Fy is creating the most fun, addictive way to shop on your phone.
Business overview
| Location | London, United Kingdom |
|---|---|
| Social media | |
| Website | www.iamfy.co |
| Sectors | Clothing & Accessories Digital B2C |
| Company number | 8924569 |
| Incorporation date | 5 Mar 2014 |
Idea
Introduction
Fy is a shoppable Instagram: a daily feed of unique, affordable products from emerging brands around the world.
We've made shopping on mobile simple, addictive and fun:
• A curated feed of unique, affordable products personalised to you.
• Beautiful high-res images, gifs and videos that bring the products to life.
• An easy checkout.
• Simple sharing via Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp.
We're a full-stack business. We stock, photograph, merchandise and ship every product we sell. Everything on Fy ships free, in beautiful Fy envelopes straight through your letterbox.
At the heart is a growing community of emerging brands, ranging from new designers to break-out brands. We offer brands a full stack of services to allow them to do what they do best: designing and manufacturing stunning products.
To deliver our vision, we've developed a propriety mCommerce technology platform using cutting edge technologies that allow us to deliver relevant, fast mobile experience.
Intended impact
We founded Fy with one simple purpose: to create the most fun, addictive way to shop on your phone.
And we have huge ambitions. We want to become the world's #1 mobile shopping and discovery app and platform.
We expect that people will use our app on the bus, in the office, at home in front of the TV to discover and buy products on mobile. We aim to make shopping on mobile as fun and addictive as browsing Instagram and as seamless as ordering an Uber.
There are 3 core insights to Fy:
1. Globally, people of all age ranges have an appetite to discover new, exciting, creative products that allow them to express their style, find their unique look and to project the new ME.
2. We feel that the market for these products is ripe for disruption on both the supply and demand side. We've found an almost inexhaustible supply of stunning, affordable, great value products.
3. Mobile is becoming the dominant way that people access information and this will have a transformative effect on retail.
• In Q1 2015 more time was spent accessing the internet through mobile than on desktop in the UK and US.
• By 2020 80% of adults on earth will have a smartphone.
• 29% of US eCommerce transactions are already on mobile.
We believe that mobile will become the new high street. Apps fill the gaps in our days and allow us to explore much like we might browse a boutique, wherever we are.
In our view, established retailers - with their focus on stores and traditional websites - have been slow to react and keep up with these changes.
Equally, we do not believe that there is a mobile-first shopping brand combining our end-to-end experience or unique, affordable products in Europe, in the US or in emerging markets.
We believe that our closest equivalent businesses - with low capital intensity and disruptive supply chain models - are Farfetch (recently valued at $1bn), Wish ($3bn) and Spring ($90m).
Our aim is that customers and suppliers see us as the first and best place to buy and sell on mobile.
Substantial accomplishments to date
As a team we've a proven record of rapid, efficient execution. Since we closed our 1st round of funding (£150k) in November 2014 we've:
• Built a data driven, proprietary technology platform using cutting edge technologies and architecture used by the likes of Facebook, Soundcloud and Netflix.
• Launched our mobile-optimised website - iamfy.co - as a precursor to our mobile app which is scheduled to launch in late September.
Signed up 120 suppliers from across Europe and the US.
• Shipped over 1000 orders to 30+ countries from the UK to Singapore to India to Taiwan.
• Acquired an audience of over 35,000 users
• Received over 500 user testimonials (see: http://bit.ly/1UfUENd).
Monetisation strategy
We believe our business model is simple. We curate, sell and ship products. But we do it with one key twist - we hold stock but don't pay for it.
This should enable us to generate:
• High gross margins
• ... a negative cash cycle...
• ... and a capital light model.
It also means that we are able to "own" the whole customer experience from product photography to delivery.
We are already monetising users and do not need to rely on advertising, low margin affiliate commissions, data selling or other high risk monetisation strategies.
Further information, including a breakdown of our current unit economics, is available on request.*
*external documents have not been verified by Seedrs.
Use of proceeds
There are five priorities for the remainder of 2015:
1. Grow monthly revenue whilst maintaining a cost per order under our contribution margin.
2. Release localised mobile apps across Europe (UK, DE, FR) and the US in October.
3. Deliver on an exciting product pipeline.
4, Increase number of designers put live on site per week.
5. Put in operational processes to support supply and demand growth.
The proceeds of this raise will be used to hire the team to hit these targets. We have a strong pipeline of experienced candidates for these roles.
We expect that this round will take us to August 2016, after this point we will likely look to raise further funds.
Market
Target market
CUSTOMERS:
Fy is for anyone with a sense of adventure, who wants to express how they see the world, in all its colour and splendour.
We guide our buying and marketing with three customer personas: Chloe, Sarah and Emily.
Chloe, Sarah and Emily are your friends, sisters or colleagues. You'll find them living in places as diverse as London, Berlin, Mumbai, Bristol, Dubai, San Francisco.
They all use their mobiles to organise and share their lives and all buy things online. But when it comes to shopping they're frustrated. Nothing is as easy as Uber or as emotional and fun as Instagram.
They want to treat themselves, and their friends and they're all bored of the high street and too busy to hunt out finds in markets or on etsy.
They want to find great quality, exciting products that are affordable to treat themselves and wow their friends.
They want an app that inspires them with stunning and relevant products and makes browsing, sharing and buying a breeze.
And their boyfriends or partners want it too.
BRANDS:
We're already working with 120 of the most innovative designer / makers and emerging brands in Europe.
They all share a passion for producing high quality, distinctive products that have a great price to quality ratio.
They sell their products through boutiques and direct, but are frustrated by selling online. Our experience with them has fund that traditional marketplaces don't present their brand as they'd like it to be seen, and leave them with additional work to do: like shipping and handling returns.
They want to grow a brand and create a connection with their audience.
Characteristics of target market
The Fy platform is a mobile focused horizontal, lifestyle play that is targeting a market that we believe is ripe for disruption.
The EU and US fashion accessories and jewellery markets are estimated to be worth €50bn. This market sizing excludes accessories such as smartphone cases, headphones and stationary that we currently stock.
We're also planning to target emerging markets where we see an enticing opportunity due to a number of positive
• Large, young populations with rapid population growth.
• Rapidly growing middle classes with increasing disposable income.
• Increasing smartphone penetration and low offline retail density.
Finally, based on competitors, retail sales across all eventual target categories and markets are estimated to represent a €1.2tn addressable market.
Marketing strategy
We break down our go-to-market strategy into two components - eCommerce acquisition and mobile app acquisition.
Our eCommerce marketing strategy comprises:
* Facebook / Instagram advertising - affordable products, high quality creative, great targeting and an optimised mobile landing experience is already resulting in high click through rates and low cost per orders.
* Affiliate marketing - we're setting up deals with relevant, high quality content and mobile affiliates who offer low risk commission based deals.
* Partnerships - we are seeing high quality, high conversion traffic from a number of relevant partners and are looking to grow this channel.
* Referral / WOM - we're building a context relevant, engaging referral scheme to encourage referrals and word of mouth.
Our mobile marketing strategy will comprise;
* App store featured app - we believe that there is a strong opportunity we could be featured in the App Store across a number of EU markets.
* PR - we're revolutionising mobile shopping and have some stunning, products. We believe that this is PR gold and we have a seasoned PR team working to secure a continual stream of coverage that we know converts to engaged app downloads.
* Paid acquisition- using a mix of Facebook App Install Adverts, Instagram's new ad platform, mobile ad networks and affiliates we believe we can achieve strong app download volume for the right price.
Our acquisition marketing is followed up by relevant retention marketing to drive engagement, conversion and repeat purchasers.
Competition strategy
We believe that our business model affords us a number of competitive advantages and barriers to entry.
Our advantages versus traditional retailers (e.g. ASOS Topshop, Claire's Accessories)
• A low capital intensity and negative cash cycle from not holding stock or renting retail spaces means we believe that we can rapidly grow our topline.
• A large, unique product offering that is unavailable elsewhere and a supply chain we're increasingly "locking into" Fy.
• We maintain a high price to quality ratio by working directly with designers.
• Data science is at the core of our marketing, merchandising and buying resulting in highly relevant customer experiences.
We believe that we also have advantages over non-traditional players (e.g. Octer, Lyst, notonthehighstreet):
• We "own" the whole customer experience.
• Our margins are significantly higher than affiliate commissions allowing us to out compete on both pricing and user acquisition.
Finally, full stack, at scale mobile app commerce is not simple requiring investment in technology, supply base and merchandising.
We know that success in this business requires a unique combination of creative, data, marketing and tech. That's why we've surrounded ourselves with a team of experienced executors.
Fy, Tom and JT have worked together for over three years at two similar businesses, first onefinestay and then Fab, where they ran the Jewellery, Marketing and Customer Strategy teams respectively.
Since founding the business, we've accumulated a group of advisors and investors who bring insights and experiences from creating and running businesses including ASOS, Llustre, onefinestay, Streetcar as well as funding them (Independents United, Index Ventures, Balderton).
We'd love you to join them!
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