HOW DOES PREORDER WORK?
The Kostüme way
Our approach may be different, but it's simple to understand:
- We launch a new EDIT (typically limited to 350 pieces per product)
- You place your order before the batch closes (typically 10 days)
- We manufacture exactly what's sold (plus a small number of extras to cover size exchanges)
- Your order ships (typically 6-8 weeks after the batch closes)
- If it's not right - for whatever reason - you can return it. We'll always make it right.
Once a batch has closed, there is still a limited opportunity to purchase via the returns waitlist and/or Ready to Ship page.
A NEW WAY OF MAKING APPAREL
The legacy apparel retail model is broken, and you are - quite literally - paying the price. It's not unusual for just 30-40% of the price you pay being spent on the actual product spec of the apparel you're buying. Here's why:
Estimated Breakdown of £100 Spent on a Traditional Retail Model Product
| COST | APPROX. % | EXPLANATION |
| Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) | 20-40% | The actual cost of making the garment - fabric, trims, labour etc. |
| Customer Aquisition (CAC) | 10-30% | Ads, influencers, retargeting, SEO - can be as much as £20-50 per customer! |
| Unsold Inventory (Overstock) | 10-20% | Overproduction, warehousing, storage, write-offs. |
| Discounting/Sales | 10-30% | Retailers bake in margin for 40-70% discount sales to shift overstock. |
| Logistics/Returns | 5-10% | Free shipping, returns processing (returns often do not get resold) etc. |
| Profit Margin | 5-10% | What's left over, meaning very little to invest in developing new products. |
The apparel industry is stuck in a perpetual cycle of overproduction, resulting in huge amounts of waste and substandard products.
- An estimated 150 billion new items of clothing are produced every single year
- Between 15 and 45 billion of those items never get sold
- 73% of waste clothing goes to landfill and only 1% gets recycled into new clothing
- Roughly a truckload of perfectly good but unsold 'overstocked' apparel gets destroyed EVERY SECOND
Every penny wasted is a penny that could have been spent on better materials and manufacturing, more innovation, increased sustainability, and a lower price.
Kostüme fixes this by selling directly to you, using a pre-order batch model, meaning that only items already sold ever get made. This simple change removes all the guesswork, stops waste before it starts, and means we can spend much more on our products, without increasing the price. In fact, in most cases our products are less expensive than similar products, despite frequently scoring higher in both press and customer reviews.
Or, more succinctly: Measurably better products, for less.
Ask yourself this: Isn't it better to know that significantly more of your money is being spent on making the product you're buying, instead of wasted? Seems like a silly question, until you realise that this is the reality with the legacy approach.
Staying informed about upcoming releases
Unlike legacy brands our launches are not tied to seasons. We release new collections when we have something worth sharing.
The best way to ensure you never miss a release is to sign up to our newsletter and follow our Instagram and YouTube accounts. Because we aren't constantly trying to shift unsold stock, we aren't endlessly bombarding inboxes with offers. Hopefully our mailer is one that you will actually look forward to receiving (and our average 65% open rate suggests that is the case!)
Manufacturing LEAD TIME
For preorders, unless otherwise stated, manufacturing typically takes between 6-8 weeks, starting from the moment the Edit closes.
With the intricacies of supply chain and manufacturing, there is always an unforeseeable risk that it may take a little longer. But it may also be shorter, and this is something we are actively working towards achieving with our partners. We are learning and refining with every drop.
Payment
All payments are taken upon placing an order, and processed securely via our third-party payment provider, Stripe.
We donate 1% of every transaction directly to Stripe Climate, which invests directly into cutting edge solutions for removing excess carbon from our atmosphere. To find out more, please click here. (Note this link opens in a new browser window and will take you to a third party website, owned and operated by an independent party.)
ABOUT READY TO SHIP PRODUCTS
Even with preorder it is impossible to 100% eliminate overstock, because customers might either cancel an order, or return it for a variety of reasons.
We run a waitlist when a preorder batch closes to try to matchmake the tiny (less than 2%) volume of returns we do get, but any products that are eventually left unsold go into our Ready to Ship page.
We also keep a very small stock of certain items for convenience, for example our arm warmers as well as our best-selling bib shorts.
Ready to Ship is a great way to be able to buy Kostüme products without the usual wait.
TRACKING ORDER PROGRESS
Once a batch has closed for preorders it moves to our Archive page.
Here you can see the current status of the batch production, as an overlay on the respective batch.
Shipping & Returns
For shipping and returns info please visit our dedicated page here.
Please note, we are a small but highly focused team. We do our best to reply to every message as quickly as we can. If possible, please wait at least 3 working days before following up.
Ride safe. Have fun!