Today we’d like to introduce you to Jennie Monahan.
In 2014, Jennie, an MIT graduate with a master’s degree, decided not to launch an engineering firm but a bridal business after becoming frustrated with the complexity of dress shopping. In her own words: “I was helping one of my friends to shop for her gown, and I got shocked by how long it takes to order a dress and how limited the options can be. I saw an opportunity to combine technology and fashion to deliver custom wedding dresses in an affordable price range with efficient turnaround. This traditional industry was just waiting to be disrupted by leveraging technology to create a personalization revolution.”
Starting with only a couple of views of the website per day, Bluethread is now the 1st place in google organic search for ‘Custom Wedding Dress’.
To bridge the virtual and physical elements of Bluethread’s design my dress platform, Jennie and her team have been focusing on establishing showrooms and retail partners across the US to allow clients to experience the Bluethread quality in real life. “Clients could meet our consultants or even myself at our showrooms in Mountain View and Newton MA. They could try on samples, chat about their custom design ideas, and achieve a unique and perfect look with professional assistance in a relaxing and private environment. We help each bride with patience and our full attention.” – Bluethread’s dresses can also be found at several east coast bridal stores and trunk shows in other states.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
As an entrepreneur, you always have limited resources and cash but you have hundreds of new ideas and thousands of bullet points on your to-do list. The main challenge for us is to balance between all the needs and costs, and try to make the business grow sustainably while never forgetting to enjoy the journey.
The average budget for a bride looking to purchase a wedding dress is declining, with multiple inexpensive options online or from big chain stores like BHLDN. Everyone faces a keen competition when clients have so many alternative options, which are at an even lower-price.
The traditional cost of making custom dresses one by one is much higher than those that are mass produced. We wanted to break this mold but we didn’t want to sacrifice quality and fabric standards for a lower price tag. In order to maintain a reasonable price for a personalized touch we developed innovations in our design my dress platform and relied heavily on viral marketing to stay relevant in this competitive market.
In order to grow our brand on a shoestring budget while delivering the maximum quality to our customers, we have worked tirelessly to ensure our brides are satisfied. We believe that our reputation will eventually lead to greater exposure than cutting corners on our dresses and spending money on an expensive PR firms.
So, as you know, we’re impressed with Bluethread Bridal – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
Bluethread Bridal is an innovative and intimate service for brides; providing that “something blue” for brides on their wedding day. Our technology and service allows brides to design the custom wedding dress of their dreams, with high-quality fabric, and quick turn-around all for less than a mass-produced designer dress.
We have beautiful pre-designed collections and also can make custom changes and designs. We are almost the only designer brand in the US market offering custom design and custom sizing services for under $3000 retail.
With this unique concept, our team developed a Design-My-Dress app on Bluethread’s web: At DMD, you can mix and match between necklines and silhouettes; add decor and sashes to the dress to demo the look; and even pick a demo background that matches your wedding theme!
It is a very convenient and fun way to start thinking about your own dress design. Our teammates have design and coding background, so we utilized the skills and develop this tool to help brides visualizing all kinds of different options. It will definitely need upgrades to be more mature, but it is very exciting to see some brides really use our app when they want to illustrate what they are looking for.
However, wedding is a time when quality means everything. For the most important dress in life, modeling on the screen is not convincing enough for brides-to-be. To satisfy the critical needs, Bluethread focuses on fabric quality and handmade craftsmanship in the first 2 years and try to meet higher-end standards beyond their price range. We try to offer an excellent quality and some couture experience but we also want to keep our price in a range for most of the normal girls just like ourselves to enjoy. We called it semi-haute couture or light luxury. The reason we can make it work is because we don’t have multiple trading layers between the manufacturers: us and the customers.
So, what’s next? Any big plans?
We now are working to build a presence at more key locations across the country. For a bride living in other states, she can contact her local boutique to set up a pop-up or a trunk show with us, or she can contact us directly. We even have a lot of satisfied brides from different states who designed, purchased, and fit their dress designs with us step by step entirely online.
Pricing:
- Main collection (S line): $1,600-$3,000
- H line (coming up): $1,000-$1,600
- Custom designs from scratch: $2,000-$3,000
Contact Info:
- Address: 1007C Chestnut Street, #304, Newton Upper Falls, MA 02464
- Website: https://www.bluethreadbridal.com
- Email: info@bluethreadbridal.com or boston@bluethreadbridal.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bluethreadbridal/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bluethreadbridal.us/
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/bluethread-parlor-newton
Image Credit:
McKenzie Stewart, Ned Jackson, Andrew San
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