Case Study: Open for Vintage
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Growing From 2 to 65 Boutiques Globally in Just One Year

"We have been dealing with Seriun now for a number of years as the main developer and administrator of our site. Their level of service is outstanding and they take a real and honest interest in understanding our business so we can improve it."

James Loftus | Director, Open for Vintage

FACT FILE

Open for Vintage (OfV) a luxury fashion website, has a mission to become the leading online platform for luxury preowned fashion whilst promoting sustainable fashion practices and independent retailers.

OfV was founded in 2016 by two Irish entrepreneurs Colin Saunders & James Loftus, and is a high-end marketplace selling preloved vintage designer items from boutiques around the globe to their discerning international customers. Just one year after launching, OfV is now home to 65 boutiques in 12 markets, with an average order value of £700+. The team carefully curate exciting one-off pieces through their passion for everything vintage. They are ‘unlocking the worlds boutiques.’

OfV has also attracted the attention of some of the most prestigious global fashion publications including Vogue, E! Entertainment and The Huffington Post, and international A-list celebrity customers include Kim Kardashian, who purchased a selection of pieces – namely a vintage Escada skirt she wore on Valentine’s Day. Also, Hayley Baldwin and Daisy Lowe, as well as Irish VIP’s Vogue Williams and Una Foden, who are also fans.

Attracting such high-profile names has brought the Open for
Vintage brand to a global audience.

Mission Accomplished

Open for Vintage, had a mission to become the leading online platform for luxury preowned vintage fashion whilst promoting sustainable fashion practices and independent retailers.

  1. To start the online store, they needed a system that would allow customers to shop from a global network of luxury boutiques all on one website.
  2. They also needed a platform, which would operate a management system providing logistics and curation processes to many independent boutiques around the world.
  3. The three-way transaction between the vendor, marketplace and consumer creates financial and operational complexities that need to be managed and automated to ensure the best possible service and value proposition to the customer. Functions such as onboarding of new vendors or taxonomy of individual products and maintaining high quality and consistent imagery can be difficult to manage and maintain consistency.
  4. Order processing and logistics present a unique set of challenges where the customer and the vendor can be in different regions around the globe. Commission management for sales across multiple currencies, language and identifying logistic partners, are critical considerations to ensure products are delivered on time and within the market commercial expectations.
  5. Vendor management presents back office complexities and as each boutique is independent, aligning each with the OFV brand and operational template, could create prohibitive administrative burden.
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How we made it all come together

Successful Integration

Procuring an enterprise platform was too costly and time consuming. Seriun chose nopCommerce as their ecommerce platform of choice and integrated other services.

In order to meet Open for Vintage’s expectations, Seriun developed several plugins to integrate with 3rd parties: DHL fulfillment, Pixelz image post-production, Intelligent Reach for product data imports, Affilient for affiliate marketing.

Seriun also set up vendor commission calculation and reporting, auto pricing adjustments for vendors listing in other currencies, place bid/make offer feature, and a separate web portal area for vendors to list product and manage orders and shipments.

 

Results that speak for themselves

Open for Vintage have grown from 2 to 65 boutiques in just one year, with a global reach across 12 different markets, they have been recognised on the Startups 100 Index of top new UK based businesses and they have successfully raised their second round of investment, currently valuing the company at ~£4m.

Seriun are now starting phase three of development. OFV have a scalable and fully managed and serviced platform upon which to grow a successful international marketplace. Seriun and OFV’s partnership is a success and an integral part of the solution. They look forward to scaling up the platform as OFV continue to grow.

Leave it to the professionals

If you have a bespoke software project in mind that you’d like to discuss, or an e-commerce idea you want to get off the ground, come and talk to us – we’ll happily give you our professional advice (no obligations attached).