There is a side of running a small business that you don't always see from the outside. Most of the time, when we share something about Chic Riot, we're talking about the gear we make, the women who wear it, or the reasons we started doing this in the first place. What you don't always see are the little hiccups that happen along the way, even when we think we've done everything right.
Recently, we had one of those moments with a product we were pretty excited to bring back: our Brie 2.0 Women’s Motorcycle Jeans.
Bringing Back Something You've Been Asking For
Last year, we made the decision to stop selling the Brie 2.0 Women’s Motorcycle Jeans. Like most small businesses, we have to make decisions about what we can continue to offer, and sometimes that means putting a product aside for a while. But we continued to hear from people asking about those particular jeans, and after enough requests, we decided it was time to bring them back.
When that first order came through, we went through our usual process. We connected with our customer, collected her measurements, and worked through the details before getting started on making her jeans. Everything seemed to be moving along just as it should.
There was just one difference from the last time we made them. Our original fabric manufacturer had stopped selling the exact material we used, so we had to find another supplier. We noticed that the new fabric was a little different in color, and it didn't have quite the same amount of stretch as the original. We accounted for that by making the jeans a bit larger, hoping that would give us the fit we needed.
At the time, we thought we had it figured out. We had found a replacement fabric, made the necessary adjustments, and followed our normal process for a custom order. What we didn't realize was that the difference in stretch would end up making a much bigger difference than we anticipated.
The Challenge of Making Something You Can't Try On
The customer who received that first pair happened to be Sowatha, of 2 Wheels Adventures and Journey with Sowatha. After trying on the jeans, she let us know that they were a bit tight to put on, and we realized that our adjustments hadn't been enough.
Of course, we were frustrated. We had noticed the differences in the fabric before making the jeans, and we genuinely thought we had accounted for them. But until Sowatha tried them on, we didn't have a clear picture of just how much that change in stretch would affect the fit.
This is one of the challenges of making custom motorcycle gear. Every piece we make is built around an individual customer's measurements, which means we can't simply try on a finished pair of pants ourselves to see how they fit. We have to rely on the measurements, the properties of the materials, our experience, and the adjustments we make along the way. When one of those materials behaves differently than expected, it can be difficult to predict the outcome.
Thankfully, Sowatha was incredibly understanding when we explained the situation. We offered to make her another pair, which meant asking her to wait potentially another two weeks while we worked through the process again. Nobody wants to tell a customer that something isn't right and that they'll have to wait longer for their order, especially when you've put so much care into making it for them. But we'd rather take responsibility and make it right than leave someone with gear that doesn't fit the way it should.
Situations like this are rare for us, but they do happen. And when they do, we're reminded that making something by hand and making something to fit an individual person doesn't always leave room for the kind of predictability you get with mass-produced products.
Why We Still Choose to Make Gear This Way
One of the reasons we operate the way we do at Chic Riot is that we don't buy huge quantities of fabric and keep stacks of inventory sitting around. We generally keep just a few yards of a material on hand and order more when we need it. That helps us cut down on waste and avoid producing gear that might never find the person it was made for.
But there is a trade-off. Fabric manufacturers change their offerings, materials go out of stock, and sometimes the exact fabric we've relied on for a product is no longer available. When that happens, we have to find an alternative and make sure it works before we can confidently continue making that product.
Bringing back the Brie 2.0 Women’s Motorcycle Jeans hasn't changed our minds about offering products that customers have asked for. It has reminded us, though, that returning to a discontinued design can take a little more time when the materials aren't the same. Before we move forward with full production, we need to test the replacement fabric and understand how it behaves, especially when stretch plays such an important role in the fit.
We're still learning as we go, and part of being a small, hands-on business is being honest about that. We won't get every decision right the first time, but we can listen when a customer tells us something isn't working, take responsibility, and do what we can to make it right.
That's a part of running Chic Riot that we don't always talk about. The finished gear is what people see, but there's a lot happening behind the scenes to get it there. Sometimes that process goes exactly as planned. And sometimes, as we were reminded with this first order of the returning Brie 2.0 Women’s Motorcycle Jeans, it takes a little longer than we expected.
