My Dressoir rents out designer clothing for parties or events. And that proved difficult to fit into standard e-commerce systems and logistics processes. Five questions for Maxine Hassing from My Dressoir. Read the Dutch version on Emerce.
Where did the idea for My Dressoir come from?
I started My Dressoir three years ago from a personal and business need. I worked as a sustainability manager and helped large companies to make business processes more sustainable. So I fully understood how that sustainability transition worked and how you can achieve both commercial and sustainable impact. In addition, I personally also wanted to live more sustainably. I wanted to wear something nice and new but dit not want to buy something new every time. I felt bad entering fast-fashion stores. And the clothes I would buy would take op too much space in my small closet in Amsterdam anyway.
The core of the problem is that we often buy things we don’t need. I’ve been used to sharing clothes for years. During my student days I always lived in a dorm with friends and I have a sister and mother with whom I often share clothes. This experience has been the basis for My Dressoir: how can we organize clothing borrowing on a large scale? Plus, I had been wanting to start my own business for a while as well.
Have you been affected by the corona pandemic?
It has been two difficult years. We rent out clothes that women can wear to parties and everything was closed. The restaurants and cultural sector is now opening up again, so we are looking forward to it.
Where is your company now?
We are in good shape. Over the past three years we have been able to test everything. Which products, which services, how do we make the process run as smoothly as possible, which dimensions, which designers. We now understand our business model very well. We focused on building the best tech and operations we could build.
Renting out clothes is a quite complex operational model. In normal e-commerce you can expect some returns. With renting, it is 100%. We have to clean, check and repair everything. We could not build on standard e-commerce systems and logistics. With the right partners, we have built everything ourselves.
I am proud that everything is now in place and in-house. We can now do everything ourselves and are very flexible. It took a few years, time, energy and money to get there. Now of course we want to continue and that is why we also want to raise money.
What are you looking for in terms of type of investor?
We are now mainly in talks with funds and angels. With some in an advanced stages. We prefer to work with an investor with a background in logistics, e-commerce, fashion or sustainability. I would really like to add one or more female angels to the group of investors, because my company is female founded. We are, of course, also absolutely open to male investors. We have already a few of them on board. But to be honest, I don’t want to close until we can find that female investor.
What do you want to use the investment for?
Expand the team. We already have many customers and have grown through press and word of mouth. In terms of marketing, our costs have never been very high. So at the moment it is mainly about expanding the team. We would like to hire a Head of Product and a Head of Brand partnerships. These are crucial positions to cover in our team and help grow the business further.
My Dressoir is currently raising. Check out their profile: https://api.fundsup.co/go/xNMto7LYqo