Juniperserah
la,#2UPDATE Employee
Wed, May 05, 2010
Hello there,
To whomever wrote this, if you really have/had a problem, all you had to do is call Chic Little Devil and we would happily ALWAYS work whatever it is out reasonably!! In fact, if for some erroneuous reason you (someone out there) really feel these ways, please call today. The fact that nothing like that happened is what makes me think this is more of a disgruntled personal attack.
I would like to address everything just in case though, to put my mind and anyone else's mind at ease
1. We have a PR agency, and clearly because of that we have PR clients. Each has a different contract with us. Some contracts allow for rentals (b/c the designer themselves wants to take advantage of that revenue stream) and when a garment rents, the rental is split 50/50 with the designer if that's what the contract calls for. At this date, we are the ONLY PR agency to my knowledge that does split the rental fee with the designer, other PR agencies keep that for themselves. Many of our smaller to medium-sized designers always cite how thankful they are for that additional way to make money (rentals).
AS for as PR is concerned; for things that give the designer direct credit (ie: magazines and red carpet where there is name mention for the designer) that lending is free since it's good exposure and can lead to great sales. For projects where the designer name will not be directly mentioned (ie: videos, film, tv, performance etc) there is generally a budget for rentals fees.
For some of our larger more presitgious designer clients, rentals are NOT permitted at all and we only do free celebrity or editorial lending upon specific approval by the designer for each and every pull request.
We have landed our clients on literally hundreds of A-list celebrities and in the best magazines in the world.
Designers of course pay quite a premium for PR services...it's this exposure that drives sales. In the past, for very small designers that we really believed in, we have agreed to accepting part of the payment in clothing (ie: samples). We turn those into revenue after the season is over and they are no longer current for press, via our online store on ebay.
Our designer PR and studio services businesses are very complimentary (ie; studio services faciliates large-scale procuct placement), but there comes a time when the season is over and the items that we own (the ones which don't go back to the designer) must go. What would you like us to do with them? Throw them out the window? NO, clearly, we sell them at that point.
2. Another service we offer, UNRELATEDLY is designer close-outs. Our business is transitioning more to Studio Services and PR, so this is really dying out. But what this means is: we go to designers and buy-out their previous season items (new), and then sell them online. The designer wins, and is able to liquidate and get good money for styles that are otherwise completely useless to them at that point. We win b/c it's an additional revenue stream for us.
As for the rants and raves about our ebay prices and condition of our items. We sell some items listed as new, some as not. We have 99.1% great feedback. This means 991 out of 1,000 people are happy enough with us to be compelled to leave a good feedback remark about it!! We have been on ebay over 10 years. That 99% number does not lie. We have loyal clients who claim they have bought from us over 50 times and LOVE our merchandise and deals.
Whoever found themselves, for whatever reason, upset or just wanting to do a BAD deed, and wrote this post does not know anything about the detailed workings of our business. I hope the message here is that if anyone ever has a problem or a question, there is ZERO reason not to just call chic little devil and ask for someone to address it (ie: the owner).
We always want to continue to grow and serve the industry of both fabulous large-scale couture designers, as well as our up-and-coming designers!