Technology company scaling e-commerce sales and fulfilment across 70,000+ product lines.
Business overview
| Location | Worcester, United Kingdom |
|---|---|
| Social media | |
| Website | fancydressworldwide.com |
| Sectors | Clothing & Accessories Digital B2C |
| Company number | 08087671 |
| Incorporation date | 29 May 2012 |
Idea
Introduction
Since March 2016, online retailer Fancy Dress Worldwide has grown rapidly. Here are just a few of many impressive facts & figures.
- Unique innovative software processes built in house.
- Over 380,000 orders.
- Profitable first year on a £680k turnover*.
- £1.67m Y2 revenue*.
- Growth from 1 to 20,000 products.
- Growth from 1 member of staff to 25.
- 2 moves to bigger premises.
*Based on unaudited management accounts.
Intended impact
From 2012 - 2016, founder Dom Portman had grown an innovative fancy dress product, the Fancy Fresher pack, part time for 4 years. The pack was sold to students providing them with fancy dress needed for the parties in their universities freshers' weeks. After gaining in depth knowledge of the fancy dress industry and also the systems and processes that online retailers have in place, Fancy Dress Worldwide was born.
Fancy Dress Worldwide aims to provide customers with the best quality costumes and accessories on the fastest shipping methods possible - we can ship to America by 10:30am the next day.
Our USP without question is our ability to build innovative software in house. We build all of our online systems and processes and we have exciting innovations including;
- Auto pricing, can be updated every 8 mins.
- Dynamic shipping methods offered based on our products location.
- Selling products before we buy them.
- A buying portal which tells us daily what to order in 1 click.
Substantial accomplishments to date
- Unique innovative software processes built in house.
- Over 380,000 orders.
- Profitable first year on a £680k turnover*.
- £1.67m Y2 revenue*.
- Growth from 1 to 20,000 products.
- Growth from 1 member of staff to 25.
- 2 moves to bigger premises.
*Based on unaudited management accounts.
Monetisation strategy
We are a multi-platform retailer. Multi-platform is, in our opinion, the future of retail; with many large companies such as Debenhams investing in coverage across Search Engines, eBay, Amazon & other up and coming marketplaces.
By focusing on putting our products in front of the most amount of customers and offering the fastest shipping speeds possible at the correct price, we ensure we are always growing revenue.
Since March 2016 we have had over £2million in revenue and over 380,000 orders, shipping to customers as far afield as Kenya.
We aim to continue growing in two ways, products and sales channels. By growing our products and sales channels in line with our investor deck, we can ensure consistent growth.
We also aim to achieve bigger discounts with suppliers, work on exclusive & fully branded product lines as well as put services such as postage and packaging supplies out to tender.
Use of proceeds
- 25% growth in stock - as we grow, the amount of cash tied up in assets naturally grows, although we never buy stock before we have orders for that particular product.
- 10% staffing - to bring in a strong middle management team enabling auditing procedures on stock & pricing are in place and to build a good HR department.
- 5% USA growth - we have launched on Amazon USA, Mexico and Canada and want to hire another web developer to help this integration work.
- 5% Amazon Prime - also in Q3 2018, we are beginning to fulfil Amazon Prime orders in the UK. This will also need a dedicated web developer ensuring systems are put in place and improved as time goes on.
- 55% Equipment - We want to purchase racking for all of upstairs, build a 3 tiered racking structure and a small office and meeting room.
Market
Target market
We have many key demographics, which we believe are primarily aged 3-30. Fancy dress events go on throughout the year with highlights including;
- Halloween party goers.
- Parents whose children attend dress up days in schools including World Book Day which is becoming a big event.
- Attendees of sporting events.
- Theatres and music venues.
- Festival/ concert attendees.
- Carnival attendees.
We cater for many markets with both cost effective smaller accessories and premium quality costumes.
Future plans are in place to create sub-brands for particular demographics.
Characteristics of target market
The fancy dress market is worth an annual £3.5 billion and is growing.
E-commerce sales growing at a rate of 24.6% yearly.
E-commerce sales to reach $4 trillion by 2020, double that of 2016.
From our experience, people who buy costumes online typically leave it until 1 or 2 days before the event before buying the costume. This means that we can offer next day delivery. Currently we exceed 96% in accuracy delivering next day, altered for customers not being at home.
We feel that the software we are building to become a multi-platform retailer can be transferred across multiple industries. Our long term goal is to become a retail group.
Marketing strategy
We connect to many retail sales channels via API's and build detailed software which enables us to sell products before we buy them. We can ensure that we only sell them at the right price point. We have reliable suppliers who we grow with individually who fulfil what we place for next day delivery.
We are also building traffic to our own website, having partnered with various sites such as TopCashback and Quidco, who offer rewards to those visiting our website. By building these quality links to reputable companies slowly over the next few years, we aim to build brand trust and bump up googles rankings as our site becomes more optimised for search engines.
Competition strategy
In the highest traffic areas on the web, competition is stiff.
We entered the market less than 2 years ago and feel that we are already winning trade from other companies. We believe that we are doing this by innovating with software and things like auto-pricing, which updates our prices online multiple times every hour. We are also building strong links with suppliers in order to gain exclusivity to certain products and to work on products that can be sold under our brand and with our packaging.
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