Mario Galvan has been a tailor for twenty-five years. He learned the trade from his parents, who worked in small tailor shops in Mexico before moving the family to Southern California in search of better opportunities. As a child, Galvan was surrounded by sewing machines and spools of thread, but it wasn’t until he entered his late teens that he began to marvel at his parent’s skill. “I was suddenly able to see the craftsmanship that goes into the garments that they worked on,” Galvan tells Fast Company. “I am still sometimes amazed that they are able to create such wonderful things with these little machines.”

I think tailoring speaks to the American dream: these are people who move to America and often make sacrifices so that their children will be able to have a good life.

Since the age of 16, Galvan has worked in a range of roles in the sewing industry, both as a tailor and as a manager of tailors. Over the course of his career, he’s found that one of the biggest challenges of being a tailor is simply finding customers. “You have to be in a really great location in a strip mall or somewhere that is heavily driven by foot traffic for your tailor shop to be successful,” Galvan says. “Most tailors can’t afford to advertise to get their name out beyond their immediate clientele. They mostly rely on word of mouth.” And for consumers, finding a good tailor has always been somewhat of a problem, since there is no simple tailor directory to rely on.

Another challenge facing tailors is the fact that Americans have been spending less and less on alterations over the last few decades: with cheap fashion widely available at stores like Target and H&M, clothes have become disposable products that don’t warrant the investment of tailoring services, making it even harder for tailors to make a living.





George Zimmer, best known for founding Men’s Wearhouse in 1973, has an ambitious plan to breathe new life into the craft of tailoring. Today he announces the launch of his new tailor-on-demand service, zTailors. Using an online platform, customers can locate a tailor in their neighborhood and dispatch them to their home, office, or even a conveniently located Starbucks–whenever they want. The services are priced competitively: you can get jeans hemmed for $15 or shirts tapered for $20. zTailors is also making the network of tailors available to clothing stores that provide tailoring to their customers.

George Zimmer

For Zimmer, zTailors wasn’t simply a way to fill a need in the market by connecting tailors to customers using technology. After 40 years at the helm of Men’s Wearhouse, Zimmer has worked closely with tailors and learned the ins and outs of their craft. He says this project was an attempt to help preserve the livelihoods of America’s tailors, many of whom are recent immigrants to this country and whose craft has been passed down from generation to generation.

“Tailoring is mostly not an American phenomenon,” Zimmer explains. “In my prior career at Men’s Wearhouse, we had tailors from two dozen countries. I think tailoring speaks to the American dream: these are people who move to America and often make sacrifices so that their children will be able to have a good life.”

Currently, zTailors is available in select cities like New York and Los Angeles, but it will go national in the next four months. Since tailors will enter people’s homes, zTailors has community managers–Galvan is one of them– who perform a thorough background check on each potential new tailor in the network and verify the quality of their work. Once accepted into the system, each tailor sets the number of hours they are free to work. This allows them to earn extra money with zTailors in their free time, without losing the stability of their day job–unless they want to; for entrepreneurial tailors who find they have the capacity to make more money through zTailors than by working for another employer, this system could possibly replace their day job altogether.