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Selling clothes online

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Selling clothes online

#1
Hey,

a few friends and I want to found a european startup that sells unique clothing online. But as you know there are already lots of websites that sell clothing. To create something new we decided to restrict our inventory to items that you normally cannot buy online like bags from a small Italian bag manufacturer, young labels that sell most of their clothing at promotion events or just unique looking clothes in general like a dress consisting of feathers.

Do you think that our concept has potential to work? Is there something you would improve / change? Would you buy clothes at our store? If no why not? If yes, what part of our value proposition is most important for you? What do you think our target demographic looks like?

Do you buy clothes online? If yes, do you buy only certain kinds of clothing (only t shirts and trousers, no shoes etc.)? If no, why?

How important is it for you that your clothes look like they definitely did not get bought at H&M, Peek & Cloppenburg, Zalando etc. ? What do you look for in clothes except for the obvious things like that you like the look and that they fit? Do you think big clothing sellers have any serious shortcomings (especially those who sell online)?

Edit: btw we want to mostly focus on local businesses and want make sure that all sellers are verified!

Re: Selling clothes online

#2
Hey, all. Would actually love to talk to you about this.. I'm a Y Combinator founder, and we're building a startup called Crowdery. It is a marketplace and, to some extent, there is overlap here.. Our approach is admittedly much more nuanced. Ping me on twitter @marannelson if you're interested in talking!

Re: Selling clothes online

#4
For sure, it has potential to work, it is similar to Fab.com's business model. They find local designers (in our case they sold our t-shirts), and they give exposure to the brand, in exchange for discounting merch. Nastygal.com is another great example, although they go for the 1 off/thrift store finds.

Re: Selling clothes online

#5
It's hard to answer these question without seeing the actual stuff. Clothes can be unique in many ways.

I buy a lot of clothes online. I mostly go to polyvore.com and find stuff. But I do visit some websites of actual brands because I know they deliver a certain aesthetic that I like. I like unique stuff, who doesn't? But I prefer a simpler, elegant aesthetic.

The kind of stuff they have on nastygal is mostly just vulgar to me. As someone here mentioned they go for a thrift store look. But they do actually source it from vendors like anyone else. It's different from many brands, sure. But it's still internally consistent. I did order 2 things from them though.

Your target demographic will be determined by the kind of aesthetic you have.