Frayed, yellowed wedding gown? He saves them.

By Juanita Cousins
The Tennessean http://www.tennessean.com

A second-generation wedding gown hung in a crowded closet for nearly three decades before daylight shined on its yellowing satin and champagne stains.

Years before, a dry cleaner shredded the Chantilly lace on Cindy House’s gown, also worn by her mother in 1956.

Then Surendra Kumar, owner of Oakwood Cleaners (http://www.oakwoodcleaners.com), gave the gown a transformation fit for Cinderella and her fairy godmother.

“I was skeptical taking my dress to another cleaners after the first incident, but his work is unbelievable,” said House, who spent nearly $400 to have the gown restored for her recently engaged daughter.

Kumar and his cleaners are gaining notoriety among Nashville’s elite and in the wedding industry for his work cleaning, repairing, restoring and preserving delicate garments and family heirlooms.

Kumar, who lives in Mount Juliet, entered the cleaning industry in 1984 as a way to make money as he pursued a medical degree.

Dreams of entering health care unraveled as he found equipment that drastically decreased his cleaner’s waste, and then he became a consultant for the manufacturer, selling machines to cleaners across the Southeast.

These days, he works in the company of 100-year-old baptism dresses, $15,000 couture gowns, lace wedding dresses worn by three generations of women, quilts, table clothes and first communion garb.

Engaged women seek Kumar to have their mothers’ gowns cleaned for their upcoming weddings and moth holes repaired. Brides come in days after their wedding, looking for Kumar to remove mud stains and mend frayed hems.

Kumar’s process for each individual garment begins with a personal consultation with employee Laura Garcia at Oakwood’s Belle Meade location. She hangs the gown on a mannequin and inspects every inch, taking pictures of problem spots and drawing sketches of the gowns.

Source: The Tennessean

Full Article: http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=200991228014

Home and Abroad

While offshore contact centers offer costs savings, cultural concerns keep many e-retailers local

By Zak Stambor (http://www.internetretailer.com)

Every country has its own wedding rituals. In the U.S., they can include tiaras to unity candles—not the kind of terms people in other countries would often learn when studying English. That’s why wedding products retailer David’s Bridal Inc. didn’t look far beyond the U.S. and Canada when looking for a provider of contact center services.

“It was essential that agents understood the culture, and were sensitive to the experience of investing a significant amount of money in a gown,” says Dwight Klingenberg, the company’s vice president of profit improvement. “With something so essential to our business we couldn’t afford to introduce variables where you have a language and cultural differential.”

That depth of cultural knowledge isn’t necessary when buying a duvet or a vacuum. Overstock.com Inc., which sells such mundane products online, has outsourced a portion of its contact center live chat work to India for the past five years and been happy with the results—and the cost.

For retailers like David’s Bridal and Overstock that decide to outsource contact centers there are a slew of options available—from vendors whose agents work from home, or in U.S.-based bricks-and-mortar call centers or facilities in Canada, Mexico or another continent.

Whether to consider contact centers outside of North America is a question more retailers are likely to face. That’s because a growing number of retail companies are outsourcing this function, says Peter Ryan, an analyst at Datamonitor, a market research firm based in the United Kingdom. In 2007, the percentage of global retailers outsourcing their contact centers was 17%. In 2009, the percentage grew to 18%, and by 2012, Datamonitor forecasts it will reach nearly 20%.

Source: Internet Retailer

Full Article: http://www.internetretailer.com/article.asp?id=33001

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