Trillenium

Market

Target market

Our target market is the expanding circle of ambitious, quality and competitive online fashion retailers in the developed world.

Nick Robertson, CEO of ASOS plc, said recently "Being a digital fashion brand, it is important we never lose a digital element to what we are doing, however based on consumer reaction and participation, I think we will be looking at more new and innovative ways we can get our brand in front of the customers for a physical experience in the future" (source: Forbes Magazine).

Trillenium's customers would be online retail distribution businesses. We intend to build platforms as a service for them. Our targeted customers need to diversify from pure retail. Better online experiences seem vital to our customers' cohort of consumers because 46% of all gamers, globally, are female.

In turn, our customers could dress the Trillenium platform with their own exciting fashion, products and cool identities. The whole package could appeal to their consumers in the online marketplace.

ASOS is our shareholder and first customer. We offer our 3D, VR, scanning and expertise services to ASOS on a preferred bidder basis. In return, ASOS provides us with office space, knowledge transfer and their expertise with fashion and design.

Trillenium would target other like ASOS such as Otto, Zalando, Selfridges and Harrods.

Characteristics of target market

The UK online fashion market is expected to be worth GBP 10bn this year, according to new research from Mintel.

E-commerce is seeing a strong growth in sales, as consumers prefer to shop online. 17% of online spending is on clothing and footwear, up from 13% in 2011.

The same Mintel data for 2014 shows that 70 per cent of internet users buy clothing and footwear online, making this category (the speciality of ASOS and Trillenium) the most purchased. In the 25-34 age group that rises to 80 per cent, while it is 76 per cent in the 16-24 age group.

Women are the biggest shoppers with 73 per cent buying online, but there has been an increase in the amount of men buying online with a 13 percentage point jump over the last year to 65 per cent, Mintel said.

Tablet devices are becoming increasingly popular with 20 per cent of online shoppers using one to buy clothing in the last 12 months, while 44 per cent of consumers have used click-and-collect for clothing purchases over the last year.

Marketing strategy

ASOS is the second most visited fashion website on the planet with a presence in 240 countries and 9.3m active customers* and 88m visitors each month (as at Feb 2015). ASOS wants to interact with ‘20 somethings’ on everything to do with fashion, in an entertaining, collaborative and personalised way.

We intend to work with ASOS as their preferred supplier of VR and 3D services. ASOS will be our first, foundation customer and we would use this to reach our wider market of other retailers. It would be our calling card.

Extract from the February 2015 PR statement with ASOS to announce our joint venture:

"ASOS Ventures Limited, the venture capital arm of ASOS plc, announces today its debut venture with a minority shareholding in Trillenium (UK) Ltd. The two companies are joining forces to explore innovative 3D and virtual brand adventures online.

"ASOS Ventures CEO, Nick Robertson, said ‘ASOS has a long and successful track record of revolutionising the retail market. We are delighted to announce the new venture with Trillenium and look forward to discovering the future world of online fashion destinations for 20 somethings’.”

"Trillenium (UK) Limited founder and entrepreneur Hrvoje Prpic said ‘We have started on an incredible adventure and ASOS wanted to come with us because they too are pioneers and one of the planet’s great retail revolutionaries. We’ve now built ASOS prototypes in Oculus Rift, Google Cardboard and Unity and ASOS love that so now we’re working together. We are looking to change the online fashion shopping experience beyond recognition’.”

*Defined as having shopped in the last twelve months

Competition strategy

Trillenium has competitors. This is an innovative field and new entrants exist. Some competitors are within existing retailers such as Target, the US retailer. Others are stand-alone projects for better fit technology and for retail store realisations. We don't compete for fit (it is not our area of expertise) and we believe our VR shop dressings are of far greater quality, better scanned and more exciting than the competitors.

We aim to compete against our competitors on quality and experience.

There is a specific asset to Trillenium that would allow us to provide high quality: our scanner tech. We have built a unique 3D scanning device that creates a full 2D & 3D image of shoes, handbags and sunglasses in just 60 seconds. This seems important to our customers. One minute of work using the scanner will cost just 37p (based on a fully-loaded FTE at GBP 40k pa). This in itself could be an important cost saving. Retailers’ high-intensity operations are often under constant pressure.

Our earlier prototypes were deployed using our in-store inventory management software modules. The Trillenium team's know-how, experience and the skills were built up in the industry for both fashion and tech. We believe our CTO and technical team is world-class. We have the scanner and inventory IP from Hrvoje's earlier GBP 1m investment over the preceding four years. This innovation and all our future expenditure on IP for Trillenium has the potential to be the subject of an HMRC R&D tax credit application.

Our relationship with ASOS, our shareholder, represents an excellent position against our competitors. ASOS is the perfect partner for us and is brim-full of experts in fashion and design. These folk are supporting Trillenium to make our solutions attractive, appealing and trendy. Through this route we are now building great shops, sharing ASOS's skills, retail expertise and resources to increase the quality of our offering.