Jacomo Hakim was just 25 years old when he created his custom menswear company, BookATailor, from scratch. Less than three years later, BookATailor has become a multi-million dollar company with 12 showrooms across the U.S.
At a young age, Hakim learned from his father, also an entrepreneur, how to start and manage a company. The rest, as they say, is history. In our Q&A with Hakim, we asked how he was able to achieve success so quickly, and how many showrooms he plans to open in the next five years. The answer may surprise you!
What’s special about the BookATailor franchise?
What’s special about our franchise is that we have built a streamline process connecting the consumer to the production facility, and the technology we built behind it basically automates the entire business. So, essentially, a person that buys a franchise from us, all they need to do is bring the customer and plug the information into a computer and we take care of everything else.
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What is the idea behind the franchise?
The idea behind BookATailor is for it to be just like the Apple store — have thousands of stores everywhere, and a customer knows that when they walk into the store, be in New York or in Beverly Hills or in Washington or in Dallas, he knows that he will see the same exact things in every single one of them. And if he is already a customer of ours, if he walks into another one, we could pull up his measurements and he can continue ordering from there.
How does it compare to its competition?
We don’t have any single competitor because we are the only vertically integrated men’s custom clothing company that is nationwide today. No other custom clothing company owns their production facility; therefore, they cannot turn over the product as quickly as we can and they do not have our prices, and price is key.
What do you look for in a potential franchisee?
Aggressive, motivated, business-driven people that will run the business as if it is their own. They become our partners. If they don’t do well, we don’t do well; therefore, we stand behind them and help them and give them the tools and anything they need in order to be successful.
Where do you see the business in five years?
1,000 BookATailor showrooms across the world!
Can you describe a typical day in the life of a franchisee?
We provide them with a whole portal, which gives them access to everything and they can literally run the whole business on it. Every day they can log in and see how many appointments they have and as soon as appointments come in, they basically just take their order and it’s all automated. They then place the order and it gets sent directly to production. It’s as simple as that!
What’s your background?
I grew up in Milan — that’s where my style and fashion comes from. My father is a big entrepreneur, so at a young age I learned how to start and manage a company. So, we decided to mix his entrepreneurship with my fashion and came up with custom clothing.
What motivates you to keep going?
“I want to be on top of the world, and I don’t stop till I own the world!”
If you were to start again, what would you do differently?
Nothing.
Please tell us your secret to success?
Working extremely hard and never ever, ever, ever, ever give up! When a problem occurs, instead of getting mad and running away from it, you should sit down, solve it, and make sure it never happens again.
What is one thing that really excites you?
There’s no better feeling than having someone come into the showroom and go through the BookATailor experience: touch screens on a tablet, place an order, have FedEx deliver the product a couple of weeks later, and then the customer comes in to try on their clothes and they go, “WTF! I can’t believe that this really happened…it’s as simple as that!”
Any final words for aspiring entrepreneurs?
Yeah. Just do it! Just go for it. If you have an idea, don’t let anyone stop you. If anyone ever tells you that you can’t do something then it should just motivate you to do it and prove them wrong! All the best.
Where can people find out more about BookATailor?
Visit the website here
Where can people find BookATailor on social media?
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