New Enterprise Idea-Online Vintage Clothing Store

toodlepips

Hi Everyone,

We are final year students carrying out a New Enterprise Development Project.

Our idea is an online vintage clothing store as we feel that vintage shouldn't have to be bought the old fashioned way.

The website would also include a personal shopping service whereby customers can request a specific item which we can then try and track down.

We feel that there is a gap in the market for a well designed website which sells high quaility vintage at a resonable price.

We would really appreciate any feedback on our idea.

Thanks

okeydokey7

I think this sounds like a great idea, I think it would save a lot of time that is usually spent browsing throught a lot of vintage items in a shop.

zAbbo

Nothing substitutes Market Research like having a feeling

Realistically, I don't think this idea would work and would prove difficult to monetize without considerable investment (way beyond having a well designed website)

Online clothes shopping in Ireland is dominated by UK companies, with most of them finally investing in dedicated Irish websites (like M&M Direct, Debenhams etc.)

The ease of comparative shopping across UK/Europe would make it difficult for an Irish store to gain any traction, those that do are outward looking and niche.

While Vintage is relative niche, I'd suspect that the experience of vintage hunting is a major contribution to it's recent success. (i.e the experience rather than convenience)

By all means, show the insight into how you think it would work?

busman

toodlepips wrote: »

Hi Everyone,

We are final year students carrying out a New Enterprise Development Project.

Our idea is an online vintage clothing store as we feel that vintage shouldn't have to be bought the old fashioned way.

The website would also include a personal shopping service whereby customers can request a specific item which we can then try and track down.

We feel that there is a gap in the market for a well designed website which sells high quaility vintage at a resonable price.

We would really appreciate any feedback on our idea.

Thanks

Have a look at :http://translate.google.com/globalmarketfinder/index.html#%23en_IE
Searching for "vintage clothing" and "vintage clothes"
shows that there were were about 9000 searches a month from Ireland.

Gives an idea of the potential number of customes out there

toodlepips

Thanks all for the feedback.

zAbbo, here are some further insights into our idea.

zAbbo wrote: »

Realistically, I don't think this idea would work and would prove difficult to monetize without considerable investment (way beyond having a well designed website)

Which areas do you think would require considerable investment?

zAbbo wrote: »

The ease of comparative shopping across UK/Europe would make it difficult for an Irish store to gain any traction, those that do are outward looking and niche.

With each item of vintage clothing being unique we feel that you can't compare like with like on each website as easily and also, given the choice, shoppers will use a more local website that accepts laser and has cheaper/quicker postage available.

zAbbo wrote: »

While Vintage is relative niche, I'd suspect that the experience of vintage hunting is a major contribution to it's recent success. (i.e the experience rather than convenience)

Our target market would not necessarily be regular vintage shoppers. We are planning on targeting people who might have been put off by the effort and hunting involved in vintage shopping in the past.

zAbbo

That's not actual insight or research, what's the numbers?

If you can define the market size (It's local & Irish right?) with projections of revenue then it will be easier to determine the success of your idea.

In terms of investment, on the website alone - have you considered?

• Cost of Website (Anything less than 10k, sell on Amazon/Ebay instead)
• Resource to maintain it (Successful websites grow - developers/designers)
• Personal Shopper Resource (How would this work?)
• Marketing, Advertising, PR (Media Spend & Resource cost)

These can be achieved at low cost, but it's unlikely that a low cost website generates a high enough revenue to cover the cost of the service you're offering with a limited size market.

Outside of that, distribution, storage, customer care, fulfillment, sourcing clothes, transaction costs etc.

I'm not trying to put down your idea, but just to give you some clarity on what you're trying to do.

There are no shortage of good web business ideas, but a massive lack of realism of how to bring them to market & generate profit online.

Build it and they will come is not a substitute for a business plan.