Website Closers® presents a profitable eCommerce brand in the Fashion Accessories niche, focused on premium leather bags, shoes, and jewelry. With an expertly developed website and a remarkable growth rate, this eCommerce retailer is poised for continuing success. Since opening its doors five years ago, the company has expanded to become an authority in its vertical.
Best-selling products include leather handbags and boots. A hybrid inventory model is used, keeping overheads to a minimum. Collections are launched with a pre-order model that offers customers a chance to buy an item before launch at a discounted price—usually 15 to 45 days before shipping. This pre-order period allows management to obtain an estimate of the bestselling items as well as the necessary stock to produce for the launch itself. Apart from the bestselling items, most of the merchandise is made or outsourced to order and takes between 3 and 10 days to be dispatched from the company’s warehouses.
The only items typically maintained come from returns and exchanges, considering the stock production for the collection launch is quickly dispatched.
Currently, the business owns between 25 and 35 percent of its daily sales in stock throughout warehouses in Portugal and the US. All remaining orders do not have associated stock and are shipped from an agent’s warehouse in China. Subsequently, surplus cash flow is available for marketing endeavors and necessary orders.
Over 200 products are offered for sale via the website at an average order value of $136. Sales are strong throughout the year, and seasonality is balanced with an intelligent catalog of items. For example, handbags are consistently popular, while selling boots during the Winter and sandals during the Summer negates significant sales fluctuations. Two new collections are launched every year, divided into four segments depending on the season. The website maintains the same level of traffic and sales throughout the year, with the exception of peaks during Q4 for Black Friday and holiday shopping. During this period, management astutely increases marketing efforts to gain maximum value.
The company has tremendous scale opportunities at its fingertips. Low-hanging fruit includes international expansion. 75% to 90% of the marketing budget is directed to the US. Increasing these efforts to additional Geos would likely boost sales enormously. Expanding to secondary platforms such as Amazon would provide another revenue stream and make an international expansion that much easier.
While handbags and shoes are their big sellers, its first boots collection was recently presented and is seeing early success. The first sandal collection was also launched recently, which is also successful and seeing a lot of interest 3 likely the summer will be very big for their sandals. Plenty of accessories could quickly be introduced and subsequently increase the repeat customer rate and introduce a new audience to the company. Popular items that will undoubtedly be well-received by customers include hats, necklaces, bracelets, scarves, and gloves.
Furthermore, changing the core material of the handbags to vegan leather would appeal to an entirely different market segment4one that is growing prolifically. A potential men’s collection is worth considering and could double the customer base.
Regarding service and optimization, the business currently has only two warehouses worldwide, and a combined team of five employees, none of whom have an eCommerce or sales background. As a result, there is undoubtedly vast potential to hire or outsource specialists who can scale the business swiftly while allowing the owners to endure a lighter workload.
One owner focuses primarily on marketing and sales, the customer support team, and the US warehouse team. The other is responsible for website design and maintenance, collection management, the Portuguese warehouse, and digital design teams.
Four additional employees work in the following capacities:
- Full-time customer support and sales representative
- Full-time digital designer and warehouser
- Part-time warehouser
- Part-time accountant
Contractors comprise two primary roles. Firstly, an agency manages social media customer support. Secondly, warehousing and fulfillment in China are done through an agent and ensure most orders’ merchandise production, warehousing, and shipping.
