Halethorpe-based Discount Bridal Service Inc. leaves brides in a

Daily Record, The (Baltimore), Jul 29, 2005 by Kathleen Johnston Jarboe

Natalie Hovey was on a budget for her October wedding. So when a friend told the California resident she could save a couple hundred dollars on her gown through Discount Bridal Service Inc., she found a dealer and placed an order for a simple, strapless Paloma Blanca silk gown. She saved $300.

Now she holds a dress by the same maker. Discount Bridal sent it to her after it collapsed earlier this month. The new dress has straps. It's covered in embroidery. And it's made out of a polyester blend.

It was not comparable, the 28-year-old corporate event planner said.

The $2.6 million bankruptcy of Discount Bridal and its affiliate businesses earlier this month left at least hundreds of brides nationwide in a lurch. Having paid up front for the dress of their dreams, they were left with nothing more than the closest matching stock on hand.

But the collapse of the Baltimore County business, which had been one of the country's largest discounters of bridal apparel, rumbled past the woes of brides. It exposed a raw nerve in the bridal industry and has left many questioning whether there is a future for discounters like Discount Bridal.

The Halethorpe business passed on savings of 20 percent to 40 percent off retail gown prices by keeping overheard low. With just one official showroom in Maryland for trying on dresses, most orders were placed through a network of close to 500 dealers across the country. Brides largely would shop at regular dress shops and then find a Discount Bridal dealer in their state to place the order.

Advocates of the business model compared it to car shopping: Test drive the vehicle, pick the one you want and then find the best price.

The bridal shops were always up in arms about this, said Michele Bobb, a former Discount Bridal dealer in Gaithersburg. It just flew in the face of everything that was sacred about the bridal industry.

The approach created tension among bridal stores, Discount Bridal and other discounters who emerged after Discount Bridal by selling dresses over the Internet. Bridal stores would spend thousands stocking their store with dress samples each season. Then there are the countless hours required to help prospective brides try on dresses and pin them for sizing estimates. Many dressmakers agree to only sell their gowns to authorized stores that carry the costly samples, forcing discounters to use third parties in a process called trans-shipping to get gowns.

Some bridal stores and dressmakers have called the bankruptcy a cautionary tale. They say the discounting business model is flawed, and that brides are playing with fire by buying outside the realm of authorized dealers.

I think girls ordering wedding gowns off the Internet is probably putting one of the most important things at their wedding at risk, said Michaela Hume, a customer service and shipping manager with manufacturer Essense of Australia. I hope other girls learn from [the bankruptcy].

Dressmakers need the full-service stores to carry their lines in order to drive sales. And while some manufacturers turn a blind eye to stores that look like discounters, others refuse to deal with such companies, especially as many full-service shops lobby hard with threats to stop carrying designers' lines.

We need them to carry our collection. If they don't carry our collection we are dead in the water, said Marty Bernstein, president of Toronto-based designer Paloma Blanca. Bernstein said he didn't deal with discounters and severed relations with Discount Bridal years ago.

[Losing the support of full-service bridal shops] would destroy me because I can't count on DBS or Internet sales unless the bride sees [the dress] in the store anyway, he said.

Some stores classified as discounters don't want to discuss their business in the wake of the bankruptcy. In the process of tracking down lost dresses from Discount Bridal, many manufacturers discovered the third parties the Halethorpe business used to get around dressmakers that refused to deal directly with the store.

Other companies who helped Discount Bridal brides were hurt for their efforts. A bridal consumer Web site pulled its list of what manufacturers were cutting prices for brides who had already paid once for their dress. Some retailers wanted brides to pay a second time - this time at full retail price, according to the site.

The people who are helping brides don't exactly want to stick their head up and get fired at by their competitors, said Alan Fields, a consumer advocate for brides and author of Bridal Bargains and Bridal Passport. In the perverse world that is bridal retail, no good deed goes unpunished.

To the rescue

Stacks of thick red, shiny purple and other colored binders line the downstairs wall of Michele Bobb's Gaithersburg home. In a basement room, there are shelves of even more binders carrying sample wedding invitations, and binders listing dresses and costs for her past orders for Discount Bridal.

Retailers typically sell gowns at twice the wholesale price dressmakers charge. Discount Bridal cut that markup significantly. Bobb used the foot traffic she received from Discount Bridal to push her invitation business.