AbbyShot's Kingdom Hoodie is here!!

Designed with a video gamer in mind, AbbyShot's Kingdom Hoodie is now available from www.AbbyShot.com! Our custom hoodie is perfect for Kingdom Hearts fans as it borrows a lot of styling cues from the Enigma trench coat. AbbyShot's Kingdom Hoodie features custom bold stitch lines, a deep-style hood, side seam pockets and custom drawstring toggles. You can customize your Kingdom Hoodie even further with a removable beaded necklace as well.

AbbyShot's prices are due to increase soon...

The declining CAD-USD exchange rate over the past six months, courtesy of www.exchangerate.com. Click image for larger view.

We've been delaying this for as long as we can, but the continuous decline of the US dollar has been hurting AbbyShot for many months now. The exchange rate used to set our US prices was formulated over a year and a half ago when the US dollar had a value of over $1.37 CAD. This is no longer the case, the US dollar has been steadily dropping and is currently hovering at around $1.17 CAD. This means that every garment sold now is bringing in fewer Canadian dollars than it used to even 3 or 4 months ago. With the future of the US dollar uncertain as well, we have been forced to take a long hard look at not just our prices, but the processes we will use from now on to both set our prices and to monitor them over time.

The World Trade Organization international tarrif changes in 2005 are another price-affecting factor as well. (for those not in the know, it basically is a lowering of the import taxes on goods produced in other countries such as China, India, and many other "developing nations".) Many of our fabric suppliers are scaling back their operations, raising prices, and in some cases even dropping whole lines of fabrics. These are changes on a global scale that are affecting all apparel businesses, irregardless of the current currency issues. See our Gemini Reloaded sidebar article for another effect of how these changes in the apparel industry are affecting us.

Starting on December 15th, AbbyShot will recalculate all USD prices. We are also going to be implementing a quarterly schedule of pricing reviews. We feel that re-examining our prices on a quarterly basis instead of monthly or annually will strike a suitable balance between protecting AbbyShot against shifting currency values and maintaining as consistant a price as possible for our customers.

So, what does all of this mean? First off it means that on December 15th all our prices on everything, products, options, and shipping, will be increasing. Significantly in some cases. This is not a desirable change, but we don't have much choice - the US dollar doesn't look like it's going to be increasing any time soon. These new prices will remain until March 2005 when we will perform our next pricing review. Perhaps then our US prices will go down. From here on out it will depend on how the US economy fares. Also, see the mini-article insert to read the details on how this will affect our European customers when they purchase from us. (the short version is that the price increase doesn't apply to you!)

We fully realize that many of our customers will be more than a little disappointed to see our prices increase. We're not exactly thrilled about it ourselves, so we do sympathize with everyone. As a gesture of our appreciation for what these new prices will mean for our customers who are currently saving up to purchase in December 04 or January 05 we have decided to fully disclose now what these new prices will be. If you have been planning to purchase soon, consider this an encouragement for you to place your orders now before the prices change on December 15th. Without further ado, here is a look the price changes:

Click the images to see large views of this stylish garment which is a tribute to the dawn of the Silver Screen Era.

AbbyShot wows the crowd!

At October's 15th Annual Women's Film Festival in St. John's, Newfoundland AbbyShot showcased yet another new design. The coat is a reproduction of the 'Femme Fatale' look characterized by leading ladies of the 1930's and 40's. The coat was worn by AS model Cheryl Jameson throughout the festival. AbbyShot offered up the Femme Fatale for a silent auction with the proceeds going to support the festival and its programs. Many people were quite impressed with the quality of the garment and couldn't believe how good it looked.

The film festival is long over now and the garment is with the overjoyed woman who won the silent auction. The design still remains with AbbyShot and only one question remains: Should AbbyShot release the Femme Fatale as a regular item available through their web site? Originally, the Femme Fatale was only intended as a one-off original design for the Women's Film Festival event, however several people have approached AbbyShot wondering if it will become an AbbyShot product. What do you think? Contact us and tell us what you think!

AbbyShot is dedicated to being world class.

Proudly made in Newfoundland, Canada!

At AbbyShot, the quality of our coats is measured by the feeling our customer gets every time he wears one of our custom garments. We know this about our customers because of all the interesting stories that filter back to us through email and the AS forum. Just the other day, AtomicFerrett posted about the compliments she receives from strangers as she wears her leather Cleric Custom. Further digging on AbbyShot's forum reveals that AS customers are more than a little happy about their coats.

Of course, we're partly to blame for all of the coat excitement. (We even encourage it!) Every month we proudly show off a group of customer photos in our Newsletter.. and why wouldn't we? Our customers look great in their custom AbbyShot threads. As clothing designers and manufacturers we measure our success by the response of our customers. By the looks of things, AbbyShot's design and production team are making people happy from Sweden (Daniel) to California (Phantom) and many points in between. (See sidebar for customer photos)

We've always thought that AbbyShot's coats are such prized items because the designs are unique and the quality is comparable with the world's finest garments. While design gets a lot of credit, the quality of our work should not be overlooked. Quality is a state of mind that permeates through AbbyShot's tiny Mount Pearl shop. We know that the only way our business will grow is if our product, and our service consistently amazes you, our customer.

For example, it is pretty normal for a custom made product to be inspected by its manufacturer before it is delivered to the customer. And in that way, AbbyShot is normal. Before your custom coat is snugly packed into our shipping box, it is ‘de-linted’ (excess threads and fabric lint are removed). Our shipping clerk makes sure that all of the seams line up correctly and that there are no obvious defects in the coat. That ‘pre-packaging’ step is the last of 7 separate quality inspections that your coat must pass before it is shipped.

We can hear you scratching your head and asking, "Seven steps? I mean, c’mon.. they’re just coats, right?" That’s where you’re wrong. AbbyShot’s coats are one of kind items - each one is treated with care by the cutting and production staff. So what are those seven steps? We’ll cover a couple of them here, and finish the series in an upcoming newsletter.

The first step happens before thread, fabric, or scissors are lifted. When you place an order for an AbbyShot custom coat our Production Manager reviews your measurements. Julia Cook, AbbyShot’s PM, has been sewing since she was barely old enough to reach the pedal of her mother’s domestic Singer machine. She applies her 15+ years of sewing and designing knowledge so that each customer receives a coat that fits them perfectly. When you consider that she’ll likely never meet this customer face to face, it’s impressive that time and time again our customers rave about how well their AbbyShot coats fit them.

The Production Manager often has to ask our customers about some of the measurements - should that happen to you, don’t be alarmed. Chances are that she just wants to be certain about your sleeve length or your shoulder width. Once the measurements are finalized by the Production Manager, they’ll be used by our in-house designer to make the pattern for your custom coat.

Aimee, AbbyShot’s Designer, is responsible for designing coat patterns and modifying those patterns to fit your measurements. This may sound like a simple process, but in fact she has to consider variables such seam allowances, fabric type and especially the style of the design. The modified pattern pieces will be given to AbbyShot’s cutter, but only when the Production Manager has reviewed the pattern pieces to ensure that they will fit the customer’s measurements. The pattern pieces are laid onto a roll of fabric some 60 inches wide - this arrangement of pieces is called a marker. Using a combination of computer software and apparel engineering, a computer controlled knife cuts the pattern pieces with astounding precision. (This used to be done by hand - but we’ve recently switched to CAD-based design and cutting.. we really like it!!)

If you’ve been counting you realize that your coat has been quality inspected twice and we haven’t even cut the fabric yet! It might look like a lot of extra work, but it makes a better coat at the end of the day!! Our fabric cutting machine races back and forth atop our cutting table, slicing wool, kasha and other fabrics into coat pieces. The freshly cut pieces are collected, inspected and measured by AbbyShot’s cutting staff. Occasionally the Production Manager will meet with the cutting staff to find why a piece wasn’t cut to the right size. Once the cutting staff approve of the cut pattern pieces, they give them to our team of talented and experienced sewers. The cutting and sewing rooms are joined together by a small opening that we call the ‘hole of NO return’. Once a coat goes through that hole, it should not come back to have any pieces ‘re-cut’. The cutting and production staff are focused on making your coat fit you perfectly, the first time.

So you can see that our staff have quality on the brain, don’t they? In our next newsletter we’ll let you know about some of the magic that happens to turn a box of fabric pieces into a perfectly fitting trench coat.

The AbbyShot forum community sparks an original design idea,

Fireseid's Jacket Design click each image to see a larger animated version

Earlier this month some discussion began amongst some of the posters on the AbbyShot forum regarding the idea of a jacket-length version of the Stampede Duster. We thought that this was a pretty neat idea that deserved some further thought so we put to these same forum people to suggest they view of what would make for a good jacket style version of the Stampede Duster. Here's the basis of what was proposed:

Now, while these don't have to be breathtaking works of art, obviously the clearer they are the better. Faded pencil sketches, tiny low resolution images, etc. won't be terribly useful to any one. You can submit as many designs as you wish, but please don't send us 75 variants on the same look! I'm thinking line drawings of the design without complex or super-detailed shading or colouring. It shouldn't have to be a major time investment in order to create a submission. Let's work within the idea of a jacket length version of the Stampede Duster, available in black or red, using much the same type of features as the duster has so that it won't require a totally different manufacturing process. (so things like spiked shoulder pads, funky braided trim, strange custom hasps, pipes hanging from the ribs, and other such custom features should be omitted from any submissions.)

Blight the dark maelstrom's Jacket Design One Jacket Design Two click each image for a larger view

Now before anyone jumps to the wrong conclusion, this is not a promise that we'll make a Stampede Jacket, (although I will admit that it is a tempting idea...). Also, there is no official prize for creating the "winning" design (assuming that we even use someone's design). This is being done as something fun and as a test of this method of co-creating a design. If we do end up creating a Stampede Jacket, you're looking at it being at least six months away from being a reality. If it works, then I'll take the concept and polish it into a more refined process that we can use in future design projects. If it doesn't work, then at least everyone had a bit of fun with it. Our primary concern is still going to be the next batch of new designs that we've officially committed to as well as a few ones that we haven't announced yet. If a Stampede Jacket design does result from all of this, then it'll have to go to the back of the line just like all the other design ideas!

Endless Void's Jacket Design click image for a larger view

Having said all that we are quite intrigued by the submissions that did come in from this small discussion on our forum. There is a lot of lively conversation going on with all sorts of ideas being discussed. You can check it out for yourself by reading the forum thread itself entitled, Stampede lovers, now hear this! We've gathered the submitted ideas here to show everyone. We're quite interested in this idea, and if it proves out that there is considerable interest in the idea we would design this, using either one of these ideas, one of your ideas, or an independent idea of our own. What does everyone think? Would you want to see AbbyShot make available a jacket length version of the Stampede Duster? Do any of these specific ideas look attactive? Do you have a different idea for what it should look like?

Send us your thoughts on this design idea!

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