Profile: Dessi Bell, founder of Zaggora

Stressing out about losing weight for your wedding is a reality for many women. The pressure is no rare thing. But turning this stress into a highly-successful business proposition definitely is. But that’s what happened to 28 year old ex-investment banker Dessi Bell and her burgeoning company Zaggora.

Her revolutionary hot pants, which actually help you to lose weight, have attracted over 3 million visitors to her website from 119 different countries around the world and since launch in July 2011, she has sold over 550,000 pairs.

I caught up with Dessi to find out more about the business of selling hot pants online, if she will ever set up a brick-and-mortar store and why she would never have made it without social media.

So Dessi, how did it all begin?

The idea was born in 2008 when I was getting married. As an investment banker I was often short on time and I put myself through hell doing everything I could to shape up for my wedding. I thought to myself I can’t be the only women with this problem – there must be an easier way to get results and educate yourself about the most effective ways to lose weight.

I remember calling my mum from my honeymoon and telling her about the idea – it took a few years after that to actually come up with the product and get it ready for market.

How did you go about creating your famous ‘hotpants’?

It was very interesting, I learned a lot looking at university research into obesity and how heat can have an effect on weight loss. The heat element was something we felt we could work with so once we had worked out the science behind it, we set about finding a manufacturer who would work with us on it.

What were your main considerations when setting up your website?

How to create credibility for ourselves as a female consumer product because new things that will make you younger and slimmer emerge every day. We needed to incorporate the fact that our products have credibility.

We gave away products to bloggers who were big in the States to try on and encouraged them to come to our Facebook page to discuss their experiences. It was important for us to incorporate Facebook onto the homepage so that visitors could see all of the reviews popping and the buzz straight away.

Also we knew we wanted to be able to ship globally from day one so we created a partnership with a global logistics company and also created French and German versions of the website.

We were getting orders from those countries early on so knew we needed to create a more localised experience for those markets. We are developing a new website though which will be able to localise even more and we can tailor to cultural differences.

How many people work for the company now?

We started out with two people in a living room and now we have a 30 strong team. We have a design team, web development, graphic designers, customer service team in the UK and we also have people on the ground in the States doing sales.

We currently only sell online through our website but we are talking with a few retailers at the moment about getting our products stocked.

Would you ever consider setting up a brick-and-mortar store?

We did look at that, we were in quite advanced talks with Bluewater Shopping Centre but we decided against it. We are an online business and with the drop in footfall in physical stores we thought the capital needed to set up a store would be deployed more efficiently on our online store.

I have thought about what I would do if I had a store in the future. It would be more of an environment where people could come and experience the brand. More than just selling products we could offer workouts and advice, people could come and educate themselves. You need to give people more of a reason to venture out. I do all of my shopping online – as it becomes easier to shop online you need to offer an experience rather than just sell.

Do you have a mobile friendly website?

We are have a mobile site but it’s not very friendly! We are making it more mobile friendly as part of our new website. It is part of the reason we are updating our site but more than that – our current website has very basic functionality and doesn’t allow for interaction and engagement with customers.

The new site will have interactive features which will help us to reach our customers and track our marketing spend a lot better. At the moment it is very on-sided, the consumer sees what we tell them and even though we have many reviews it is a very linear experience. We want to create somewhere people can come and engage with us.

How important are reviews and social media to your business?

Our whole business is build on word-of-mouth and we have 11,000 brand ambassadors – women that spread the word for us online and offline. Social media is incredibly important for us we have 380,000 fans on Facebook and 30,000 Twitter followers.

There’s nothing more valuable than third party review. Our community of women use our social media channels to give their honest opinions and they have grown into valuable places for our community to look for inspiration and ask questions. It is a support network for people engaging with our brand.

Would you have been able to have the same success without social media?

I don’t think we would have been able to build the business we have without social media, it has offered us so many amazing opportunities.  I just think had it not been for that opportunity, in an old economy, we would have to have found a retailer, go and get some press – all very one-sided and success depends on a few individual players in the market place.

Social media has given us that community which acts as an ongoing focus group. If we are looking at new stuff we ask them we get comment on what they think and what we should improve in our current lines. Five years ago you would have had to pay to get 20 people in an office and get feedback – slower and less representative.

How important is editorial for ecommerce?

We have a blog which is done very well where we provide tips on working out and other features. We have a content editor in-house who writes the blog we use that as a tool to start the conversations – this will be even more true with our new website.

I agree a lot of ecommerce is looking to editorial but my view is it’s very much a one way discussion – if I sit and read Vogue I read what the editor thinks, no-one listens to my point of view. I prefer to start conversations rather than just tell my customers what I think.

What are your plans for growth?

Since launch we have sold more than 550,000 products around the world and it has been a great success. Next we are focused on more product development with new, better performing materials.

We also want to focus on fashionable wear. I think there is a real gap in the market for sportswear that looks good and that women aren’t afraid to wear outside the gym if they need to run errand after a work-out.

We will also be focusing on increasing our distribution channels. We recently went to the Vitality Show – a health, beauty, fitness and wellbeing event and 90% of the people who stopped at our stall hadn’t heard of us. It was a great way to engage with potential clients so we will be exploring more channels like that.

For more information visit zaggora.com