Hi everyone, I am a dressmaker in England although I do have a number of customers in the USA so have found this topic really interesting. I agree that there is a need for reasonably priced dresses as not all dancers want nor can afford the dresses produced by the worlds best couture companies, such as Chrisanne etc. It may well be that many people have purchased dresses from manufacturers in China and been happy with them but those that I have seen have in my opinion been made from very poor quality fabrics/trimmings, are in the main factory mass produced and a very poor fit. I have on a number of occassions had to attempt to alter dresses sourced from the Far East, to make them wearable!! I also have quite a few customers who have purchased dresses from E-bay and other sources and have just binned them as being totally useless, as well as one or two customers who have been reasonably happy with what they have got for their money, however these have been in the minority!! In the instances where I have altered these dresses the result has been that by the time the customers paid for the dress and then the costs of the alterations to make the dress fit to wear, they could have come to me and had a dress made by me for a similar price in the first place, which would have guaranteed a good fit and a well made dress using quality fabrics.
I cannot comment directly about Rainbow Shui as I have never had any dealings at all with them but one thing that does concern me greatly is the number of companies which have set up "internet businesses" in England offering cheap ballroom and latin dance dresses for sale. That part is not a problem but unfortunately what a number of them do is to mislead the customer into believing that they are actually making their dresses for them. They use terms such as "have your dress custom made by us" and nowhere on their websites does it actually say that in fact your dress isn't really being custom made by them at all but is being made in a factory in China. When you read the very small print, it does give information such as the fact that you have to pay for your dress in full in advance and if it dosn't fit, then this is undoubtedly because you have not taken your measurements properly!!!! Oh and of course refunds are not given. What makes it even worse is that some of them even have the audacity to steal photographs from genuine couture companies websites and use these same photos offering to make copies of these dresses for a fraction of the RRP prices!! Imagine the disappointment when the dress turns up and you are actually expecting it to looking something like that shown in the photograph only to find that of course it doesn't event remotely resemble it.
Another scam that I have come across is where they show a photograph of a beautifully made couture dress, smothered in Swarovski rhinestones and offer to make you that very same dress for a couple of hundred pounds. As I am in the trade, I am not stupid and know that it would be impossible to even buy that quantity of Swarovski rhinestones for the price they are offering the dress at let alone make the dress and apply the stones. So where is the catch, check the small print and it tells you that your dress will be "stoned in a variation of that shown in the photograph"!!!!!!! In other words your dress will have a couple of hundred stones on it rather than the 10,000 on the dress in the photograph!!! They claim that this is because they wish each dress to be individual and not an exact copy of another!!
These companies are probably making huge profits at the expense of amatuer dancers. I can buy a ballroom dress direct from China for about £60, these companies sell them at anywhere between about £175 and £500, a huge percentage profit mark up for doing nothing other than taking the order, ordering from China and then delivering to the customer. Incidentally these companies have no effect on my business whatsoever as I am always busy, with a full order book and normally have around a three month waiting list for dresses, so this is not a case of "sour grapes" - lol.
Sadly like a lot of things in life, dance dresses come under the "you get what you pay for" scenario but my advice would be to "shop around" to see where you can get the best value for money from a reputable company or dressmaker. I can and do produce beautiful top quality dresses that grace the floor at major competitions around the world, such as Blackpool but even without the overheads of the major couture companies I just cannot produce top quality dresses smothered in thousands of Swarovski rhinestones for peanuts, simply because the costs just of purchasing the fabrics and stones are many many times more than I could purchase a dress from China for. However of course there is going to be a huge difference between how the dresses would look! What I can do though is to produce made to measure "budget range" dresses for dancers that don't require a hugely expensive dress. I do this by using simple designs, good quality fabrics and imported or acryllic rhinestones and beads and basically design the dresses to fit within the customers budget as well as the purpose for which the dress will be used but what I do not compromise on is fit and quality of workmanship. The most commonly asked question that I receive is "how much will you charge to make me a dress". This is like asking how long is a piece of string because I can make a dress for a few hundred pounds or a few thousand
My mission in life is to make nice, good quality dance dresses that my customers will be happy with. I doubt that I am unique and I am sure that there are others like me around the globe. I could jump on the bandwagon and import shoddy dresses from China, sell them via my website and earn a nice fat profit but I wouldn't have the pleasure and satisfaction that I get from seeing my customers looking fabulous dancing in competitions in dresses that I have made
Back then it was already close to $2000USD (14000RMB) minimum & the price can go up to 20K to 30KRMB. You're looking at regular couture pricing.
