I drafted this post 2 weeks ago but couldn’t find extra time to complete the post. 
I have just started on my new job last week 3 weeks ago and as much as I love my new working environment, I’m still feeling the fatigue and lack of energy for working 8 to 5 and “working” again at night for FMTP.
Have so many things I wanna do for FMTP, but I know I will always lag behind the others who are managing their blogshops full-time no matter how late I sleep at night :( I have considered going into full-time for FMTP, but given my mum’s nagging nature and the huge capital that I need for FMTP, I chose to take up this job offer.
Speaking about the huge capital that I need, I recently heard about a thread in flowerpod that discusses about online blogshops (sorry if i’m outdated for knowing about this only until now 
), so I went in to see what comments people have about FMTP and other blogshops.
There are not many discussions about FMTP except for the frequent updates on the blogshop launches’ date/time (thanks to the kind podder who includes FMTP in the list 
). However, there are a couple of “not-so-good” comments about FMTP which I wanted to clarify but well, I guess I better not appear to be defensive so I didn’t make any comments on the threads.
However, the comments were really bothering me that entire night when I read them…
There was a particular comment from a podder who says that she has a friend who used to be our model and commented that the quality of our clothes is not really good, after the podder was being recommended by another podder to visit FMTP for office wear.
To be honest, when FMTP first started out a few years back (2007 in fact), we had little experience about what kind of design/quality customers are looking for and it was difficult to find a balance between a good cost price and good quality. So it may be true that back then, the quality of our clothes may not be really ideal. However, as time passes by and we gained more experience, I’m proud to say that we make wise choices in our apparels sourcing and manufacturing now and in fact, I have been receiving many emails from customers to say how much they like their purchases and words of encouragement to encourage me to continue bringing in pretty and quality apparels.
Anyway, the reason I’m relating the huge capital that I need to fork out with the recent comments I saw from Flowerpod, is because there are a couple of podders who commented that FMTP is expensive.
Firstly, I believe all blogshops have their own justification of their own profit margins and sometimes different suppliers can have varying cost prices with varying quality.
I do not deny that FMTP may be priced higher than most of the other blogshops, in particular for our office wear series, if you have noticed from our recent Allure Series collections.
To be very frank, I have been sourcing for boutique quality office wear from new suppliers and the cost price of any particular dress is even higher than the average selling price of a dress at other blogshops. Imagine that the cost price is already exceeding the average selling price of other blogshops, it’s really not possible for me to price those dresses at $20+
I can actually price the dresses just slightly higher with minimum profit, but sadly, we online sellers are actually controlled by some of the work wear suppliers to not undercut the boutique prices. That’s the reason why FMTP and some other blogshops selling boutique quality work wear cannot afford to price the clothes at the same level as the average selling prices of a typical dress at most blogshops.
We do sell lower prices compared to boutiques but the gap cannot be too huge. However, sometimes boutiques do sell at outrageous prices; there was a particular dress which I priced at $50 mailed but my colleague saw a shop retailing the same dress at $129.90.
I sometimes wonder if I have chosen the wrong strategy, should I stick to average (not bad, but not as good as boutique quality) quality office wear and set my prices at average prices? Probably buyers find it insecure to purchase a $40+ or $50+ dress without trying it on first? I will definitely need to monitor the sales of my office wear collections and feedbacks from my customers to work on something.
Currently, it only seems possible for me to set my manufactured work apparels at more average prices since they are more within my control.
I do seek for my customers’ understanding that I always try my best to provide sincere prices to my buyers. 
Lastly, do stay tune for our next collection! (I’m aiming to launch this coming Sunday!) FMTP will be launching an extremely gorgeous dress that can work as both a bridesmaid dress and an evening cocktail dress. The pictures are absolutely stunning too!
I will try my best to put up some preview pictures soon!!! :*)
