Why tailors keep your dresses for so long

By MUNGAI KIHANYA

The Sunday Nation

Nairobi,

25 February 2018

Several years ago, I had an interesting discussion with a tailor. I was trying to understand why tailors delay finishing customers’ clothes. He explained that it was because they usually have very many orders to fill. The average backlog ran to several weeks.

So, I asked him how many dresses he can finish in a day; he said two. Why then does he accept so many orders knowing very well that he cannot finish them in good time? He gave me two reasons: first, he doesn’t want to risk losing a customer and, second, that he wants to maximise his income.

Are these reasons justified? To find out, suppose the tailor makes a profit of Sh300 from each dress. Thus, if he got two orders each day, his daily income would be Sh600. In a such a case the customers would only need to wait one day to get their dresses.

With such efficiency, there is likelihood that word will go round and soon enough the tailor will start getting three orders daily. Since he can only finish two, one dress will need to be carried forward to the following day. A backlog begins to pile up.

By the end of, say, five days, he will have received 15 orders but finished only 10. So there is a balance of 5 unfished dresses. These 5 will take two and a half days to complete.

Unfortunately, the end of the third day, another six orders will come in and the backlog grows longer and longer. The larger the number of customer waiting, the longer it will take to fulfil their orders.

The tailor is now at risk of becoming a victim of his own success. The waiting is likely to grow so long that his reputation is ruined – he becomes “the one who never finishes his work on time”!

Unfortunately, even though his orderbook is so long, his daily income does not change at all! He still takes home the same Sh600 each day.

Clearly then, his two reasons for keeping a larger order book are not justified. His income doesn’t improve and he is not able to retain customers since his reputation is dented.

This simple logic escapes even some highly trained sales professionals working in well-established manufacturing companies. They will continue booking more and more orders even when they know that there are production backlogs running into several weeks.

This does not in any way increase their sales turnover of the company since, in most cases, customer only pay after delivery of product. Furthermore, even the sales commissions are paid after the customer pays. So, in the end, no one gains anything – not the customer, not the manufacturer and not the sales executive!

Fortunately, a manufacturing company can increase it production capacity. Doing so is the only way to increase the income and reduce the backlog.