Wearth London

Idea

Introduction

Wearth is an eco-friendly & vegan online platform launched in 2017 with the mission to help build a greener future for e-commerce. Our ethos is that anyone can make a difference, no matter how small, to help tackle the environmental issues our world is facing. We have developed a curated online marketplace of over 250 sustainable brands across a wide range of categories from ethical homewares & vegan beauty to zero waste and slow fashion.

Ethical consumer spending in the UK has more than doubled in the last decade, increasing from £21 billion in 2010 to £47 billion in 2019. This growth looks set to continue in the wake of the pandemic with 80% of consumers now planning on shopping with businesses which make a concerted effort to be environmentally-friendly.

We are positioned well to be an important part of this movement towards eco living and we are listed by industry-leading consumer group, Ethical Consumer, as one of the 'top 5 ethical online retailers' in the UK.

Substantial accomplishments to date

Despite bootstrapping the business since our launch, we have made significant progress in establishing Wearth as the go to place to discover eco-friendly & ethical products online.

• Record Q4'20 sales of £750k (P&L +£37k)*

• Over 2m annual website visitors

• Sold over 180,000 eco-friendly products to date

• Increased conversion rate from 2.08% for 2019 to 2.74% for 2020

• Engaged community of over 110k social media followers across Instagram, TikTok & Facebook

• Developed an innovative shop by values feature where you can shop by certain characteristics, e.g. plastic-free, refillable & recycled materials

• Over 80% of our brands have a female owner/co-founder

• Support British makers with over 70% of our products made in the UK

• Recently launched new Pantry category with zero waste food staples including pasta, coffee, grains and herbs/spices, all in reusable packaging

*Based on unaudited management accounts.

Monetisation strategy

On our platform we charge a commission for each sale from the brand, our standard commission is 25%. We are a managed marketplace where we cover optimising/listing products, customer service and marketing. Our aim is to not only be a revenue source for our partners but we also work to create exclusive opportunities for our brands including press features, influencer collaborations and promotions to our community.

Key departments we see for growth in the ethical market are refills (e.g. cleaning & beauty), homewares, fashion & gifts. In themselves these have significant market sizes in the UK. This offers a great opportunity for Wearth to grow and become a household name as these categories continue to mature.

In terms of demographics, millenials (25-34) are our main customer base, representing 35% of our sales, which aligns with consumer research on millenial spending habits (73% of millenials are willing to pay more for sustainable goods, Nielsen). That being said, over 30% of our sales have come from shoppers over the age of 45, representing the broad nature of our customer base.

Use of proceeds

Organic/content marketing - We will be continuing to develop our SEO strategy and enhance our content offering. As part of this we are launching our improved Eco Inspo content platform later this summer.

Paid marketing - Invest in our existing PPC channels, which consistently perform above 400% ROAS, offering room to push for customer acquisition. With a larger marketing budget at our disposal we will also explore other paid media channels, such as TikTok.

Team - We will be growing our team to help us continue to scale and realise our ambitions for Wearth. Our focus for hires will be on digital marketing, content creation and operations.

Tech stack - We are currently building our new website in partnership with 5874, one of Europe's leading Bigcommerce development agencies, to improve both our frontend performance/features and backend capabilties. We also have plans to develop a Wearth mobile app in the near future.