2 mins on... Paynter Jacket Co
It looks pretty close to being the perfect modern brand.
Paynter Jacket Co. make limited edition jackets that are sold in batches, 4 days per year.
4 new styles drop each year, and each one is released on a Saturday at 9am UK time. The demand for each drop is huge, and growing. Styles have previously sold out in as little as 86 seconds.
Customers who make the cut, pay upfront and then receive their jackets once they’ve been produced. Due to the insane desire fans have to own a Paynter jacket, the brand has released an even earlier chance for customers to secure a jacket with a fabric deposit scheme.
Their consumer proposition is incredible:
Sustainability + Exclusivity + New Luxury Positioning
But what really turns me on is what this means from a commercial and ops perspective. Leaders and operators should think more like Paynter.
Here’s why…
Operations
Paynter’s operating model subverts the norm of an apparel brand in so many ways, here’s the key challenges.
Make to order:
Payment upfront means limited cashflow concerns. If you’ve received the cash before you’ve purchased the stock you aren’t chasing credit or aggressively negotiating on terms (which will have a knock on benefit of making suppliers actually like working with you beyond the money).
No issues with aged or dead stock, is huge. The ability to trade a business without the risk of ageing or dead styles clogging up warehouse space and tying up working capital is mind-blowingly good.
Reduced environmental impact through excess production. A huge amount of products produced by apparel brands ends up in landfill or is destroyed, the waste is on an almost imaginable scale. Brands like Paynter are a vision of a brighter future.
The fabric scheme is like pre-order on steroids. Fans of Paynter are effectively financing further up the supply chain, which de-risks the business even more.
Pre-order:
Means you’re not trading a website every day. The website runs on a drop model, meaning it doesn’t need to constantly be managed or updated or traded. They’re not constantly spending money trying to drive traffic to their store.
Focus on quality:
Their quality and story are the foundations to a new kind of luxury brand. The added exclusivity and limited supply means Paynter can (if they choose to) command higher price points in the future, which will lead to increased profit margins (potentially with no extra effort or costs). Again, a mind-blowingly good position to be in.
Exclusivity creates mystique and intrigue:
This feeds the hype ahead of every drop. Honestly, every time an email from Paynter lands in my inbox I smile, open it and engage… I receive A LOT of emails from brands, and NO ONE else makes me feel like that.
Lean af:
Their tiny core team means they’re lean af, meaning they’re carrying no excess costs, minimising HR head-aches, and (I can only imagine as I’ve never met them) avoiding so many of the growing pains that most brands go through related to people.
Singular focus:
The total focus on jackets means they’re not expanding breadth of lines, diluting focus or creating potential sink holes of money. As brands expand their style and category count it vastly alters their mix of hits and misses. The more you do the lower the probability of a hit. Paytner stick to jackets, meaning their hit rate is MUCH higher than virtually everyone else.
Had a quick look at the website (didn't know these guys). Frankly speaking, the product is basic AF and while the pricing is quite smart, I have a hard time picturing the kind of frenzy you describe (which I sort of get for more directional workwear such as Hawkwood Mercantile or, down the post-street tunnel, 18east). Isn't that a case of manufactured scarcity? Also: sold-out in the context of MTO is relative.