Website Closers® presents an eCommerce company based in Italy with a strong operational setup for its collection of stylish Men’s Footwear and Apparel, including products that are exclusive to their brand and can’t be found in local shops. With a stunning 300% YTD growth rate, the company is positioned to begin expanding into additional European countries and to take its SKUS to Amazon, which represents tremendous growth opportunities for them, including in the U.S.
The company has set itself apart from competitors by offering luxurious designs at affordable prices. With an Average Order Value of $69, their products are solely available on their website and not in any other Italian eCommerce stores. While the company initially worked to scale by expanding its product line (with more than 350+ products manufactured for them), in 2022 the company successfully shifted in the opposite direction and began focusing on just 80-100 of its best-selling items, knowing these are what customers are buying the most.
The result has been an impressive jump in profits, with the company projected to soar to 400% Net Profit Growth by the end of 2023, a clear sign their new strategy of offering fewer SKUs is working. Their other focus has been on creating more fully branded products with their custom logos and designs, and they continue to develop new ones. Their name has been a registered brand in Italy since 2022.
The company has also developed a reputation for excellent customer service that includes a 100-day money-back guarantee and quick deliveries, and this operational efficiency has contributed significantly to its explosive growth in the past two years.
The unique designs of their men’s dress shoes, sports shoes, and formal, elegant clothing and sportswear have not only created top sellers but also given the brand a low return rate of just 2.3% combined with a fast-rising Repeat Customer Rate of 21%. The company has a high customer satisfaction rate which results in plenty of glowing 5-star reviews.
In short, the company has built up a strong Italian fashion brand, attracting vibrant sales from middle-class consumers. Both footwear and apparel are evergreen markets across the globe, but they are also enormously competitive ones, and this brand has done exceptionally well in a short period of time establishing itself among male buyers across Italy. That puts this brand in a unique position for a major expansion across the rest of Europe, particularly in countries with similar purchasing habits as the Italians have.
Launched in 2021, the company has several reliable suppliers with a network of factories that can produce the kind of mid-ticket shoes and clothing this company specializes in. Because of their trusted relationships with their suppliers, this company has been successful at reducing the cost of their goods by 50% from the original prices in some instances, which has also improved their cash flow.
That trust benefits the company when it has asked its suppliers to produce sizes not usually available to other clients, and more customized designs that customers were asking for, along with products with their logo prominently displayed on them. This has gone a long way toward improving their brand recognition.
With products being shipped from their 3PL partner, the company now averages 150+ shipments per day, and they stock 100% of their SKUs. Having a fully stocked inventory is another major advantage this brand has over competitors since they can deliver products very quickly and increase their level of customer satisfaction.
Their sales are not impacted by seasonal factors and sell at a steady pace throughout the year, although they enjoy peaks in sales during winter and spring for items such as jackets and winter shoes.
PPC ads on popular social media sites such as Facebook and TikTok have been highly beneficial for the company, generating a 4.4% Return on Ad Spend and sometimes even higher at 5.76% in their best months. They also run PPC ads on Google, relying on image ads that have proven to deliver a similarly high return.
The company also generates organic traffic through its social media accounts, which include 20,000+ followers on Facebook across all pages. Another strong tool at their disposal is an email database containing 67,890+ subscribers, ideal for future upsells and cross-sells once new products are rolled out.
These digital marketing tools are bringing more and more customers to the brand’s Shopify website. Since the company first launched, there have been more than 5.3 million online store sessions on the site, and the company now averages a whopping 330,000+ monthly sessions. The company has improved its website by building software, custom add-ons, and custom-coded Google Sheets to improve its profit margins and reduce costs.
There are additional ways for this company to scale through digital marketing. One would be to launch an SEO program on their website, having it fully optimized for keywords that consumers are putting into search engines for related products. An informative blog on their website would also help introduce their products to new customers.
Another strategic option would be to open shops on Amazon’s numerous European platforms and taking advantage of PPC ads on Amazon to present their most popular products to the millions of customers using those sites. That could include an Amazon store in the U.S., now the leading country for the global Footwear Market.
With an experienced team of 19 full and part-time employees, the current ownership works just four hours per day on this business, focusing mainly on managing their PPC ad campaigns and leading the team.
That team includes nine full-time customer service representatives, three full-time graphic designers, and full-time workers handling data entry, web development, email marketing, and inventory management. Part-time workers are used on several related tasks.
Customer service is particularly important to the company, which receives 400 customer inquiries a day. Providing first-rate customer service is one of this brand’s top goals and accomplishments.
For a buyer, there are no special skills needed to run this business since the team now handles 90% of the daily workload. All operations and systems are fully set up, so a new owner could focus on scaling this business in multiple ways, including by launching a larger selection of women’s shoes and apparel, expanding internationally, and continuing to market only those products that bring in the highest sales.
In just a few short years, this Footwear & Apparel company has accomplished what other businesses often take years to achieve, including strong brand name recognition, glowing reviews, best-selling products, a rising Repeat Customer Rate, and unique products not available anywhere else. Their successful formula is one that can easily be replicated across the globe.
