Tips for Buying a Suit Online
Choosing a reputable company.

There are several companies online selling men’s suits and the choices can be confusing. But you must make sure you are buying from a reputable company first. There are plenty of ways to spot non-reputable companies online. Here are some tips:

1. Scanned photographs from catalogs.
One of the best ways to detect a good company is to notice the photographs showing the suits for sell. Is it a catalog photograph or a stock photograph taken from a catalog or magazine? Unless the company puts out a printed catalog, then more than likely the company just took photographs from other sources. And the chances are high the company doesn’t stock the product and the chances are even higher you won’t receive the product advertised. A lot of very small sellers use these methods to entice buys and will then ship you something totally different. This is especially true for men’s suits online. At VavraItaly.com, we photograph all of own pictures and you will be guaranteed to receive the product shown.

2. Secured checkout.
Another way to ensure safe web shopping is to make sure the web site has a secured checkout process. When you get to the pages that will require your personal information, look for a yellow lock graphic on the bottom of your computer screen on the right  . In your browser you’ll see “https”, instead of “http”. If you don’t see both, then your information isn’t encrypted and is not safe. Getting a secured web site requires a security certificate. Getting a security certificate requires verification of the company's credit and identity. Don’t trust any graphics or text on the web site saying the web site is safe, you’ll know when you get to the checkout page and see the “https” in your browser.

3. Unrealistic claims.
We see web sites advertising “Italian” suits online for as low as $99-$199. This is their every day low price, not a product that is marked down.
Simply put, it’s impossible to sell an Italian suit for $99-$199, unless the retailer is losing money on each sale. The Euro vs. the US Dollar is in the $1.25 range. Meaning: it cost us Americans about $1.25 to buy 1 Euro.    

What really is going on is these web sites are selling Chinese-made suits, not Italian. They get them into the United States and re-tag the sleeve tags with “Made in Italy”. 
As the old saying goes, "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.".

A way to ensure you are buying a real Italian suit is to look in the breast pocket and see the content tag. On the content tag you will see “Made in Italy”. If you don’t see any place of origin, then it is made in China or Korea. By law, a company must reveal on each product page of a web site if a product is “Imported” or made in the USA. They also must reveal the fabric content on each product.

4. Misspellings and confusing product listings.
Of course, we all make spelling errors and mistakes. Even with us, we’ve been known to have misspellings and errors. But if you see a tremendous amount of errors and misspellings, then you are probably dealing with someone who is putting up web pages in a hurry so they can hurry up and make money. This usually indicates they may be trying to scam customers out of money. Any reputable company will spell check and make sure their product listings are clear and concise. They will also try to give enough information so that the customer understands what they are buying.

5. No new products.
Does the web site have a “new arrivals” or ‘new products” page? Especially in selling suits online, non-reputable web sites will put up stock photographs or catalog photographs from wholesalers without stocking any merchandise or for that matter, never even seeing the merchandise in person. They sit back and wait for a buyer and then purchase from the wholesaler. If you are lucky, the merchandise is still available. But without a new products page, most web sites may have been sitting there for months or even years without changing. We’ve seen this throughout our years of being online. Other web sites will still have suit photographs from 2 to 3 years ago. Or they will have photographs from catalogs that don’t even exist anymore. Without a new products page, you can probably guess the web site isn’t active and isn’t being updated.

6. Who am I really buying from?
Web site domain registrations are basically public information.  Just look it up with Whois.com here:
http://whois.domaintools.com/   and type in the domain name.   You will see exactly who you are dealing with and, most importantly, if they have a secured site.  Look for "SSL Cert".  If it says "no valid SSL", then it is not a secured site.   Also be wary of anyone using hidden registrations through companies such as Domains by Proxy.  From a consumer's stand point, there is no good reason for a shopping web site to have a hidden registration.  We see this most often with a conglomerate of different web site domains advertising cheap Italian suits. But these various web sites are actually one company/person.  

For measuring information on suits see our Measuring Information and Clothing Questions sections.