Suitcase
Name:
Sector:
Legal form:
Country:
Website:
USP’s:
Interviewee:
Written by:
Founders:
Suitcase
Fashion sector
Public limited company
Belgium
Service of an offline shop with the rapidity of an online shop
Jonathan Wanten
Simon Landsheere
Jonathan Wanten + Anthony De Wit
Summary
Suitcase is an innovative way for men to update their wardrobe without a need to go visit fashion stores. An employee will get in contact with the clients and will have a small interview to get to know the style of the customer. After a while, Suitcase will send 2 to 3 different outfits to the client and he can choose to keep the clothes he wants. The clothes he doesn’t like can be send back without paying any additional costs.
Background
Mr. De Wit and Mr. Wanten started the company in 2013. First of all, they’ve done some research and after a while, they went live with their website in January 2014. From that time, customers were able to get in contact with Suitcase.
The idea to start with the concept of Suitcase was founded by Mr. De Wit. He worked at the consulting office Deloitte. They had casual Fridays there but Mr. De Wit was dressed a bit too casual according to his employers. At that time, Mr. Wanten was active in the fashion sector for about 8 years. They’ve met each other because they were brothers in law and had some conversations about some business concepts. That’s when they’ve invented the concept of Suitcase.
In the beginning, they had to finance themselves with some support of a Belgian bank who leant them a straight loan. After a while, their concept got so attractive to the consumers that they had a need for more money to supply their customers. That’s when they’ve decided to start negotiating with some partners to raise more money. In September 2014, a business angel invested a half a million euro’s in their company. They describe Suitcase as the solution for men who care about fashion and their looks but don’t like shopping or don’t have time for shopping.
Mission
They want to give males the opportunity to save time and to let them try the outfits within their comfort zone.
Vision
Becoming the reference for everything that has something to do with fashion and lifestyle for men.
Values
Service & personality
Business Model
They’ve created the entire business model themselves. They combined the commerciality and creativity of Mr. Wanten with the rationality of Mr. De Wit. They had to work 6 months on it to get the business model they have now. Actually, Suitcase replaces the normal fashion retailer. They have the same margins, but their costs are lower because they don’t need to furnish their shop. On the other hand, the cost of their stock, their packaging and their marketing will be higher than for a normal retailer. So the vending price of Suitcase is the same as the price you’ll see in the normal shops.
Their business model looks like this. First of all, their customers have to create an account. They have to give some basic data about themselves and have to fill in some basic questions. When the customer has done this, someone of the company will contact him to get more information about the client. This information is needed to know the taste of the purchaser, the do’s and the don’ts. Based on all the information Suitcase will have gathered, they will compose a package (2 to 3 outfits) and send the ‘suitcase’ to the customers’ house without charging any additional costs. When the client gets the package, he has 5 days to try the outfits. When the customer isn’t home when the package is delivered by Bpost, the time of testing the outfits will start from the moment the customer picked up the package, that will be 10 days available in the Bpost office. If the outfits aren’t good enough for the client, he can send everything back to Suitcase without paying any costs, so there is no obligation to purchase or a subscription service. When the purchaser buys goods for more than €400, he gets a gift, which is a bottle of Blind Tiger Gin.
Suitcase didn’t get help from any organisation during the start-up phase. They were mainly helped by their friends and supporters. Now they’ve created their business model, they experience some advantages and disadvantages. The advantages are that they are the first company that has this kind of concept in Belgium, that there is a huge potential on this market and that the customers appreciate their kind of service. The disadvantages are that they’re still only active on the Belgian market and that they’re quite limited in the field of e-commerce. Belgium’s law concerning e-commerce is not as good as in the surrounding countries.
Growth
Their growth is different than what they expected. The e-commerce is a booming business, but because they’ve chosen to grow organic, which means they grow slower but assures the customers a better service and better quality, they don’t have as many employees as their competitors. Their sales doubled in the second half of 2015 so they can say their growth is quite good. Their costs are rather high so to continue to grow, they will need to expand to international markets. They need to spread geographically.
Customers
Their customers are men of an age between 35 and 50 years old. Mostly, those men are ambitious, have little time but are still aware of the fact that fashion is important in their branch. They can get clothes offered of 30 different brands.
Competitors
The most important direct competitors are the Dutch based Cloackroom and the German based Outfitterie. Those competitors have larger sales than them for the moment. The main indirect competitors are the normal retail fashion shops and the webshops like Zalando, …
Conclusion
The main opportunities for Suitcase are that they can internationalise really fast and that they can go from the post-order company that they are now to a curated company. This means that they will make their customers lazy by providing everything they want from behind their screen. The threats are that if they don’t internationalise, they will be swallowed up by their competitors and secondly that it’s very hard to differentiate the company from their competitors.
The main things Mr. De Wit and Mr. Wanten learnt about their business model is that there wasn’t a written book about how they had to start Suitcase because they invented the business model themselves. They had to do everything from scratch like the stock management, the composition of their box, …
The main things they want to say to future starters is that if they have an idea, which they think is brilliant, they should dare to try and start a business and don’t hesitate at all. Try to find someone who is interested to invest in the concept. The main struggles they’ve experienced till now are the financing of their project and the difficulties of managing staff. Employees go to their work to earn money, which is different to Mr. Wanten and Mr. De Wit, because they raised the company as their baby and don’t work to gain money.
If it would depend on the founders, Suitcase would be within 5 years the reference of everything that has something to do with fashion and lifestyle for a curated shop. Cosmetics is also a market they want to conquer; they don’t want to focus just on the clothing market.
Posted on 13/04/2016