Preordering, the secret ingredient in the Asphalte recipe
At Asphalte, our mission is clear: making sustainability accessible.
To put it another way, we make quality clothes in Europe that don't cost a tonne.
This was not a simple nut to crack. To use the finest materials and the best local know-how without needing to charge an arm and a leg, we had to come up with a new way of working.
Behold, we give you the preorder
n 2016, we developed a secret weapon: preordering.
In practice, this means that you order your clothes before they're made. In exchange for a few weeks' patience on your part, this system promises you:
As it's your preorders that trigger production, we only make what’s actually been ordered. The savings allow us to offer you prices that would otherwise be impossible.
Because we don't overproduce, we never need to discount. This means that we can invest much more in the materials we use. The finest natural fibres and certified organic materials made by the best craftspeople in Europe.
By producing as locally as possible, we slash the environmental footprint of our clothes.
Combined with the fact that we avoid middlemen and keep our margins low compared to other clothing companies, we can offer you the best quality-price-impact ratios on the market.
‘Wait for weeks, what the hell?!’
Well, the big difference in the way we work compared to traditional brands is that we make your clothes after you've ordered them. Result: you receive your parcel a few weeks after you’ve purchased it.
In a world where you can have pretty much anything delivered to your door in 15 minutes at 4 am, this may seem a little old school. We'll give you that.
But you know what? We're really proud of our model.
Being the opposite of getting "everything right away" actually makes a lot of sense to us. Not only does it reduce impulsive buying, but it's also a way of rediscovering a taste for the slower things in life and appreciating the time it takes to make a well-made garment.
It's a bit long, it's true, but it invites you to ask yourself the right questions and get a little kick when your order finally lands on your doormat.
It's all about thinking: do I really need this item? Will I still be wearing it in 1, 2 or 10 years' time? Am I prepared to wait for it?
Of course, we’ll keep you company while you wait, just like that copy of Horse & Hound from 96’ in the dentist's waiting room. We’ll keep you posted each step of the way on how your item is coming together, right up until your postie pops his head over the hedge.
The right price, all year round
Sales, black Friday, press sales, what have you. Don’t expect any of this from us, we're just not in the business of accumulating excess stock.
What we want at Asphalte is to achieve impeccable quality without becoming an expensive niche brand. We want you to get your money's worth. Thanks to our model, we can offer you long-lasting clothing at reasonable prices, without organising special offers all year round.
The price you see on the label corresponds exactly to the cost of the materials we buy, the European know-how that makes them, running our company responsibly and the transport to your doorstep. No more, no less.
The 3 principles of our sales system
The rule: An item launched every week
With us, each preorder is short-lived. Every Tuesday at 10 am CET, we launch a new item that you can preorder until Sunday. We give you six days to make up your mind, then we'll move on to the next one. 52 times a year. It's not a lot of items, but it's enough.
Every Tuesday at 10 a.m. sharp CET, we launch the preorder for an item. From then on, it's up to you.
For 6 days, you can preorder that item in your preferred sizes and colours.
End of the line, everybody off. On Sunday at 11.59 pm and 59 seconds, we close the preorder for good. After that, we launch production.
The exception: our Eternals
A rule wouldn’t be a good rule if there weren’t any exceptions. There’s always a preorder running on our most popular items: the Perfect Jumper, Ultimate Jeans, Ultimate T-shirts, Solid Sneakers, Perfect Sweatshirts, Button-Down Oxford Shirts, Polos, Boxers-briefs and Perfect Socks. This means you can place your preorder whenever you like and when we reach a batch’s worth of preorders, approx once a month, that batch will go into production.
The icing on the cake: monthly stock sales.
We carry a small inventory so that you can swap sizes and colours without having to wait for the next preorder (often a year later).
We also offer all our customers refunds if they want one, no questions asked. So at the end of the day, that’s how we end up with this small stock.
We make any stock available to buy once a month to give any stragglers a chance to get their hands on an item they missed. They’re more expensive mind, to reflect the additional cost of holding inventory. It’s a good reminder of why our preorder model is unbeatable at providing the best value.
By definition, quantities are ultra-limited, but this means you can enjoy Asphalte quality without having to go through the preorder process, as all stock items are shipped within days.
First come, first served
Before we go any further, there's something we'd like to point out to you that may be important.
To minimise delivery times, we buy our rolls of material in advance. If we didn't do this, we'd have to wait another 6 to 9 months before delivery, which would be a bit too slow even for us.
In order to buy this material as accurately as possible, we make forecasts based on our customers' answers to questionnaires designed for this purpose. Basically, we ask you whether you want a particular item in a particular colour, and we order the material from the mill accordingly.
Most of the time, these predictions are correct, and everything's for the best. But sometimes, a fabric or colour experiences a sudden success, and we run out. In such cases, we have no choice but to close the preorder before midnight on Sunday.
If we overorder a fabric, which happens very occasionally, we keep it for the next preorder.
All this to say two things:
- if you have the time, try to answer the questionnaires we send you regularly. It not only makes sure that we create the pieces you really want and need, but also really helps get our order quantities right.
- If there’s an item that you’ve got your eye on, don't dither too long before preordering it or you might be hit with one of those nasty stock-outs messages. Not very nice.
Over and Out
That's it for today.
If you're worried about missing out on upcoming launches, we recommend signing up to our newsletter or items notification, the best way to keep up to date with all the latest news and events.
Thanks for your time and attention and for making what we do possible. We really appreciate it.
Until then,
The ASPHALTE team