Arden Reed - Kickstarter

I recently discovered these guys on Kickstarter, called Arden Reed.
An MTM Suit is about 350 bucks.

I know at this price point, I shouldn't be expecting too much, but I'm somewhat interested. Should I give it a try?


More details here.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1485253509/custom-shirts-and-suits

Fabrics, canvassing? Where are the pics of customers this guy has fit before?

They didn't show much.
Although the pictures shown in the video are indeed the finished products of their stuff.
They're trying to start up a company with Kickstarter, so I doubt there would be many pictures.



Kappuccino said:

They didn't show much.
Although the pictures shown in the video are indeed the finished products of their stuff.
They're trying to start up a company with Kickstarter, so I doubt there would be many pictures.

Click to expand...

Yeah, but without details I am going to assume the quality is going to be total crap...

I've been following Ardeen Reed on kickstarter as well. I sent an inquiry about about fabric and suit construction to their customer service email. They replied with only vague answers and avoided answering my questions about canvasing and wool content. My guess is they are selling fused suits made from polyester blends. If they were making suits of decent quality, wouldn't they want to brag about it? If the idea is to get a Bespoke suit at a discount, the best MTM suit value I've seen is between $500-$600 at minimum. Spending less than that is a waste IMO.

Hey guys,

My name is Mike, and I'm one of the founders of Arden Reed. Sorry for the lack of clarity regarding our suits, but we have been upgrading our entire line as we received orders and gained understanding of our client's demands.

We started off with polyester-wool blends for our suits, but recently began upgrading to 100% wool to the Super 100s to 120s. We should expect all our fabrics to be 100% wool by the end of August. We are also using half-canvas construction for our suits and have maintained that for our entire history.

Our pricing will remain the same as we upgrade our suit line.

Let me know if you have any additional questions.

Best,

Mike
[email protected]

Mike,

Is there an option to have full-canvassing? Is there somewhere in NYC where we can get measured up?

Hi guys, I'm a long-time lurker and new poster, but I thought I'd share my experience purchasing an Arden Reed suit and shirt package through The Daily Hookup.

I don't know if this is because they're a new business, but I've had an absolutely terrible time with a purchase that I made almost 4 months ago. I'll try to keep my description brief.

I purchased a suit and shirt package on January 21st, and received the package 3 weeks later with the shirt missing from the package. I contacted Mike and Carlos about the missing shirt, who informed me a week later that they couldn't find the shirt anywhere and that I'd have to wait 3 weeks for a new one. Since my suit fit poorly out of the box (no real surprise, since it's my first time with the company), I suggested that the new shirt be shipped out with a remade suit based on new measurements.

I went to my tailor, who immediately expressed concerns about the suit's fabric quality (overall cheap-feeling fabric, misaligned and low-quality pant zipper and slide hook), and so after consulting with my tailor, I sent Mike an e-mail requesting a refund under their "100% satisfaction guarantee". Mike replied back saying that he couldn't give me a refund until I had a remake done first, and asked me to return the suit on my own dime before I proceeded with the remake. As is customary with other MTM companies, I asked him to send me the remade suit first, which he agreed to. To his credit, he offered to upgrade my suit to one from his Super 140s collection at no charge and said that he would send me some fabric swatches to choose from that I'd receive by the end of that week.

Fast forward 2 weeks later (and 2 months after my original order), I still hadn't received the fabric swatches and couldn't go forward with the remake. I then told Mike that wanted a refund instead of a remake, and they received my old suit a couple weeks after that. A week and a half after that, I contacted them asking about the status of my refund, and Carlos (one of Arden Reed's co-founder) wrote back saying that they only process refunds on the 15th and 30th of each month. It's now May 6th, nearly 4 months after my original order, and I still haven't received the refund in my PayPal account despite paying for my own return shipping to fix this debacle.

Honestly, I hate leaving companies bad reviews, but this is by far the worst experience I've ever had with an online retailer. It speaks volumes that I was able to order a suit from another company a month after my order from Arden Reed, receive it, then receive the remake of that suit before receiving my refund from Arden Reed. I've been hesitant to leave them a bad review throughout this ordeal, but I feel like they aren't treating me like a valued customer because of my reluctance to push the issue and complain.

And for the record, I'm not another company's shill, just a frustrated customer.

TL;DR: Ordered suit + shirt from Arden Reed, received poor quality suit and did not receive shirt. 4 months later, still have not received refund.

I ordered an Arden Reed suit and shirt voucher through Thrillist on 14Mar.

The customer service and response time was good during the inquiry and ordering phases.

I confirmed that delivery time was 3-4 weeks because I needed my suit for an interview on 3May.

On 14Apr, I found out that my suit was done but they were waiting on the shirt. Over the next two weeks, it was almost painful trying to get a straight answer from Mike Abadi on when my suit was going to ship. I had to go through Thrillist to find out that my suit was being remade due to measurement issues.

After I told AR that I wanted a refund because I was not going to get the suit on time, I received no more communication from them. No response to messages left on their site. They didn't answer their phone during working hours. Mike stopped answering my emails.

The annoying part was that they kept flooding social media with their new kickstarter project about some scanner truck but they can't seem to fulfill their current orders.

The only thing that didn't make this a total loss was that Thrillist refunded my money, and only after 2 days of contacting them.

But Arden Reed did waste 6 weeks of my time and made me miss out on some good sales.

The only advice I can give is do your research on this company, notice how they had all those backers last year and the lack of reviews they have now.

If I remember correctly, this company was started by a couple of former investment banking analysts. They did a promotion for a networking dinner with some finance professionals. Seem to be catering to that market pretty strongly.

I should start a Kickstarter if these people are so gullible and like throwing their money away

Nothing worse than an Indochino knockoff. There must be dozens of these craptastic companies out there now.

Their Kickstarter video is cringeworthy.

Update: I received my refund today after sending Carlos an e-mail informing him that I was going to file a chargeback if I didn't receive it by the end of this week. No apology for the wait or the bad experience, just a refund to my PayPal account and no further communication. Very unprofessional.

I don't know whether my review had anything to do with it, but it's a little odd that I suddenly received a refund the day after posting a negative review, especially considering that my previous e-mails were often ignored for weeks at a time. They can promote their tailor truck all they want, but if they don't get positive reviews from their existing customer base, they won't get anywhere.

Do your own due diligence on this company before purchasing anything from them.

Cautionary tale:

I ordered a suit through Arden Reed on Mar 17. I received it today, May 11. About five weeks after my order, I tried to get in touch with their customer service department to track the status of my suit. After three attempts through their website I finally got a satisfactory response, and even an offer for a tie due to the extended wait. All great up until today.

Now for some background. I've been a long time lurker on this site, I did my homework, read the horror stories and met with two tailors prior to making a purchase. After all that, I decided to go with black lapel, given their positive reviews for product and customer service. I was not disappointed. After 3 weeks I had a suit that fit just as well as any RTW. Two more weeks and a remake later I have a suit that fits exceptionally well and will do nicely for my upcoming wedding. The whole process was very positive, the customer service rep was very knowledgeable and responsive, and I came away from the process with a very positive view of online m2m. Based on this experience, and a carefully targeted thrillist deal, I decided to try m2m again and see if I would have the same success... especially considering the deal that was offered.

Ok, so after receiving the suit I did a quick hand measure (i.e. not by a professional) and even this rough measurement shows that the jacket more closely resembles a RTW 40 or 42, rather than the slim 37-38 I was measured for. Keep in mind, I used the same two tailors for this ordering process that I had used for Blacklapel, both of whom followed the directions specific to Arden Reed rather than reusing the black lapel measurements. Beyond the measurements, the construction of the jacket is very poor. The lining does not lay properly, their are loose strings everywhere, and even as a relatively uneducated consumer, it appears that the coat does not use a floating canvas construction for the chest piece as they indicated in this thread. Comparing directly to the Blacklapel coat, you can instantly feel the difference.

All of this would not matter much, except for the fact that the intent was for this suit to be used during the third week of May, so given the delay in construction, plus any remake, I won't make the deadline. I will post an update as soon as I hear back from customer service. If positive, I cannot say that I would discourage someone from giving AR a try, as long as they were willing to go through the order and remake process several times, could tolerate moderate to low build quality, and had 8-12 weeks before they needed the item.

Chris

I just got my suit from Arden Reed, I was scanned by 3D scanner and than I was manually measured. My suit turned out amazing. I purchased 4 more. I got super 130 the price was 750 and its defiantly worth it. I love their tailor truck !