Kal di Paola, founder of successful online retailer Buy My Wardrobe
Kal di Paola, founder of BuyMyWardrobe, talks about how she keeps customers like Victoria Beckham and Beyoncé happy with a first-rate delivery service.
Interview by Martina Mercer
Tell us about your business
I have been in the fashion industry as a designer and entrepreneur for 15 years. My journey to BuyMyWardrobe started back when I was designing clothes under my own label and selling them from my studio flat. My motivation for starting that business was the desire to own desirable fashion items at a price I could afford (some things don’t change!).
That business grew from my flat to a west-end showroom, my label went on to sell to over 140 independents, including a Top Shop concession and was endorsed by numerous celebrities including Beyoncé, Victoria Beckham, Danni Minogue, Denise Van Outen and many more.
When people were spending times were great but by 2008 the country was in recession and business was tough and I like many people needed to reign in my spending. Spurred on by a need to cure my personal shopping habit, a wardrobe that would barely close and a very unhappy bank manager, I decided to make some cash by selling the contents of my over flowing wardrobe.
Having considered the available choices and deciding none worked for me I decided to host my very own event. An event where I could sell off my wardrobe by bringing together like minded women who shared my taste in fashion. The first event saw 17 stylish ladies gather to sell their wardrobes to invited members of the public.
The event, was ticketed and held in an upmarket venue. A Champagne preview hour, goody bags and beauty treatments added glitz to the glamour. The event was a huge success and paved the way for a BuyMyWardrobe phenomenon
More events followed and as word spread they began to sell out. After 10 sold out events, a growing community and a high demand for seller spaces I realised I was onto something and I needed to do something about it before somebody else did!
I started work on launching buymywardrobe.com as an online marketplace for pre-loved designer fashion in August 2011, we spent a year talking to our events community, branding and building the site and it officially launched at the end of August 2012 – the growth since then has been very encouraging-we will be a year old next week and in the year since launch we have attracted over 400 sellers and 46,000 registered users.
What do you think sets your delivery apart from others?
We have a deep understanding of the market through our offline events, before I decided to launch online I had already hosted over 10 events – sold the wardrobes of 200 women and created an engaged and connected offline community.
What I learnt from the offline event was invaluable in creating the concept online and allowed us to deliver something that we knew the end user wanted.
Why do you think yours is better than your competition?
We have spent some money on advertising but to date we have grown mostly organically by leveraging an existing offline community using authentic content to create an engaged online community. We have attracted high calibre investors and achieved impressive results with a relatively small amount of investment.
Our platform is social v anonymous with a community at the heart of it. The community we believe is the essential ingredient to making a marketplace work and trust is the currency. All our sellers use their real names and have bio’s on their profile. We have been able to build a trust because people know who it is that they are dealing with.
Are there any mistakes you’ve rectified to make it run smoother?
We are very lucky to have a very engaged community of users to draw feedback from and so by doing as much research as possible before we implement new functionality we ensure that mistakes are kept to a minimum. We are constantly improving the site -changing and adapting to what the user wants is essential in building a successful scalable business.
Who do you use to ensure complete reliability?
We are a marketplace so all our sellers use their own courier service – the majority use Royal Mail registered delivery.
Have you had any delivery nightmares, couriers, logistics?
Our delivery issues are very different to those of a regular e-tailer. We community manage our sellers to ensure that they are delivering an exceptional service to the users of our site.
This can often be challenging as we’re not directly in control of products going out on time and packaged in the right way- having said that our sellers value their seller memberships and therefore most adhere to our seller guidelines for post and packaging and understand the importance we place on giving an exceptional service to buyers of their items.
What can turn delivery into a nightmare? What can go wrong?
If a seller goes on holiday and forgets to hide items from their profile before going- we’re left to deal with the rightfully angry buyers!
Do you offer a gift wrapping service?
We have a VIP service as part of our offering where we handle the sales for ladies who don’t have time to manage their own accounts. For the VIP service we pack everything in good quality brown boxes and nice tissue paper and can added additional wrapping or birthday cards if requested.
Tesco recently announced that they operated their delivery service at a loss. Do you think it’s worth it for the extra custom it brings?
Yes – very important for companies like Tesco for whom happy shoppers can be loyal lifelong customers!
Do you have any plans to change or improve the delivery service in the future?
As we grow and once we have volume we’d like to be able to offer more competitive delivery rates across the marketplace.
Find out more at www.buymywardrobe.com
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