Discounts Are Killing Your Custom Garment Sales. Do This Instead

There's a trend I've been noticing more and more in the custom suit industry.

As the cost per fitting from paid advertising keeps rising, and overall conversion rates globally decrease, most are trying to counteract it with offers. And more often than not, that offer is a discount.

"Get $200 off your suit this month." "Fill in the form now and save."

I understand the logic. Conversion rates are down, costs are up, something needs to change. A discount feels like the simplest lever to pull.

But if you're operating in the luxury market and if you're selling custom suits, I'd like to invite you to reconsider.

The Market Shift

Economic uncertainty has a way of changing buying behaviour across the board. Even wealthy individuals become more deliberate about where their money goes.

What I hear too frequently from our clients is something along the lines of: "We are selling to wealthy individuals, they are not affected by inflation or world events."

To that, I can bring a recent discussion with one of my old, by all means, wealthy clients (owner of a multimillion-dollar consumer goods business) to whom I was commissioning garments in the past: "We are feeling it more than we would want to. Utilities have risen for both our manufacturing and warehouses more than we would want to in the last 2 years. Tariffs forced us to look into new suppliers, who are almost 2X the previous cost. Fuel prices eat both into our distribution costs and the shipping costs of rough goods.

Some employees moved to areas with a lower cost of living as travel costs to work started to eat too much into their salaries, which are already above market average. As our consumer has less disposable income, they are buying the cheapest option, so distributors started ordering less from us."

So, the affluent individual might not be directly affected, but their businesses are, shifting their focus from enjoying the wealth to trying to keep it. Freezing their own and C-Level team bonuses, cutting expenses, longer workdays and less leisure is a pattern. They are still buying and spending on their lifestyle, but here's the critical distinction:

They're not looking for the cheapest option now.

They're looking for the best value option.

Those are not the same thing. And confusing the two is one of the most expensive mistakes a luxury business can make.

A Lesson From The Yacht Industry

Let me give you a practical example that illustrates this perfectly.

When the economy tightens, yacht manufacturers face the same pressure you do. Buyers become more cautious. Sales cycles get longer. The temptation to compete on price is real.

But watch what the smart ones do instead.

Many have invested heavily in improving fuel efficiency, significantly reducing the running costs of owning a yacht. That's a genuine, measurable financial benefit.

Here's what they don't do: advertise it as "lower fuel costs" or "reduced monthly expenses."

That's commodity thinking. That's a pricing offer. And pricing offers erode the very thing that makes a luxury purchase desirable.

Instead, they reframe it entirely.

"Go further. Stay out longer. Make more memories. Less time at the dock, more time on the water."

Same feature. Completely different conversation.

They're selling second-order benefits: the actual experience the improvement enables rather than the cost saving it produces.

The lesson applies directly to your business.

What Discounts Actually Communicate

When a luxury brand offers a discount, the client doesn't think "great value." They think one of two things:

Either the product wasn't worth the original price, or business is slow enough that they're willing to negotiate, meaning something is wrong with it.

Neither thought belongs in the mind of a client you're trying to impress.

A custom suit is not an impulse purchase. It's a considered decision made by someone investing in how they present themselves to the world. The moment you reduce that experience to a dollar amount off, you've shifted the conversation from value to price.

And once that shift happens, it's very hard to reverse.

What To Do Instead

If your business model relies on offers and incentives, and there's nothing wrong with that, simply change the nature of the offer.

Instead of taking something away from the price, add something to the experience.

Rather than: "Get a suit and receive $200 off."

Consider: "Get a suit and receive a complimentary custom shirt, handcrafted to match."

Or a custom accessory. A second fitting. A personalised styling consultation. Whatever makes sense within your business.

The investment is similar. Sometimes it costs you less than the discount would have.

But the signal it sends is completely different.

One says: "This product is negotiable and can be price shopped."

The other says: "This experience is exceptional and we are so good at it so here's more of it."

The Broader Principle

Every piece of communication your business puts into the world, every ad, every post, every offer, every email, is a branding decision.

Not just a marketing decision. A branding decision.

And in the luxury space, branding is everything. It is the product, in many ways.

So before you publish your next offer, before you set your next campaign live, ask yourself one question:

Does this communicate the experience of owning something exceptional, or does it communicate a transaction?

If the answer is the latter, it's worth rethinking.

You are not selling fabric. You are not selling a price point.

You are selling the experience and benefits of wearing something made specifically for you, and everything your business communicates should reflect that.

Let's Talk About Your Business

If this resonated and you're curious about how it applies to your specific situation, I'd love to have a conversation with you.

I offer a free discovery session where we can take a look at where your business is right now, talk about what we do, and explore whether and how we can help you bring in more of the right appointments to sell more suits consistently.

Schedule a call here:

https://calendly.com/sartorialdigital/discovery-call

To your success,

Andris