4 Couture - International Trade Matters Ltd

Corporate fashion boutique

4couture is a creative, boutique agency with over 15 years’ experience in supplying stylish corporate clothing, workwear and branded promotional merchandise. They have a forward thinking, in house design team responsible for supplying some of the largest household brands in the UK and EMEA. Products vary from off-the-peg promotional clothing, field team uniforms, hospitality and retail wardrobing right through to fully bespoke designs. As part of their service to customers they will provide management, warehousing and running of client inventories. Customers value them for being good with the smallest details, great with the big ideas and always fun to work with!

Established international traders understanding the impact of Brexit

The team at 4couture already manage imports and exports from various parts of the world. In addition to traditional imports and exports, they also provide a supply service for a large multi-national in the EU which includes fulfilment to recipient customers around the world. Management of the goods and supplies is part of the service 4couture provide so it is essential that everything flow smoothly.

Having handled imports and exports for some years, the team had processes in place but wanted to ensure the processes were effective and met compliance requirements. As importantly, with several trading partners in the EU, they also wanted to understand the impact of departure of the UK from the EU.

Although there were a variety of public training courses available, a bespoke offering was sought that would be more time- and cost-efficient and tailored to their needs.

How International Trade Matters Ltd helped

Our International Trade Specialist held a tailoring call to learn what was needed, find out about current activities and knowledge levels, and the goals for the training. The training was delivered at a time and place that worked most effectively for 4couture. Not only was instruction provided, but there was also time for detailed discussion about the commercial aspects of the business that drive many of the choices taken.

Outcomes

4couture were able to understand the overall process for international buying and selling and took away a series of tasks they could implement to drive improvements. Understanding the commercial implications of their policies was essential to the value of the training. By the end, 4couture could see that their approach not only followed the rules, but also provided an enhanced level of service to their customers which they could shout about.

“We’d highly recommend the bespoke training we received, we learnt so much that will immediately help us run our international trade more effectively including aspects we hadn’t even given consideration to. Having a day tailored to our needs meant that we could flesh out all sorts of real scenarios that we face on a daily basis and we came away with practical solutions rather than just the theory. Frances’ business acumen meant that she was very quickly able to grasp the intricacies of our day to day logistics and she provided some invaluable suggestions which we’ve already started to implement.
Lisa Morelli, Director