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Son of a Tailor, the Copenhagen-based menswear brand, has new clothing models made by the Portuguese company Neves Pereira & Silva – Poltex. The company from Brito, Guimarães, produces customised T-shirts and polos for its 150,000 customers all over the world.
“This project with Son of a Tailor started about five years ago, the idea being that the garments are made one by one, with the measurements that the customers themselves enter on the website. 50 per cent of them are already loyal and 10-15 per cent are for big men. In terms of the type of purchase, I can say that we have Arabs buying 20 pieces,” says Paulo Neves Pereira in an interview with T Jornal.
In order to be able to produce efficiently, Neves Pereira e Silva had to restructure its production process from normal mass production to individual piece-by-piece production without losing the efficiency of what has to be a production line.
At the start of the project, they made each mould one by one and had to cut them by hand. That’s how this adventure began, inefficiently, but with a view to automating processes. From there, they took small steps with the brand in order to automate part of the modelling and modify machines to adapt to the new production process.
That’s why they’ve managed to change delivery times from an average of 21 days to, in some cases, 5 days. This significantly improves the customer experience and allows more people to convert to more sustainable fashion.
The entire production line had to be designed to optimise production and the distribution of tasks among employees. “I often say that we sell minutes,” jokes Paulo Neves Pereira, emphasising that “despite being more tiring and challenging in terms of logistics and delivery times, the price is worth it,” as well as the fact that the made to order format is more environmentally friendly.
At the moment, Son of a Tailor absorbs 40 per cent of Poltex’s production. “We gave the brand structure in the early years and then grew with it during the pandemic, we even received 1000 garments in a single day to make them one by one, with delivery times of 7 to 10 days and 20 workers,” without whom this wouldn’t be possible. He makes a point of emphasising the premium nature of what is produced here: “we work with the best raw materials, 100% linen, supima cotton and also organic cotton, we are GOTS and Oeko-Tex certified”.
Poltex works with around 300 different references for Son of a Tailor. The Danish brand launches new colours every season. “There’s also the option of embroidering the customer’s initials.”
Paulo Neves Pereira and his team took on the challenge of Son of a Tailor five years ago when they offered to take over the entire production, which at the time was carried out in Poland and Lithuania. From that moment until today, the amount of production has increased by more than 20 times due to the efficiency and quality created, which has even led to the need to open a new factory dedicated specifically to this project.
The adventure is still very much alive, and they even organised an event where they took machines and seamstresses to Copenhagen to produce T-shirts live in the brand’s pop-up store for a sustainable textiles event.