There is someone who quickly became important to Benoît and me , but who we never really introduced to you (although we often recommend him).
This is Gilles Masson , who advises us on the development of BonneGueule and who is always there when we have a setback (it happens to us too).
We also call our dinners the Free-Massonic meetings (or the massonery workshops, since we are still and tirelessly building BonneGueule). You will see that the interview is also colorful 😉
Note: You can directly make an appointment with Gilles and his brother François-Xavier on the website of their store, Atelier Mesure .
Introducing: the incredible Gilles Masson
Gilles is a serial entrepreneur , who has always worked in textiles.
The incredible Gilles Masson is him.
Lanvin model when he was very young, then quickly sales manager in luxury houses, before saving a French clothing workshop from bankruptcy, and setting up his own men's suit shop in the Saint-Germain district where many ministers came to get dressed.
Gilles then tried the American adventure for a few years, and returned to settle in Paris where he is now launching, little by little, his own vision of the tailor-made suit boutique (in concrete terms, it is the traditional half measure, the big measure not being accessible unless you spend several thousand euros).
Gilles Masson and his storefront at 44 rue de la Tour Maubourg in Paris... very special (it is still under construction). We see a little of it in the video.
Gilles Masson and BonneGueule
Gilles contacted us about a year ago. Indeed, it surprised him a lot that websites could find success by exposing hyper-technical details on clothing.
Details which are not details, but which have tended to be lost in recent decades, because the consumer no longer paid attention to them : terrible 80s and 90s where non-style reigned accompanied by non-quality which went with it.
But back to Gilles. The almost 30 years that separate us are a great wealth of experience for our team of young adults, all in their mid-twenties.
This is how we were able to organize ourselves better, and optimize our financial management (very important when buying stocks... and avoid sell-outs : the famous need for working capital is unforgiving!). And Gilles also got us out of some nice legal pitfalls, by introducing us to his great friend Pierre, who is a very renowned lawyer (and someone we also really like).
For our part, we are also giving Gilles some tips, at our level. But let's be clear: he is far from falling into the cliché of the fifty-year-old who fears the Inter-ouaibes : it is impressive how organized and connected he is.
But we still exchange some tips on designing and managing a website, which is kind of our strong point.
A healthy and sustainable vision of commerce
But what really makes Gilles unique (and also brings us together a lot) is his vision of the retail profession.
I regularly recommend Gilles Masson to those who ask me where to make a costume, and readers spontaneously send us their testimonials (sometimes quite funny).
But beyond that, I can no longer count the anecdotes that people have told me , where Gilles closes his shop in the middle of the afternoon, and takes one of his customers to the train station at high speed, just to help him out, like that .
Or when he welcomes and serves a BonneGueule reader in a wheelchair, where other tailors discard because it is not profitable in relation to the efforts devoted.
Or when he explains, for an hour and a half, the details of the making to other readers, simply curious this time…
Or when he opens his shop on Sunday at 11 p.m. for an urgent order from a gentleman who is getting married, who was set up by another tailor, and to whom Gilles gives a book of oriental poetry.
It's quite unusual, but Gilles finds it perfectly normal: it's simply his vision of business .
So of course, when we do e-commerce, we have to adapt the way we do things a little to best serve a larger number of people: set times to come to the office, ask not to use our cell phone numbers personally to ask for a size exchange, and a few things like that, but each discussion with Gilles remains a moment where we ask ourselves “how could I have written this article better?” », “how can we further improve the free response service to readers’ questions?” ", "How can we better inform customers about the status of their order? ".
So we did an interview with Gilles, where he explains all this to us with his baritone voice, and his grip worthy of gunslinging uncles:
Interviewer: Gilles, hi! As I wrote in the article, you are someone we have known for a while because you help us a lot with many things related to the organization of Bonne Gueule. And then also, through the discussions we had, you gave us a lot of advice on everything that was of value to the merchant.
Gilles Masson: Today, you have a brand, a style, a price. So. That's the bulk of the market. And you can buy everything that people sell you in this brand with the style, with the price. Knowing that the brand is a real social recognition. You dress “at home”, a real benefit. I'm not into that at all, I find that things have changed, that today, we have to start with quality, which is what I've always done. But today, it must be expressed. And allow the person who is going to make a garment to understand these stories of quality. However, it's a job that I did for 20 years, so I know the quality of the materials well. Which means that today, instead of making things and selling them, I make them with the customer who comes. And I said to him: “This is your garment.” My thing is to tell them: “You know what you want ? I execute. You do not know ? We discuss. »And we start with the quality of the materials. I thought it wasn't playable. But in fact, all the people of your generation, you are thirsty, which surprises and delights me, to understand what quality is, and the questions that are asked of me amaze me. I've always worked on that. The clientele that I had, who are more of my generation, were not very interested in it. And your generation is much more interested in it. I am absolutely delighted. I try to sell very, very high-end products since I take the best in Italy and the best in England. Depending on the client, we go for Italian subjects or English subjects but I don't worry. I have the two best.
Interviewer: And according to you Gilles, what makes people of our generation more interested in fabrics, quality, technicality while those who came before had rather abandoned that over the years ?
Gilles Masson: My generation was all about costumes and nothing else. You have the freedom, that is to say you can go to work in the outfit you choose. A chic guy today, chic jeans, chic shoes, chic jacket, chic t-shirt or tie, he's perfectly elegant, he can go to work. In this whole notion of costume which was my culture of yesterday, which began to decay, I was convinced that your generation was not going to be interested in it. There was no reason. And what do I discover? People aged 25 who say to me: “Explain to me, I want to understand. I want to understand what I'm buying. » I take care of a client as if they are unique. So the appointment system is not a job. I put: I'm open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. And I want each person alone for an hour. So. For ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, depending on the person, we discuss these famous stories about fabrics and quality, so that they understand. He goes out, he is armed in his choice. And it is a choice made with full knowledge of the facts.
Interviewer: In our discussions, we often talked about trade values, are they a little lost? First of all, what are trade values?
Gilles Masson: Listen, if you ask the question “What is the most important thing in a business?” » there are three answers. From a certain generation, we will say, a business was location, location, location. Today it's over. The most important thing in a business is the seller, the seller and the seller. So, we can make destination stores, where people go; and not passing stores to attract crowds. Conversely, the most important thing is the seller. It’s betting on the man. Because when you explain to him six months of work by people who are going to look for materials, create fabrics, create clothes, you have to explain it to them so that they can pass on all that. And the end customer is delighted to know all this.
Interviewer: And so, if you had to recruit a salesperson today, what would be their main qualities?
Gilles Masson: When I hire a salesperson, I ask them why? If he tells me to sell, I'll fire him. Maybe he thinks I'm crazy, he's not wrong, I'm a little crazy. But the first thing I say to him is this: “Why are you involved?” To sell ? " Fired. Red card.
Interviewer: So he has to respond to advise?
Gilles Masson: No. To give love to the customer. But yes ! When you have a client, you only take care of him, he's a prince. Everything is up to you... There you go, the customer is king. Well, treat him like a king. So, no one else for an hour. All the sales associate's skills or mine should only be for that person.
Interviewer: When a client has desires that, in fact, are not in his interest, that he perhaps has bad taste or that he wants things that would be too big or too small for him, what is that? at that moment the role of the seller?
Gilles Masson: It’s very easy. Look at what is marked, the main thing is to be good in your style. Do you have any ideas? You communicate them. It's giving him the choice and giving your opinion. For example, he wants things that are not in his size, as you just said, in colors that are not at all in trend and what's more, don't go at all with his skin and his pigmentation and his hair, you let him do it. And then you show him that you can do something else. And he chooses. And the main thing is that he is good in his style. This is my basic line.
Interviewer: So you work in a profession where, in fact, you don't necessarily choose your clientele. Most of the time people are very cool. But sometimes, there are also probably some who are less nice or who lack manners. Is it also the salesperson's role to remind a customer that he or she is going beyond the limits?
Gilles Masson: No. You blacklist him, that's all. 100% of customers leaving a commercial establishment must be happy. They must smile. Even the CCs. Do you know what CC means? Ball-breaker. He's bad everywhere, it doesn't matter, he's a customer. So you do what he asks you. You win, you lose, it doesn't matter, but he leaves with a smile. On the other hand, he is so disingenuous, he is so ill-mannered, so complicated, you blacklist him. And when he comes back, you don't, you can't, you're caught, and then he leaves alone. We must refuse conflict.
Interviewer: And do you ever make friends with customers and then have drinks with them?
Gilles Masson: If you had come last night, we had three traffic jams with three customers. As I make a little wine, as you know, they wanted to taste it. We spent an hour and a half making the costumes. We spent an hour and a half talking about wine. Like fabrics and wine, there are many parallels. They left, we all had a little…, they said: “we had a great time, we had a great time!” » If you like, we were serious about the clothing part and then, we were crazy about the wine part. It was funny.
Interviewer: You've had stores for a while. Do you have any funny stories to share about customers who were often annoying, either a little weird, or...
Gilles Masson: Well at the beginning, I didn't have all this knowledge. So my hand was a little slow. When someone wanted to take something and not pay for it, for example, that could make me slightly angry. He took his pencil filler and we clarified things. For example, yes, yes, there are a lot. There is at the beginning, it was at the beginning. Now I'm much more polite.
Interviewer: On the site, we have an article where we actually give our favorite addresses on tailors, made-to-measure, ready-to-wear, etc. And then obviously, I put you in it because I'm wearing one of your costumes and I'm very happy with it, and that often brings people back to your store. And where you surprised me a lot is that you regularly tell me that these are people aged 40-50. However, this is not necessarily the age of the typical blog reader. What do you think about it ?
Gilles Masson: What is very surprising is that the generation in their forties and fifties and over, many of them go on blogs now. They read young people's blogs to seek advice and to find addresses. Knowing that many of your brands are completely unknown to our generation. They go there, they want to see, they want to understand. How many people come saying: I read on a forum, I read on a blog of yours, others, who are not at all in the target.
Interviewer: So ultimately, it's no longer a youth media at all.
Gilles Masson: No. It's starting to be everyone's media. There you have it, people aged 40-60 who now say that they go first before going to buy on the sites, on the forums, on the blogs, to see what it is all about, to get ideas. That's great.
Interviewer: Thank you very much Gilles.
Gilles Masson: But please.
Interviewer: In the rest of the article, I test the costume with look ideas. And then if you are passing through Paris, even if it is just to chat with someone who will explain to you all the characteristics of quality clothing, do not hesitate to stop by Gilles and…
Gilles Masson: To make an appointment.
Interviewer: To make an appointment. He will explain it to you in his characteristic baritone voice.
The Gilles Masson costume test
In my article on visiting the Cerruti spinning mill , I didn't tell you everything. I got along very well with Julian Cerruti, who is really a very cool guy, and who then personally chose a cut of fabric for me, based on a pattern that I couldn't find!
I had this cut assembled by Gilles' workshop, which actually has three subcontractor workshops, depending on the level of finish requested. I deliberately opted for the least expensive of the three , so as to have a realistic overview of Gilles' work.
It's a semi-canvassed suit that costs €850 (at least if I hadn't provided the fabric myself: I just paid for the service and the tailoring). And there is an offer of €780 for those under 25.
General silhouette of the Gilles Masson costume
A good overall silhouette, apart from my slightly low shoulder: we have a slightly loose cut, a French style that I have learned to appreciate. Gilles Masson suit, Office Artist shirt, Natural Born Elegance embossed tie, Randolph Engineering glasses, Jean-Baptiste Rautureau ankle boots.
By adding a Cacharel oilcloth trench coat, you're ready for fall... or two-wheelers (unfortunately the brand only distributes its men's line in Turkey!).
A very elegant shoulder drop, with moderate padding. Note the collar firmly placed on the back of the neck, and the embossing of the tie (contrast in material!).
Focus on the Office Artist shirt, a young French brand that we will soon test:
I'm lucky to have a good fit with their shirt cuts.
High-end finishes
We find the things we like, and some other finishes that I didn't expect in this price range:
Well-finished open buttonholes, which is normal for high-end products. With overlapping buttons, which is a nice little tailoring detail.
Welt pockets with half-moon finishes: this is also something that you absolutely must find in this price range. The seams are very neat, it's clean. With zoom on the very beautiful material of Lanificio Cerruti.
Rarer: a belt pin. This little detail allows you to secure the belt buckle, very practical when you need to tighten your belt after losing a little weight.
Linings in the armpits to protect your suit from wear and prevent sweating in summer. The lining is in viscose (it would have been unthinkable to find polyester in this range, especially since it makes you sweat).
We also find the cleanliness in the pants, the finishing touches, perfectly executed belt loops . Nothing to do with something heat-sealed all stuck in the bionic cabin of Nouveaux Bidules , the work of which I have already come across several times... perfectible.
Beyond that, you have service and real security with a trader like Gilles , someone who will not hesitate to explain to you the ins and outs of stylistic choices, materials and finishes for two hours. His brother François-Xavier, with whom he works, is part of his continuity!
Their Atelier Mesure boutique is located at 44 Boulevard de la Tour Maubourg in Paris , in the 7th arrondissement (and you can call them from us, they will pamper you a little more: 01.45.50.21.09).
And just for laughs...
Between the old study friends that I sent to Gilles to choose a wedding suit , those who found themselves having lunch with him, and the readers who are escorted to the station by Gilles, I am curious to know the anecdotes from others who have already visited his store.
I'm sure there are some interesting stories knowing the character! Tell us !
