Release Your Trapped Wardrobe Equity With StyleJump
22 Jan 2015
Posted in: Business Support
At the recent AIB Customer’s Christmas Market, we had a chance to talk with StyleJump, a pre-owned designer clothes emporium based online and in Dun Laoghaire, County Dublin. We chatted about how the idea for StyleJump came about, the company’s plans for developing their use of Social Media and the benefits to the business of attending seasonal events during the Christmas season.
StyleJump was set up by Kelley Burke when she spotted a gap in the Irish fashion market. She discovered that women only wear 30% of their wardrobe and the rest is ‘trapped wardrobe equity’ or in other words, a cash pile sitting in their wardrobe. Now, these unwanted treasures can be sold through StyleJump which targets women who are time poor, clothes rich and storage limited. A recent addition is to StyleJump is the new ‘try on studio’ which is open three days a week and allows customers to try on items before purchase.
The idea stemmed from a problem Kelley faced herself. Having been a buyer of preowned designer clothes for the last ten years and having worked as a corporate jet pilot, she had access to fantastic stores in London and Paris as she travelled around the world. There was no where in Ireland to buy these luxury items, without the luxury price tag.
The model works as a two sided platform for both the customer and the seller. For the seller, StyleJump takes the clothes, photographs them, ensures they’re authentic, writes descriptions, publishes to the website and sells them on the website for three months. When they’re sold the seller gets 52% commission. This strategy reflects recent shifts in Irish consumption patterns towards collaborative consumption i.e. bartering, trading and reselling, which is particularly huge in the fashion space.
Kelley attended NDRC’s Female Founders, an initiative supported by both AIB and Enterprise Ireland. This was a five week intensive programme that was invaluable to Kelley in getting StyleJump up and running and was specialised for female entrepreneurs. Female Founders provided access to expert mentors in the area of legal, branding, technology and strategy which Kelley has access to both during and after the programme.
StyleJump use Social Media to interact with their target audience, online shoppers sourcing clothes. The company target each audience segment by using the most relevant and effective social channel to them. For example, they use Instagram and Pinterest to target a younger audience than Facebook. StyleJump’s content strategy involves the posting of engaging images and information relevant to current fashion trends with a casual, conversational tone.
Looking to the future, StyleJump are developing their long term strategy for Social Media. Currently, their most effective social channel is Twitter as it is quick, convenient, their audience is easily targetable and it has shown the best response to content posted to date. Facebook has been less effective due to the challenge of declining organic reach which results in less content being served to their followers through standard posts. Therefore, a big factor in StyleJump’s future plans for Social Media take into account the cost of social advertising in order to increase the reach of their social content.
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