1 years sales of 5 million U.S. dollars wedding Weddington way growth and profitability of the road

Intermediary transaction SEO diagnosis Taobao guest Cloud host technology Hall

Editor's note: The wedding tradition has nothing to do with technology? No, look at Weddington way. How do you sell more than 25,000 dresses in 2013 with annual sales of more than 5 million dollars? More importantly, according to its first quarterly results in 2014, The company is expected to reach a 10 million-dollar annual operating rate. Article from Foreign Science and technology blog Pando.com.

In the United States, there are about 2.5 million weddings a year. According to the average cost of 25,200 dollars per wedding, the wedding market can reach $63 billion. Most of the billions of-dollar industry is affected by technology, and the wedding industry is one of the few unaffected. The bride and groom will mimic their parents ' wedding ceremony and make minor adjustments, like Pinterest, email and photo-sharing platforms, but when it comes to money, there is little change.

Try never stop. Millions of venture capital and tens of thousands of people are trying to solve the problem, but most of them have done little. Ilanna Stern was a buyer for the bloomingdales of a large chain store and the founder of Weddington Way, a bridesmaid's dress online retailer. She points out that most wedding market participants try to make weddings a business issue rather than a social problem. The bride and groom, of course, need tools to discover and buy wedding supplies, but simply offering more beautiful and novel online services is far from enough to subvert the traditional offline business model.

Weddington Way's secret weapon is to integrate social elements into its business experience, and not just focus on the bride in the process. Weddings are always a big day for brides, but for those who have been behind the scenes, weddings are like a battle. In addition, the bride wants to share joy or madness with friends and family, or pressure to make decisions. Weddington way solves this problem by allowing users to browse the site together, share comments and information about goods, and help make decisions.

"The way young people communicate, connect and consume media today is so different from their parents, why can't wedding planning change?" Stern said.

This is not always obvious. When Weddington Way was just starting out, Stern and her team focused on protecting the privacy of brides and initially locked in a number of social tools that are still in use. But information sharing is only a one-way pass from the bride to the other team members, without a reverse flow. Clear customer feedback shows that brides want as much information as possible to enter. Stern quickly made the necessary changes in the user experience.

Allowing other participants in the wedding, especially the bridesmaids, to join, is the second magic weapon that distinguishes Weddington way from other wedding start-ups. While the bride is generally considered a one-time client, the bridesmaids tend to attend several weddings, including their own, in the next few years (generally considered to be the age of the bridesmaids at the age of 20 to 30). In this way, Weddington Way's customers are more attractive than their peers in terms of cost and customer lifetime value, Stern said. At the same time, an average wedding company could sell four dresses, and the first deal to absorb a bridal client would be quite impressive.

Weddington Way sold more than 25,000 dresses in 2013, with annual sales of more than 5 million dollars, stern calling it a "real business". In the first quarter of the new year, the company's operations have reached a 10 million-dollar annual operating rate. Although the company's cash flow is working well, stern pays more attention to company growth than profitability. Another unique factor is the company's ability to accurately forecast sales. Buy wedding supplies usually eight months before the wedding, Stern knows the bride's wedding date and her purchase conversion rate so that she can draw the current schedule.

The success of Weddington Way also benefited from other factors. Stern pointed out that the company's Web site has the largest online wedding fashion classification system----to the bride's thinking shopping, according to the depth of color, artistic aesthetic and the theme of the meaning of classification. The website also sends the cloth sample to the new user, this solves the problem which the electronic commerce lacks the tactile experience. In addition, the company provides a personal stylist for every customer who visits the site. But in the final analysis, the interactive social experience of the platform is the key factor that Weddington way to stand out from many wedding dealers.

Weddington Way's new move is the launch of its own brand series. The company has launched a series of dresses with six colors, complete sizes and different styles. In this way, compared to national chain stores and boutique stores, the company can provide customers with more flexible, faster and more economical products and more convenient return services. This also allows companies to reduce inventory risk and shorten the product cycle.

Stern believes that her team has created some clever designs to make these dresses no less favourable than the famous brands. These include: the use of customized soft matte fabric instead of the stiff flash bridesmaid clothing standard fabric; add pocket design elements to place small but large objects such as lip gloss and mobile phones.

Early-stage customer feedback suggests that owning a brand can be a winning situation. But manufacturing also poses risks and challenges. Even if Weddington way proves that it has the ability to attract online customers and deliver a social shopping experience, this does not mean it can successfully produce products that win customers ' favor and deliver them efficiently to customers. Stern is sensible, and she will gradually build and develop her own brand business over time. During this period, she did not want this brand-building process to suffer too much interference.

With Weddington way brand awareness and customer satisfaction, Stern hopes to expand the site into a comprehensive wedding fashion platform, operating footwear, jewelry and bridesmaid accessories, and even directly for the bride and groom's fashion needs to serve. Existing wedding electric dealers, such as knot and loverly, are more of a trend-leading web site, which leads to a third party, rather than having the entire vertical experience. The company's real competitors are not other start-ups and electric-power websites, but offline retailers and beautifully-crafted prints that have served brides and wedding planners over the past decades.

Weddington Way's team has grown to 20 people, headquartered in San Francisco, near Stern's alma mater Stanford University Business School. Backed by investment companies such as Battery Ventures, Felicis Ventures, Trinity Ventures, and Bonobos founder Andy Dunn and other Angel Investments, the company raised 2.5 million dollars in seed money in 2011 ( Convertible stock structure). The increase in seed money last summer (undisclosed) brought more cash and strategic advisers, including JetBlue CEO Joel Peterson and founder Jim Ellis of Asia wins. Stern expects a first round of funding later this year.

Weddington Way is still in the early stages of the business cycle, and despite the impressive data, it still has a long way to go to prove that it is a fairly large sustainable enterprise. History shows that the wedding industry is not an easily affected by the technology industry. However, to solve this problem with the social perspective is the root cause of Weddington way in the industry.

In terms of early results, "wedding technology" is compelling enough to make it profitable for a wedding.

(via PD/fast carp)