By Jennifer Yeager
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| These jeans feature Cone 1968 dark indigo denim with burnt orange thread and antique nickel hardware. The fit is modern taper with extended in-seam. |
Do you remember your all-time favorite pair of jeans? That pair that fit perfectly, felt great to wear and looked super chic? You probably also remember buying lots of jeans that didn’t quite live up to that perfect pair. Maybe they didn’t fit right in the waist, or the length was wrong or the denim felt cheap.
Now your denim troubles are over. Meet Oakley’s newest and unique clothier, Valor Custom Denim LLC. When you buy your jeans from Valor Custom Denim, you’ll get the perfect pair, the perfect fit, every time. Guaranteed.
Brad Campling and Trent Wall are the Managing Partners of Valor Custom Denim and self-professed “denim heads.” For the last 18 years, Campling and Wall worked together as process improvement engineers, and in 2011 they founded their own company, Stream Improvement Services, headquartered in Oakley.
The story of how these two engineers expanded into the apparel business is compelling. A few years back, Stream Improvement Services worked with a client that made uniforms for firefighters. As you might imagine, uniforms and gear must be custom fit to each individual firefighter to ensure maximum durability and safety. At the time, the manufacturer took a full 16 days to produce apparel for a firefighter. With the help of Campling and Wall, that 16 day turnaround was reduced to a jaw-dropping 6 hours.
After their tremendous success with the firefighter apparel manufacturer, Campling and Wall decided to expand into the apparel business themselves - specifically, men’s premium jeans. They saw a real need in the market. “The problem today,” Mr. Campling explained, “is traditional retail and online store models are flawed in that they’re built to offer only standardized products that don’t fit anyone as well as they could. That’s why virtually everyone we know struggles to find jeans they really love to wear.”
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| All of Valor’s denim has selvedge edges for a clean finish along the side seam. |
We’ve all had that experience. Typically, you have no choice but to purchase jeans from the pre-sized merchandise on the shelf. And if those pre-sized options don’t offer the size, material or finish you’re really looking for? Usually you shrug your shoulders and buy the pair that’s closest to your dream jeans.
That’s where Campling and Wall come in with something completely new: ‘artisan manufacturing,’ or what Valor Custom Denim calls ‘Me-tail vs. Retail.’
“We’re changing the way apparel is designed, purchased and manufactured,” said Mr. Wall. The goal is “to make men look and feel great in custom made jeans by putting the customer at the center of the process.” In other words, no more “off-the-shelf” shopping for jeans because Valor Custom Denim makes exactly what you want, precisely to your fit.
“As engineers, we bring an analytical and customized approach to fit that is rare in the industry,” Mr. Campling explained. “We size the jeans specifically to each customer based on eight ‘critical fit’ measurements.” To achieve this Valor Custom Denim created a unique website, www.valordenim.com, that shows customers how to take their critical fit measurements through a series of short, easy-to-follow videos. Once the measurements are entered into the website, a process that takes no more than 10 minutes, a 3D CAD modeling system generates a pattern, and staff tailor Robert Gerace makes the jeans.
Valor Custom Denim uses only high end, high quality materials and finishes. This way, customers are assured their jeans will be both a perfect fit and the perfect style for their individual aesthetic. What’s more, every pair of Valor Custom Denim jeans is made in America, a detail especially important to Campling and Wall. As Mr. Campling noted, “There’s a lot of human suffering in the world because of the apparel industry.”
From a business standpoint, Valor Custom Denim is well situated for today’s market and for the future. Today, they provide high end premium jeans for men. In the next three to six months they look to expand into women’s jeans. And beyond that, Campling and Wall look to continually improve their value stream. Through use of online tools. as well as their own process improvement background, they plan to make the manufacture and delivery of custom jeans as seamless as possible with a quick turnaround time and guaranteed customer satisfaction.
Look for Valor Custom Denim online at www.valordenim.com.
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