How Adflation Is Becoming A Serious Problem In The Suit Industry
- Andris Vizulis
- 3 days ago
- 4 min read
Most business owners in our industry have a reasonably good handle on inflation.
You raise your prices a little. You have a conversation with your fabric supplier. You find a smarter way to structure your offers or tighten up your production process.
It's not fun, but it's familiar territory. You've been navigating it for years, and you know the levers to pull.
What I want to talk about today is something a little different.
Something that's hitting advertising-dependent businesses just as hard and getting a fraction of the attention it deserves.
Adflation.
The steady increase in what it costs to acquire a customer through paid advertising. And if you're running ads to generate appointments, or you've been on the fence about starting, this is data you genuinely need to see.
Let's Look At The Numbers
Rise.ai recently published early estimates on advertising costs across both major platforms. Here's what stood out.
On Meta:
Average cost per acquisition across all industries is up 38.1%
Average cost per click is up 11.4%
Average click-through rate is down 9.5%
Meta, which for a long time felt like the scrappy cost-efficient alternative to Google, is now catching up fast in terms of how expensive it's getting to run ads there.
And Google isn't offering much of a relief either.
On Google:
Average cost per click on Search is up 12%
Average cost per click on the Display Network and PMax is up 7%
The average cost per lead across all industries is up 12%
More money is going out. Fewer clicks coming in. Lower engagement across the board.
That's the reality of the current landscape, both in the custom garment industry and others.
What This Actually Means For You
There are really only two ways this plays out if nothing in your approach changes.
Option one: you keep your budget the same, and over time, start getting fewer clients every month. Your fixed costs don't move. Your revenue starts to drift downward, and fixed costs start to take larger part of the Margin.
Option two: you increase your budget just to maintain the same volume you had before. Which means spending somewhere between 7 and 38 percent more, depending on where and how you're advertising, just to stand still.
Neither option is particularly fun to think about.
You're dealing with both inflation and adflation at the same time. One is squeezing your costs. The other is squeezing your revenue. They're working against you from both ends simultaneously.
Why Our Industry Feels This More Than Most
Custom suiting is a long-cycle, high-trust, considered purchase.
Which means every misqualified lead, every wasted ad impression, every campaign that's running but not really optimised, costs you more than it would in an industry with lower ticket values and faster buying decisions.
A few years ago when ad costs were lower, you could afford a certain amount of imprecision. The margins were wide enough to absorb it and still come out ahead.
That window is closing.
The 38% and 7% figures from Rise.ai are industry averages across all businesses on these platforms. Poorly structured campaigns will feel the pressure significantly more than well-run ones.
So..... running ads without truly understanding what you're doing now is becomeing is an increasingly expensive habit.
This Isn't A Reason To Stop Advertising
I want to be clear about that.
Paid advertising, done well, is still one of the most powerful tools available to a tailoring business looking to grow consistently.
But "done well" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence.
It means knowing your actual cost per acquired client not just your cost per click or your cost per lead. It means having your campaigns optimised as close to a real buying decision as possible. It means having a qualification process on the back end that converts efficiently so you're not paying top dollar to fill your calendar with people who were never going to buy.
It means starting to build acquisition channels that don't depend entirely on paid platforms.
Because if this trajectory continues, the businesses with diverse, resilient acquisition systems will be in a very different position in two or three years than the ones that put all their eggs in the Meta and Google basket.
Build This Into Your Plan Now
If you haven't already factored adflation into your business planning for this year, it's worth doing sooner rather than later.
Work out what a 20 or 30 percent increase in your cost per appointment actually means for your monthly numbers. Identify where your current campaigns are efficient and where they're quietly leaking budget. Start thinking about what a stronger, more diversified acquisition system looks like for your specific business. (Think, higher conversion rate, alternative ways of first contact, offline marketing campaigns, and partnerships)
The shift is already happening. The businesses that take it seriously now will be the ones still growing comfortably when everyone else is wondering where their margins went.
Want Some Help Navigating This?
If you want someone in your corner who understands both the paid advertising landscape and the specific dynamics of running a custom garment business, someone who can help you run more efficient campaigns and build a stronger acquisition system both online and offline. reach out.
We offer a free discovery call where we'll take a proper look at where your business is, what the biggest opportunities are, and whether we're the right people to help you get there.
Schedule here:
To your success,
Andris
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