Fashion is one of the largest selling e-commerce categories worldwide. In New Zealand and Australia, over $3.4bn is spent online on fashion annually. In the last year, online spending on clothing and accessories in New Zealand increased by over 21%.
Designer Wardrobe is an online fashion community of like-minded individuals who love to buy, sell and rent designer items to and from each other. Originally a popular Facebook group, it quickly grew into a premium standalone web and app platform with members trading their favourite preloved designer labels.
It’s a thriving community too, with a rapidly growing base of over 87,000 members, a returning visitor rate of 70%, over 26,000 live listings, and more than 1.2 million page views per month.
The platform’s sell-through rate on clothing is over 5 times that of Trade Me’s currently reported sell-through of Women’s Clothing, which until recently was one of the only options for selling clothing online. The technology behind Designer Wardrobe’s platform has been built from the ground up specifically for fashion. The platform utilises a high degree of curation, as well as superior filtering functionality and automation, and this has allowed the company to achieve superior metrics when compared to Trade Me’s generalised marketplace.
The success of marketplaces designed specifically for fashion, as opposed to generalised marketplaces such as Trade Me and eBay, is evidenced by the substantial traction these fashion focused marketplaces have exhibited overseas. Rent the Runway, the market leader in the US was forecasting US$121 million in rental revenue for 2016.
At present, Designer Wardrobe is focused on Women’s fashion, and although there is still plenty of room for growth in this category, there is a significant opportunity to expand into other categories such as Menswear and Kidswear.
Today, Designer Wardrobe is a fashion-tech company focused on creating a great peer-to-peer experience for its members, while also being a mutually beneficial sales channel for designers and retail partners. The core services offered through Designer Wardrobe are as follows:
Designer Wardrobe is the only online peer-to-peer fashion marketplace in Australasia with a focus on high-end fashion, and this has allowed the company to gain a strong foothold. Designer Wardrobe is now looking to develop and grow the business further in order to fully own the market. To achieve this, the following initiatives are in development:
In order to execute these initiatives, Designer Wardrobe is now raising a targeted $1.2m through Snowball Effect on a pre-money valuation of $4m. The Company will also consider over-subscriptions up to a total of $1.7m.
Designer Wardrobe benefits from excellent governance, with investor Simon Moutter (Spark) as chair and the active involvement of internet entrepreneur Shane Bradley who is an investor/director.
The rapid growth of the platform since inception is evidence that Designer Wardrobe has built a marketplace that their users want. With further investment, Designer Wardrobe can grow at a faster rate and own the online pre-loved fashion trading space in Australasia.
Donielle created the Designer Wardrobe Facebook Group as a community proof of concept, before developing it with Aidan and Jarrod as a standalone platform. The Designer Wardrobe team has a broad mix of creative, technical and business skills. Key team members include:
It's crucial for you to understand the characteristics and risks of this investment opportunity. New Zealand law normally requires people who offer financial products to provide in-depth information to investors before they invest. The usual rules do not apply to offers by companies through Snowball Effect. As a result, you may not be given all the information you need to make an informed decision. Investing is risky. Some of the key risks include loss of capital, illiquidity, lack of returns, dilution, loss of key people and customers, and lack of control. You should only invest money that you can afford to lose.