Bringing Together Content And Commerce In Men’s Fashion: JackThreads Founder Jason Ross (Part 4)

Sramana: In the beginning, did you have different merchandise for sale every day?

Jason Ross: In the beginning we did sales three times a week, and we rotated the merchandise so each sale had something new. A couple of months later we had enough of an audience to move to sales five days a week. Shortly afterward we began having sales seven days a week. Today we have multiple branded sales every single day, which is the level I originally wanted to be at from the first day. I just did not have the resources or audience back then to make that type of offering.

Sramana: How do you market and run the flash sales? How do you get the word out about them, and how do you manage them on the back end?

Jason Ross: On the back end we have a buying team that works with close to 300 brands now. They stay in touch with sales reps and inventory managers for those brands. We want to be the person they call first, and that remains our strategy to source merchandise. We have a photography studio with models and photographers. When a deal is done with a brand, they ship merchandise to our warehouse and our studio takes over. They get the models ready and do a photo shoot of the items. In terms of marketing we now have a mid six-figure membership base that has opted to receive daily e-mails.

Sramana: How did you build that membership? You said you had very few visitors for the first six months. When did the membership start to take off?

Jason Ross: The third month was the first time we received blog press. The press was viral, and our sign-ups rose significantly every day. That turned out to be key to our growth. For the first nine months all we did was market ourselves to blogs. At the same time we implemented a system where members who invite friends who actually make a purchase receive a $10 credit on the site. A lot of people take advantage of that and use it as a way to make money to buy goods on out site. That has helped us out a ton.

In August 2009 we realized we needed to grow quicker. We were a year into the business and that is when we hired a full-time marketing professional. We started with Google and Facebook and did test advertising campaigns. It took a month or two of tinkering to acquire customers at the right price and get that money back. Two months into our campaign, we began seeing ROI on it.

Sramana: How did JackThreads’s traffic ramp after the third month?

Jason Ross: The growth was not significant, but it was enough to indicate we had something. We were lucky to be involved early on when there were not many other entrants in this space. We had the luxury of going slower. I don’t have hard data for site visitors, but I remember that it was enough to indicate that we had an opportunity to scale quicker.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Bringing Together Content And Commerce In Men’s Fashion: JackThreads Founder Jason Ross
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