Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Darren Hill, CEO of WebLinc (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: I see it.

Darren Hill: It’s quite powerful. People share them like crazy. Our site allows hearting and comments and the customer base is very active.

Sramana Mitra: Interesting. When you put something up on the website, I’m sure you are seeing huge amounts of social media sharing.

Darren Hill: Absolutely. That is the key. That was almost a by-product of allowing people to upload their information. The big value was that these girls are excited that they’re on the Free People site. >>>

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Darren Hill, CEO of WebLinc (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Besides geography, what other parameters do you personalize on?

Darren Hill: For a lot of our fashion clients, we personalize on sizes. For instance, if you have come to the website and you’ve looked for a specific pair of shoes, we’ll actually tag your account and we’ll know what shoe size you are. So the next time you look at shoes, we will filter and sort that specific shoe category. We will make sure that the shoes at the top are available and are in sizes that you indicated that you were interested in. That simple little tweak can increase the conversion rate by about double for specific clients. That is pretty significant.

Sramana Mitra: What else in fashion is interesting in terms of personalization? I’ve started one of the first Internet fashion companies about 15 years ago. I know this category cold. What are you seeing in terms of trends? I’m a big believer in online >>>

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Darren Hill, CEO of WebLinc (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s fast forward to 2014. What is your business today?

Darren Hill: 2014 is an interesting transitional year for us. We had been in business for 20 years. All of the growth that we had, which was pretty significant, was organic. We invested all of our profits back into the business and never took any outside investment up until last year [2014]. Last year was the first time that we did take outside investments.

Sramana Mitra: What is your business?

Darren Hill: We have an e-commerce platform. Companies hire us to use that e-commerce platform for their business. It controls everything that their online store is doing. It controls the front-end—what the customers sees and what the customer interacts with. >>>

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Darren Hill, CEO of WebLinc (Part 1)

As you know, I am deeply interested in personalization as it applies to e-commerce & Web 3.0. In this interview, Darren Hill and I discuss the subject at length, especially as it pertains to fashion e-commerce, another area of significant interest for me.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with introducing our audience to yourself as well as WebLinc. Tell us what you do and what you’re focused on.

Darren Hill: I started WebLinc with my brother in 1994 when I was 18 and a freshman at college. Before we started WebLinc, we owned a small mail-order business, which was a traditional mail-order business for mailing out catalogs. >>>

Web 3.0 and Online Fashion

Excerpt from my new book, From eCommerce To Web 3.0.

In 1999, long before fashion on the Internet actually took off, I started a company called Uuma. It was a traditional venture-backed personalized fashion startup that received an acquisition offer from Ralph Lauren before the company was caught in the first dotcom crash.

I am going to articulate the vision behind Uuma, particularly because that vision still remains unrealized. I hope that some entrepreneur, somewhere, will execute on it.

As you know, I define Web 3.0 as a verticalized, personalized user experience. The web is still utterly fragmented. You have to go to different places to find information about the same context. I have long had the vision of a personalized Saks Fifth Avenue. I want my store — my personal store — that carries merchandise that applies to me; that suits my hair color, eye color, skin tone, body shape and personal style. I want it to stock my favorite designers and more like those. And I want to see articles and community discussions that are specific to my interests.
>>>

Men’s Fashion e-Commerce Entrepreneurs Thriving

Excerpt from my new book, From eCommerce To Web 3.0.

Most major retailers are latching on to the e-commerce trend but there is also a growing number of online men’s fashion upstarts like Combatant Gentlemen and JackThreads that are using social media channels to understand the consumer and sell effectively under their own retail brands.

Combatant Gentlemen’s strength lies in creating a brand that produces high quality clothing at an affordable cost and then effectively selling it to their target customer of young, aspiring professionals through Facebook. CEO Vishaal Melwani says, “One of the big reasons that we still, to this day, take away clients [from competitors like Men’s Warehouse] is because their messaging is incorrect. They don’t understand the pains and the trials and tribulations that our guy goes through on a daily basis.”
>>>

Building a New Online Fashion Brand: Combatant Gentlemen CEO Vishaal Melwani (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: What about team? What size is your team?

Vishaal Melwani: We’ve grown from a humble three to 22 now. The team is focused on three prongs: development and engineering, creative, and production. On the development side, we really focus on leading the cutting-edge on user interface. On our site, we focus on Fit Tech. A lot of guys don’t know their suit size so we’ve done stuff where we matched BMI to suit size. >>>

Building a New Online Fashion Brand: Combatant Gentlemen CEO Vishaal Melwani (Part 6)

Vishal Melwani: That’s what a lot of people take for granted. You go up and you pitch your business. You focus on metrics and what you want to disrupt. Really, everyone’s a human being. Every human being that I know of, especially in business, loves stories. If you can’t tell a good story, you’re not going to get anything out of it. We went up there and said, “I’m a third-generation tailor. This is what I grew up in and we wanted to create a business for the guys that we know. Our guys are party animals. They’re business minded. They want to have a great time and pay a lot. They want to look great. We’re unapologetic about it.” Luckily enough, we took home first place. From there, we got our first seed check from Dapples for $500,000.

Sramana Mitra: How much did you raise?

>>>