Sometimes I forget

 WHAT DO I SOMETIMES FORGET?
      Well, if we're being real, it's a lot of things. However, what I'm talking about here is that sometimes I forget that we have so many people that are new to my company and they just see pretty things, but don't actually know the story of what makes our products special, or why they should buy a corset from us versus any other corset company out there.
      So, I don't believe in ever putting down other companies, although (bless their hearts) I have been put down, copied, slandered, and internet bullied (heck, I'm pretty sure everyone has) by competition.  I'm eternally grateful for my competition, as the majority of them are extraordinary people, and MY GOODNESS, we are all in this together!
       That being said, we do have a few things that I personally feel like are unique to our company, and I haven't seen it in very many others. Let me detail them below. I will try my best to not be too wordy, but any of you who know me at all....well....I'm verbose.

Damsel in this Dress Corsets Are:

• Made with Steel Boning!  Not the cheap stuff. Just because it says it's "steel boned" doesn't mean it's nice steel. We have had to source ours very carefully, and in all of my years doing this, I think we've only ever had 2 METAL BONES BREAK.  That is 2 out of....lets see...do some math...figure things out......I've made about FORTY THOUSAND CORSETS myself since I started this company, so if you take 40,000 and multiply that by 5-14 pieces per corset...holy crap. I've actually never even done the math. That's pretty freaking good.  Also, if the metal bone did have a manufacturing defect, I paid for shipping both ways and did the repair for free. I try to stick by the product.
• More of an Hourglass Curve! If I wanted my job to be easy, I would straighten out the sharp curve in the waist. If you look at most lingerie corsets, renaissance bodices, and steel boned corsets made overseas, they actually don't have a very sharp hourglass turn in the sides of the waist. Some of them can be downright barrel shaped. I totally understand why. It's MUCH easier to just stick something on a woman that is simply uniformly TIGHT than something that actually takes the flesh, skin, and...uh..."padding" on our waists and RESHAPES it. Lots of women have this idea in their head that a corset will actually physically make their body smaller.  Friends, if there was a product that could do that in 3 minutes of lacing, I would be a whole lot richer. CORSETs DO NOT MAKE YOUR BODY SMALLER. All they can do is "redistribute" parts of your body and flatten your body, as it is. When you put one one, you will definitely FEEL and SEE a different you, but there is  nothing that can take the molecules of your body and shrink them.  (Scientists..don't hate me for that sentence. I know it is wrong.)   However, I do believe that if you wore them on a regular basis, your posture would improve, your waist would honestly reshape, your portions would get smaller, and your self confidence and sense of well-being would sky-rocket! Clearly, I need to make a post on JUST this subject.
• 10 years of pattern-making and interior tweaking for superior construction!  Yes, friends, we have been in business for 10 years, since I was 18 years old! I LITERALLY think about corsets all day every day. They are always on my mind. I want to make them better, higher quality, more affordable for my time and materials, better able to fit a variety of sizes....the list goes on and on. No matter how much you, as the customer, think about corsets during your normal day, I think about them MORE. I promise.  With all that thought, the patterns get reworked and re-designed about every six months.  I NEVER say to myself, "Meh, it's been selling great all this time. There's no reason to do anything different."  I know that there will eternally be room for improvement. The only sad thing is that lots of the improvements are things that aren't visible to the eye, because they're on the interior of the corset. I will just let you know, the interior structure is more important than the exterior, and we have grown in leaps and bounds in that area in the last 2 years.    It's also good to note that I SERIOUSLY CONSIDER CUSTOMER FEEDBACK, SUGGESTIONS, AND THE OCCASIONAL COMPLAINT! You guys help fuel me to make these better, and I would completely suck without my amazing fan base. 
• Fabric is glued together before it is grommeted!  Every time I see a bodice home-made by a seamstress, no matter what her sewing skills are, the grommets are almost always pulling out because of the stress of lacing. I used to have this problem too. When you punch a hole into fabric, made of woven threads, those threads will keep pulling apart over time, especially if you're trying to suck a waist in dramatically. Thus, we take THOUSANDS of hours carefully glueing layers of extra thick upholstery to the front openings of our corsets so that the grommets won't pull out.  Once again, as with the boning, we'll have maybe one in every thousand fabrics we use that won't "adhere" well, and the grommets end up pulling a little, but we always fix things....always! 
• I care. I care so much that it's stressful and ruins my life sometimes. When a customer makes a suggestion or ESPECIALLY if we ever get a complaint, I take this deep into the roots of my soul, and struggle emotionally for days and weeks....sometimes years. I know it's not good. I know it's not healthy and it causes a lot of depression and self-flagellation. I'm trying to stop. BUT, what it DOES mean is that you do get a better product and better customer service because I beat myself up so much. 

Okay, honestly, I can think of a million other things, but I'll have to save them for later.