[0] http://mentalfloss.com/article/82726/how-playtex-helped-win-...
Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo by Nicholas de Monchaux
>How the twenty-one-layer Apollo spacesuit, made by Playtex, was a triumph of intimacy over engineering.
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/spacesuit
It has an interesting behind-the-scenes look at how Playtex succeeded where other contractors failed, how they were almost cut out of the deal anyway, and ended up being awarded the contract as a subcontractor to another company that was able to provide the necessary government-compliant documentation.
The reason Playtex built the space suits because they were the ones who came up with the idea of a cloth spacesuit.
Building a space suit is tricky because you are pressurized over the environment; if you just sewed a simple air-proof garment it would inflate and it would be difficult to bend your arms and legs to move around in space. Most companies bidding on building a spacesuit were proposing designs similar to deep sea suits, which are rigid metal and plastic with complicated joints to allow it to bend and move while maintaining a constant volume.
Playtex was able to design a constant-volume air-tight suit out of layers and layers (like 17) of different types of fabric; this was directly related to their core competencies.
The tech is far less important.
She first tried a naive tech-focused approach and realized that she didn't understand the problem well enough and making adjustments to the tech was slowing her learning down too much.
She made a great decision to optimize for learning speed and temporarily build a more traditional custom-fit bra business. She has learned a lot about the problem space and what makes a good solution.
Now she's using technology as a tool to enhance and optimize the process that already arrives at a good solution.
We do the same thing when we write code:
1. understand the problem
2. write a correct solution
3. optimize the solution
IMHO, it's the ONLY thing that matters - and like you, I too learned it the hard way. Optimizing for non-existent (or non-critical) problems is a very common mistake.
I suspect pretty much any woman in North America, regardless of ability to afford it, would see that as a totally rational price point.
And as someone who _can_ afford it, I'm seriously weighing a trip to NYC to be fitted.
Because that would be one of the best examples of the risk of wealth imbalance in our country that I've yet seen.
Many women have hard to fit bras. My wife probably spends 2-3 hours per bra in acquisition time as inventory of odd sizes are tight and size fit varies dramatically. The cost would need to come down for her, but there’s definitely a market need.
She bought two eventually. I think it was $70 a piece or so.
I'm not sure I agree with your second paragraph though. Could also just be an example of the risks with stupidity and ignorance.
* “Bergner’s and Macy’s already can get a good fit. They have 15 cup sizes most people don’t know about”
* “I’d pay $150 for a custom fit if my size weren’t fluctuating”
* “If I have to travel, I can already get a really good bra in Paris, NY or London that look better”
* “Seems like it could be successful if enough women who don’t know their options hear about it”
These are aggregates of the most commonly expressed opinions. It seems like price might be a valid concern of women as well as men. I am sure that with enough press, this founder can succeed, but I don’t think I’d necessarily be biased if I thought it wasn’t competitive or disruptive enough. The qualities and connections of the founding team matter more than anything when the problem is that existing solutions aren’t popular enough to meet demand.
My father-in-law went to Italy and had some custom shoes made. It cost him a bit over $3,000 USD (air fare included). However, he could order a new pair of shoes (in any color of the available leathers) for $250 and they fit wonderfully every time. For his feet (size 13 and one slightly narrower than the other) it was an extravagance that really removed a lot of pain and agitation from his life. He was the first person I had met who had a need like this that was so far from the "standard" offerings that shoe shopping was a scourge.
That rationale seems a bit simplistic to me. I suspect that for many women in North America, the choice of spending $350 on a bra, or $100 on a bra + paying some bill on time, is a no-brainer.
In a country where 62% of Americans don't even have $1000 in savings, and 21% of Americans don't even have bank accounts?
$350 is a super niche price for a bra.
It's not crazy. I regularly spend 80$+ for bras I don't like, and if I found one which worked with my wardrobe and truly fit comfortably, 350$ would not be a luxury purchase.
I'm 30 and I would estimate that I've spent a few thousand dollars in my lifetime on bras that I've only worn once or twice because they just don't fit or wear correctly or they're so uncomfortable that they could be classified as an instrument of torture.
Women are willing to spend $100+/bra at Victoria's Secret and the quality isn't even particularly good (though it's miles better than Target). Victoria's Secret's main value to the customer is consistency. The product is consistently good, not great, but the sizes across all their products are far more consistent than any other store that sells bras. A good fit is the most important component to a comfortable bra. Victoria's Secret demonstrates that women are willing to pay a premium to be able to confidently buy a bra that will probably fit and won't be terribly uncomfortable.
Bratheory is offering women the ability to confidently buy a bra that will definitely fit and won't be uncomfortable. Is $350 a premium? Certainly. But not that much of a premium considering the value proposition for their customers.
These things seem to be fairly new. Not available afaik 4 years ago when my we needed one. I've heard good reviews of the style, but don't know anything about specific brands.
I suspect you are completely out of touch with pretty much any woman in North America, besides for the <1% of women who can afford a trip to NYC for a bra fitting expedition.
I'm a bit skeptical of your assertion that anyone regardless of income would see this as a rational price point, when economic theories seem to indicate that our restrictions determine our preferences.
A $350 for an esthetily pleasing comfortable sturdy bra is a no brainier purchase when it's such a QoL improvement, you wear it everyday, and the alternative is a string of cheap bras that won't be that much cheaper in the long run and fit/feel worse.
Just because cheap bras come in lots of sizes doesn't mean one of them will actually work for you.
This is decidedly the former. For top-heavy women, especially the majority who are a bit asymmetric, a perfectly fitting bra is an impossible dream.
I do not know why I would pay for the privilege of being constricted but hurting less!
There is a lot of research on how bras are useless, and some people even wonder if by limiting lymphatic drainage bras may help promoting cancer.
I wear a sport bra when I am in a gym, and a regular off the shelf bra if I am going in a social encounter where I fear my "freedom" would be used again me to judge my character.
But that's about it. Our moms didn't burn their bras in the 50s so we could have the privilege to spent $350 on them in the future.
Even for those of us with moderate-sized breasts, the jiggling can be anywhere from distracting to moderately uncomfortable when, say, walking briskly.
And that's putting aside all the social pressures, shaping and body image issues, etc.
And I do like being constricted. Wearing a well-fitting bra feels like being hugged all the time, and it feels great.
Also,
> Our moms didn't burn their bras in the 50s so we could have the privilege to spent $350 on them in the future.
A) Bra-burning was a myth. It never happened.
B) Second-wave feminism has been considered harmful for quite some time now. It's incredibly toxic due to being inextricably linked with racism, transphobia, femmephobia, kinkshaming, and sex-negativity. The vast majority of feminists have moved on to third-wave feminism, which doesn't have these problems.
For breast shape development. Not for support.
I guess paying this amount would be a function of a) how much pain/inconvenience current bras give you and b) how long they last.
And it's not much different in price than a fancy pair of shoes....
Maybe people on HN are just not aware what something approaching this good costs, and unwilling (let's say for ideological reasons) to consider why it costs as much as it does. I doubt many VCs would be too stupid to Google a bit about what women say about bra fit (or, heck, listen to a woman who isn't a stranger), and how much they currently pay for good fit; If I had a nickel for every time a woman complained about bra fit around me, I'd have at least thirty cents.
I think an interesting next step would be some sort of home scanning kit (or just an app, though this would have a hard time with dark skin, crappy lighting, or a combination of both), not sure how hard it would be to go from a static scan of breast geometry to a fit (since they don't exactly stay that way when they're tied up!).
TL;DR, I think these folks just don't know how pricing works.
You can wear it 2-3 years and then the elastics start to wear out. (Wash the thing by hand, and it'll be dry the next day. As any woman can tell you, we do that less often than we should though.)
Compare it to glasses, or maybe shoes - people easily put down that much, even though they could buy cheaper.
Once you get to more "lingerie" type brands the price increases fast.
There's also the reality that a lot of women fall out of traditional sizes for any number of reasons and in that case, the options are more limited and expensive.
"Lesson #2: Be prepared to learn all the reasons why no one has solved your problem."
So often no progress gets made because there are five reasons people haven't made progress but everybody is making excuses about why they only need to solve three of them and wondering why their "minimal" product isn't viable.
I find myself re-learning or having to remind myself of this every so often. It's easy as a "person of a problem-solving nature" to want my solution to be problem-free. But what that usually ends up meaning is my solution never gets completed. Tackle the low-hanging fruit, then if there's enough demand/reason to continue development, do the rest.
We often doubt that if we have something crappy, that we will get any interest or traction so the MVP gets delayed. As the OP says in the article, if they couldn't have any benefits over a custom bra maker, what were they selling exactly?
Graphene fed spiders spin bionic silk
How many of us spend years perfecting products instead of launching an MVP and learning as we go? How many of us build automation before seeking domain expertise when we really should do it the other way around?
The goal should be to totally smash current custom fit prices, e.g. to ~$50 level, e.g. using a self-serve fitting station at Macy's. Many such stations can be monitored by one person, similar to how self-serve check out stations are monitored in grocery stores.
The above is for mass market. OP's manual approach can still be used as a high-end service for those who can afford it, e.g. pret-a-porter vs. tailor.
3D fitting would be really interesting, but not straightforward. It's hard to do the nonlinear transformation that would be necessary, partly because density of breast tissue varies a lot and so not all transformation functions would actually be possible. The "bloat" factor outlined in the article would also have an effect -- hormones, salt consumption, water consumption all affect that. 3D modeling might be most useful for placement of underwires, etc.
I wonder if a machine could be made that inflates/deflates a proxy of a bra until the woman (wearer? Am I assuming gender?) is comfortable. Take the readings of a comfortable fit and construct a bra that provides that support. Basically, you don't care about the shape of the breast, you care about the shape of that individual's comfortable breast and the pressure needed to get it into that state.
I read that there was a similar scenario in the design of airplane cockpits, such that there were enough different dimensions of human variation that it was hopeless to design for the "average pilot": even assuming that each dimension had 80% of pilots within the acceptable range, it was basically guaranteed to be unacceptable for the vast majority of pilots. I read that the solution was to make all the relevant aspects of the cockpit adjustable; and that this was deemed expensive and dismissed at first, but it became obviously necessary and they sucked it up and did it.
A simple, cheap, and effective process for custom-made bras seems ideal if they have it, but if that is difficult, then I wonder: could it work to make as many dimensions as possible adjustable, and then suffer only mild combinatorial explosion on the remainder?
[1] https://medium.com/@hazelynut/why-i-have-a-problem-with-bras... , linked from the article.
It is not a question of designing the perfect bra given a set of measurements. It’s more “can we make it perfectly?” And “are the measurements accurate?”
as any seamstress or seamster would tell you, it takes a life time to sew perfectly. It’s a CNC mill where you need to tension the materials and threads just perfectly while you move the x/y table.
And if you’ve ever had a suit measured, you know the person taking measurements needs to be in sync with the manufacturer, otherwise it’s a waste of time.
And for what it’s worth, my partner would not pay $350 for a perfect bra (and I mean perfect!).
0: https://www.thelingerieaddict.com/2013/11/last-time-tribal-a...
1) Freedom of motion? I wear a sports bra that flattens out my boobs for many reasons. First is prevention of pain while running, etc. -- that vaunted 'freedom of motion' is highly undesirable as the actual runner, thanks. Second, the flattening effect is honestly pretty helpful for cleans, snatches, and other movement that involve keeping a weight close to the body. My boobs significantly affect bar path and sports bras lessen that effect.
2) Heat dissipation. Dude, it's winter! I want to keep my boobs warm! Cold breasts are truly uncomfortable.
3) Ever been a breastfeeding mom? This is not something that's been brought up in this HN discussion, but remember that people who are breastfeeding are often pretty leaky and have sensitive nipples. Bras allow milk shields to be held in place or are by themselves sufficient to contain small leaks, depending on the type. No one wants to have a meeting with a lady leaking through her shirt, least of all the lady in question.
4) Clothing fit. Clothing is generally mass-produced for a certain set of silhouettes in the US. If you have larger breasts and want to wear mass-produced clothing, wearing a bra will improve the set of options that fit well.
1) sports bra != bra. They're different tools. Many women have brought those up for running, so the point is done and proven. I have no counter point to it.
2) I'm from Florida. But that's really interesting. Tools for body heat retention is an interesting topic. Do you have any other tips for this use case?
3) No. But that's another interesting use case. But wouldn't a nipple only device be simpler and more effective? I just found a tool called LilyPadz which seems to suggest that possibility.
4) You're basically saying that this use case is as a workaround/hack, not a permanent fix. The article is about custom clothing anyway. Maybe an Alvin Toffleresque prediction about mass produced, custom clothing would fit here.
1. Women everywhere are spending tons of money on uncomfortable garments to cover their nipples, because they don't realize nipple covers exist
2. Bras serve a much bigger purpose than covering nipples (hint - what's a jock strap used for? imagine needing that all day, not just when you're running...)
This doesn't work. Jockstraps were designed for protection a century and a half ago with mostly flawed logic. Today they're mostly used to hold protective cups and not for support.
You'll find the vast majority of men that have played sports in school or pursue an athletic sport as an adult have never owned or worn a jock strap. A properly restrictive sports bra would be the female equivalent and will make a world of difference.
I can run flat out and don't care one bit about my genitals flopping around, my 'moobs' however flop around considerably and in a jarring fashion which actually causes pain and they are considerably smaller than many women's breasts. Watch a woman running with an adequate sports bra, you'll see minimal movement of 2 pieces of tissue wearing considerably more than any man's genitals.
Those Amazon reviews are probably fake.
> Nude
> Colors
Who’s “nude”? When is the industry going to update this term? If a female person of color outsider won’t, I guess it’s not important to anyone
To respond to your point below, all major manufacturers now make a range of "nude" colors. The range of colors may be stunted, on both ends, but if you've shopped recently you know that a range is easily available.
It probably would not be extremely difficult to come up with a way to automatically generate a custom dye mixture that exactly matches a given skin color, out of just blacks, browns, and reds.
Reminds me of a scene from some sitcom I can't remember, where a guy is trying to be inclusive, so he says "We employ people of every race here- black, yellow, brown, and normal."
https://www.allure.com/gallery/nude-makeup-shades-for-every-...
As currently phrased, it sounds like you're perhaps suggesting men stay out of the conversation entirely.
Per.
---
A bad one will:
- cause you constant pain,
- cut blood circulation,
- keep you from being able to run,
- exacerbate back injuries,
- cause skin injuries,
- get colonized by bacterias and possibly fungus,
- create smells,
- cause allergic reactions,
- etc.
---
A bra isn't only a device meant to look good.
You often pay $60-$90 for a one that seems well made only for it to fall apart after 3 months of wearing.
Paying $350 for one that would fit perfectly and last a long time is not far fetched at all.
But, man, at that price there's a tall bar to meet. We'll pay for quality, but if it's not up to snuff, it goes back the next day.
The only price point that may have space is where VS Apex was for a better fit.
Paying lots of money for good garments is certainly a thing. But still there is a limit. So, I wish this business luck.
But... for something that often costs $80; is generally available only in sizes that comfortably fit a small proportion of the population; and where improper fit means pain all day... worth it if you can afford it.
I for one have been watching this closely, and will probably buy if/when the price hits $150-ish.
Apparel is a different world from consumer electronics in terms of pricing.
Hopefully they can bring costs down eventually through some means. A bra that's 90% perfect at about a third of that cost would be something I would consider.
It will be interesting if Women chime in here to express if all that custom fitting (and the technology involved) would be worth the money of that custom fitted bra.
More I think about it, more I'm surprised at just how much mass production lowers costs. Even after being aware of the Toaster Project.
If they don't last a long time, or if the bra size changes too often, then it is ridiculous, though.
Can't tell if this is real or not. I'm fairly confident that the thermal expansion of the measuring tape is not going to make even a tenth of a millimeter difference in precision: does it have to do with the temperature of the skin?
> [...]
> Temperature of the measuring tape at time of measuring
Are you sure?
If the measuring tape is made of steel, it expands by a factor of 13e-6[0] for every degree C that it heats up. If you measure first with a 0 degree C tape measure, and then with a 100 degree C tape measure (both of which are absurd and will be extremely uncomfortable), then the second measurement will differ from the first by a factor of 13e-4. A measurement of 100mm will become 100.0013mm. Can you even cut the fabric precisely enough for that to matter?
[0] http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Tables/thexp.html
EDIT: But see replies below: it's more likely that the temperature of the tape causes changes in the shape of the skin.
EDIT2: Also just realised I initially missed out the second factor of 100, so it becomes 100.13mm instead of 100.0013mm, which is almost close enough to matter, but only in the extreme scenario of 100 degrees C change in temperature.
https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/linear-expansion-coeffici...
ABS heats up by a factor of 100e-6 per degree C. The largest number I spotted was paraffin with 106e-6 to 480e-6 per degree C.
If the tape measure is made of the most-expanding type of paraffin, which is itself the most-expanding material listed, then the 100mm measurement becomes 100.05mm when heated by 100 degrees C. I really don't think a difference of 50 micrometres matters, or is even achievable, in the manufacture of a bra.
EDIT: (But I see the other points now - it's not the thermal expansion of the tape, but the body's reaction to the temperature).
The better bet is that the tape they're using is made of plastic, which is going to deform much more.
I believe that's all the author wanted to say
You can buy custom-made corsets for cheaper than this (yes they can be far more expensive but most of that is exotic material cost). You can buy custom made lifting boots/shoes for this that have a considerably higher material cost.
I work in international freight currently, I know extremely well what imported textiles cost including bras, even if these are hand-made in the US per customer there's an awful lot of profit there unless they are made out of unobtanium.
This is a prime example of 'pink tax' in my opinion and/or inefficient manufacturing processes (again, even if hand made) and/or unreasonable salaries.