In addition to affordable prices, adequate supply of goods, perfect after-sales service and a trustworthy value firm system, what other strategies can second-hand luxury resale e-commerce companies have to attract consumers and build their own moat?
In Vestiaire Collective's view, it is a good idea to launch a group of virtual models with their own personalities and fashion characteristics and reflect diversity, and use them to enhance community cohesion and content marketing.
Just last week, the newly redesigned Vestiaire Collective released the "The Collective" avatar project, which consists of five puppet characters, to showcase the five key features of vestiaire Collective's organizational level of goods and the new platform positioning: limited edition designer work, unique retro work, luxury, fashion and sustainability.
As the C of the five figures, Miss Classique has a golden wave head and bright red lips, and the image is set as a fashionable lady who knows the fashion and sees her life as a show to show off herself. She wears Burberry's classic trench coat in her makeup set and carries Dior and Hermes' most iconic handbags.
In the section she leads, the highlights include luxury goods from Chanel, Prada and Celine, as well as high-end designer brand products from Jil Sander and Toteme.
Miss Classic
Lady Green, who wears a "Nezha bun", has a typical Z generation characteristic from the dress style to the persona - she believes that clothing cannot change the world, only the consumers who wear clothing, and sustainable development is not a trend, it is the future of fashion. Because her character is set to be "a bit punk, potentially behind the scenes of Marine Serre or on a bicycle with a handbag made of vegan leather," products from distinctive brands such as Telfa, Marine Serre and Anine Bing are Lady Green's main carry-on tasks.
Lady Green
The only male puppet, Rich, is a "misnomer" character, whose style is not literally "rich" but "street style", walking at the forefront of the trend, wearing high-end fashion clothing that looks ordinary but expensive. In his catalogue are the labels Lacoste x Superme, Balenciaga, Stone Island and Raf Simons.
Rich
Hunter, a vintage with long blue hair and a strong rock 'n' roll style, believes that "the older it is, the newer it gets," and her "wardrobe," described as "the archive of the hottest items in fashion history," is filled with the tight tops of Thierry Mugler and Jean Paul Gaultier.
Hunter
Drops, the last "logo queen", believes that life is short and fashion trends can not be disappointed, and regards the latest products that can have the hottest brands as the most important thing. In response, Vestiaire Collective arranged for her to be dazzling, on the cusp of the product.
Drops
According to Fanny Moizant, co-founder and president of Vestiaire Collective, "Through puppetry and overall rebranding, we want to bring the diversity and fun of our community to life. Our community is made up of people who love, share and find joy in sustainable fashion, which is at the heart of our brand and what makes us unique. ”
As Europe's most famous second-hand luxury e-commerce company, Vestiaire Collective has developed strong momentum in recent years and has now operated in many European countries and the United States. Just in 2021, Vestiaire Collective received two financing rounds led by SoftBank and Kering, with SoftBank injecting €178 million and Kering acquiring a 5% stake in Vestiaire Collective. Two weeks ago, Vestiaire Collective acquired Tradesy, a local women's luxury resale e-commerce company. Industry insiders estimate that the two companies will have a combined value of more than $1 billion in merchandise and more than 23 million users. By the end of this year, Vestiaire Collective will open a second-hand merchandise certification center in the Los Angeles area, which will become the company's fifth certification center in the world and second in the United States.
Also in 2021, Vestiaire Collective was the only one of its kind to receive B Lab-backed B Corp certification, which greatly strengthens Vestiaire Collective's sustainability attributes and enables it to stand out from its peers that are also characterized by circular economy and sustainability attributes.
The revision and upgrading of the official website and the simultaneous release of the "The Collective" project are the key initiatives launched by Vestiaire Collective after completing the above capital operations and brand building, and also officially opened its content marketing exploration as an e-commerce platform.
For a long time, the basis of platform-based luxury e-commerce competition has been mostly based on factors such as product volume/characteristics, preferential margins, digital capabilities and delivery speed, and compared with fashion brands, telling good content stories may not be their important responsibilities and goals. However, the success of content marketing has played a role in promoting the rapid success of new platforms to varying degrees at different stages.
The story of how Net a Porter relied on the founder's experience as a fashion editor and succeeded by "fashion magazineizing" the shelves, has become a "cliché" over the past decade or so, and has evolved on a much larger scale and in a more diverse format – including its bimonthly magazines Porter and digital magazine The Edit, as well as the multilingual content platform Porter Digital and the content site Porter.com, All of them maximize the function of content marketing.
Bimonthly magazine Porter
According to Lucy Yeomans, Global Content Director at Net a Porter, 90% of customers read fashion content at least once a week, and 65% read it multiple times a day. Although the official did not announce the sales conversion results brought by fashion content, it is certain that the investment in content production has brought returns to Net a Porter in loyalty, engagement, customer acquisition, commercial sales and other aspects. This is evidenced by the fact that the company's fashion editorial team in 2018 has reached 70 people.
With the successful experience of Net a Porter in the past, luxury e-commerce platforms such as Mytheresa and Farfetch are also fully aware of the important role that content marketing can play, and explore content marketing methods that are more in line with their own characteristics and more unique.
In the era of "all together can become content", Mytheresa, a latecomer to luxury e-commerce, chose to focus on the "shelf content" feature, to create its own characteristics with exclusive limited series products cooperated with designers or brands.
Mytheresa Men worked with Gucci for the first time
Exclusive capsule range
According to incomplete statistics, since the launch of the "Calvin Klein Jeans x Mytheresa.com Fork Program" with Calvin Klein in 2014, Mytheresa has reached an exclusive capsule series with Brands such as Fendi, Prada, Tod's, Balmain, Stella McCartney and other brands.
On the occasion of the official launch of Mytheresa Men, Mytheresa has also partnered with Prada, Valentino and Thom Browne to launch an exclusive capsule collection and shoot themed fashion blockbusters. Within two weeks of its launch, Nearly 120 brands were launched at Mytheresa Men, and President and CEO Michael Kliger told WWD: "Launching menswear on Mytheresa is a major change for us, we use the brand's DNA to create a new menswear collection that links fashion displays, efficient shopping and creative content. ”
Since then, Mytheresa Men's first exclusive 46-piece capsule collection with Gucci has become an important milestone since the launch of Mytheresa Men, and in September 2021, Mytheresa Men and Tom Ford launched an exclusive capsule collection with one of the largest categories since its launch in January 2020.
Compared with large e-commerce platforms such as YNAP and Farfetch formed after the merger of Net a porter and Yoox, Mytheresa has created its own distinctive and unique "shelf content" feature under the premise that it cannot compete with the scale head-on, and has established a solid position in the continuous in-volume luxury e-commerce competition.
More imaginative content marketing operations come from Farfetch. Taking its operation in the Chinese market as an example, as a "customized" content project for the Chinese New Year of the Tiger, Farfetch joined hands with Xiaoguo Factory and invited Li Baht James and its actors Pang Bo, Xiao Bei and Bird Bird to bring the "Fa Fa Qi Qi Qi Le Party Night" talk show in January this year.
"HairFarth Chill Out Party Night" talk show
Whether it is the role of the guest of cooperation or the form of talk show, compared with the previous content project positioning that focuses on the fashion industry, Farfetch is undoubtedly further expanding the boundaries of content marketing for luxury e-commerce by being closer to the tone of mass media.
At the same time, the "Discovery Discovery" channel is also launched in Farfetch's official APP, presenting more exclusive content through channels including OOTD, Novelty Express, Brand Encyclopedia, Compati and so on.
From the magazine-based shelf display method to the exclusive cooperation series, exhibitions, etc., luxury e-commerce is gradually weakening its "middleman" role through a series of content marketing projects, continuously enhancing the platform's differentiated positioning and active operation capabilities, and also making the "content" types that luxury e-commerce can grasp more extensively.
As a new attempt at the time of the platform revision and upgrading, Vestiaire Collective's "The Collective" avatar project with limited edition designer works, unique retro works, luxury goods, fashion trends and sustainability as the key features may be another breakthrough in the grasp of content by luxury e-commerce, and the diversity and fun puppet models also bring a new idea to the platform and even the reshaping of the brand image.
How big a splash or even sales conversion can a variety of ideas stir up in the minds of consumers? Can more groundbreaking content marketing build a solid moat for luxury e-commerce that is increasingly reluctant to be just a platform? Rather than showing clothing and style with models that conform to the traditional mainstream fashion aesthetic, can Vestiaire Collective's use of these puppet images that require consumers to use their imagination to resonate really become the core image of the fashion enthusiast community and even drive sales conversion? The answers to these questions also need to be verified in the market and the test of time. WWD
Written by Ma Xiao Thorn
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