Taylor Swift broke my business (almost)

When Taylor Swift kicked off her Eras Tour in March 2023 everyone was on the lookout for the perfect concert outfit. Queue the Reputation Album cover and all of a sudden Dibo Bodi newspaper corsets were in high demand! Partiularly this Strapless corset and Ra Ra skirt set

There was probably more to it than just that. Certainly, a couple of viral videos from Swifites helped make sure the trend caught on.

Not that I'm complaining about that. But it kicked off a high-stress period for us that, honestly, we had no idea was coming. All of a sudden we went from filling orders in 2-3 days to a waiting list with more than 150 back orders and 2 weeks to fill most orders. 

We've had to ramp up our production capacity to get things back under control, which meant hiring and training additional staff, bulk ordering a whole bunch of fabric, changing our production processes, cataloging and refining our patterns, and a whole bunch of other stuff.

It was scary there for a while, particularly from a customer service perspective. Never before had we knocked back orders because we knew we would not be able to fill them in time. Never before had we had so many customer emails about delivery timeframes. But most of all we like to think we hold ourselves to account for quality customer service. And it's hard to do that when you are literally scrambling every day.

So what's the washup? Well, we now have our backorders back under control. Thanks to our production team we're back under 50 outstanding orders and once again can fill orders in well under a week where we have the fabric in stock. We also have a bigger, better trained team and better systems for them to follow. We can also scale production more easily when we need to if demand takes off suddenly.

So, thanks Taylor! The old saying has certainly been true for us: "What does not kill you makes you stronger"