As a rather short guy, growing up it was always a challenge getting clothes to fit, with the situation not helped by the general shortage of people trained to tailor clothes.

Of course, since moving to London the problem has abated somewhat as you can pretty much find anything and everything here, but I suspect for many the lack of qualified tailors remains an issue.

Mario Galvan, the founder of menswear company Men’s Warehouse, wants to revive the flagging trade, and has launched zTailors to try and help connect tailors with customers.

They consist of an online directory for tailors to advertise their wares in an easy and customizable way, thus hopefully saving on many of the expenses involved in advertising, or indeed hiring city center locations.

The tailors are all listed online, and should the customer find one to his liking, they will visit the client in their home and do the required work.

How the process works

Customers sign up to the site and request a fitting at their home or office.  The site will then assign them a tailor with at least five years worth of experience that has also been vetted by the team at zTailors.

Once the fitting has taken place, the tailor takes the clothes away with them to complete the job, before then returning the finished item to the customer within a week.

The creators believe prices on the site are competitive, with, for instance, a shirt tapering coming in at $20.  They have already signed up around 600 tailors to the site, who can earn between $25-50 an hour for their efforts.

The site has already agreed a partnership with the department store Macy’s, whereby the store offer customers a tailoring service for all online customers in the Los Angeles area.

zTailors is already operating in New York and LA, and hopes to expand across the US in the coming months, before potentially expanding overseas after that.

It’s an interesting approach and follows in the footsteps of businesses like Uber in providing an easy marketplace to connect buyers and sellers.