Is it possible to fulfil every order perfectly? Definitely not, but you can try and give your all to satisfy the customer.
That has always been my goal over the last 19 years. Have I achieved it? No, I haven't.
Satisfaction starts with good advice, starts with experience of what is possible and what unfortunately doesn't work. But that was lacking in the early days.
There's no such thing as can't? It is often said, but unfortunately it cannot be realised in the final analysis. Despite all good intentions, there will always be things that are not possible, where customer wishes meet reality, but unfortunately there is a "can't". The art is to recognise this, to think outside the box and to see problems that inevitably lead to the customer not being satisfied with the product.
This requires experience, experience that is not available at first and unfortunately may not be available at all. And it needs a team of employees who fulfil their task as if it were their own company, who give their all to make a product as perfect as possible.
We often discussed problems in this team before they became acute, decided on improvements together before damage occurred, and were all convinced that we were doing the right thing. And we racked our brains before even one of our competitors had this problem on their radar.
Fantastic Rubber's products have been continuously developed, improved in many details, in favour of the customer, who often only noticed it when he received a new full suit after a long time and felt a clear difference.
I am not the typical designer, I am often referred to as the engineer for latex. Well, that may even be true, because if the design has flaws, the workmanship won't make it any better.
Fantastic Rubber has achieved a fit that is among the best possible. And I'm proud of that, and the whole team is proud of that, because it's not just my success, it's the success of the whole team. I am particularly proud of the fact that almost half of our customers are women, as this was very different in the days before Fantastic Rubber.
But what you don't see in the countless pictures on the internet, on Facebook, Insta and other social media, is the very special wearing experience, a feeling that becomes addictive after a short time, a feeling that you never want to do without again.
And this doesn't just apply to full suits, but also to corsets. After all, it was the corsets that motivated me to start producing latex clothing in 2004. Because at that time there was no corset on the market that could be laced with all my strength without the eyelets coming loose and the stays coming out. And because the construction was right, these corsets were still very comfortable with very good shaping of the waist.
I can still remember all too well the words of warning from friends who meant well by me and wanted to prevent me from making mistakes. Their opinion was consistently that a latex corset simply couldn't work because of the stretchiness of the material, that I shouldn't get carried away and should leave it alone. And there is no money to be made with latex clothing anyway, because the probability of making something, especially without any experience, is almost ZERO. Too many opportunities to do something wrong with every order, which ultimately does NOT lead to customer satisfaction and you then have stress with a large number of orders.
Well, experience shows that it is perfectly possible to make a corset out of latex. And the competitors on the market have also learnt a lot. Congratulations from me.
When I started with catsuits in 2006, I had the same concerns again. Catsuits are heavy rubber, women very rarely wear them, usually only models or ladies for professional reasons. These suits would hang on the clothes rail everywhere looking for a buyer, and with very limited success.
My ideas about the collar entry led to even more scepticism, as such a full suit was far too expensive as a 1x suit and it couldn't work at all, as latex is sensitive and tears quickly.
I replied that I would offer a free repair (for the time being) to allay the customer's fears. Now Peter is completely spinning his wheels, as he won't be able to stop repairing and won't have time to produce anything new at all.
Well, the figures speak a different language: for almost 17,000 new orders, there are only around 5,000 repair orders, many of which are older suits that have been to us several times for repair, as well as third-party repairs and modifications to items that were not manufactured by Fantastic Rubber.
But this free repair doesn't just mean more work, more unpaid labour, it also increases customer loyalty and makes it possible to analyse damage in the first place, which then flows into production as an improvement. For example, we have developed reinforcements that eliminate weak points and thus successfully prevent tears in the latex.
Over the years, other products were added, including the latex boots in 2020 - a product that I had wanted to tackle for a long time but had never managed to do so before due to time and capacity constraints. The boots are now a regularly requested product with increasing demand.
Now it's time to pass the Fantastic Rubber company on into the hands of a younger successor, a successor to be precise, who has much more strength not only to keep Fantastic Rubber at the top of the industry, but also to keep it growing.
Because my strength is waning, none of us know how much time we have left on earth and I can feel the approaching winter in my bones. But to ensure that my successor is just as successful and that the team continues to have a secure job in the future, I will continue to be available with all my experience and skills. The captain will then only be Lotze.
I hope that all customers will continue to have confidence in the products offered by Fantastic Rubber, that they will not be disappointed and that the products will continue to infect and addict many people with the latex virus in the future.
Thanks for your trust.
Peter Pick