t want it to sound like the tailor your grandfather would have gone to, and chose the name based on the fashion industry term where small runs of exclusive ranges are “dropped” by retailers. Currently they are focusing on suits but believe there are no limits to the potential of the business’ technology — or to their dreams.
Currently The Drop works like this: a customer will send in a picture of a suit they have seen online. They then fill in a questionnaire and send over some basic measurements and a picture of themselves. The AI developed by Stroud looks at the measurements submitted, checks them off against standard clothing sizes and fills in the gaps. “We make the suits to 22 measurements,” says Stroud, “but only ask customers to send over 12.”
He explains that using algorithms based on previous profiles and data they’ve collected about the human body they can train the AI to predict the other measurements. It all sounds a bit sci fi to me and I do wonder how they legislate for that body type that just isn’t a standard fit. This is where the selfie comes in. Apparently the technology they use is so sophisticated that it can scan the photo and draw measurements out of that. The men — both wearing The Drop suit jackets — assure me that only one in 15 customers ask for adjustments, which doesn’t seem too bad for a ‘custom made’ suit (they have sold “a couple of thousand” suits since their launch 18 months ago).
This is one reason however that they are focusing on men’s clothes at the moment: “It’s easier to get a fit on a man,” Stroud explains, “because there are fewer categories, women dress with more variety.” And possibly have more variety in their body shapes, I venture? As such they have turned down requests for women’s suits in the past — as well as one potential order for a suit for a dog.
Letting the robots do all the hard work does mean that The Drop can significantly save costs however. “If something is popular today we can make it tomorrow,” Kruger tells me, noting that this means they can jump on trends in a way that the bigger hitters — like M&S —can’t. “The quickest we’ve delivered is nine days”.
So if you’re looking for a high fashion, custom made suit at a fraction of the cost of Savile Row, pop over to The Drop’s website. You could be part of a clothing revolution. “We don’t see ourselves as a suit business, we’re genuinely trying to change the way people buy clothes. We’re coming for you, ASOS!”
www.thedrop.co
