TheIndustry.fashion LIVE! Reimagining 'The Sessions' with Harper, Hirestreet and Nudea

TheIndustry.fashion LIVE! ‘Gain a return on returns’, in partnership with Bleckmann, presented its first annual Reimagining ‘The Sessions’ in conversation with TheIndustry.fashion's EIC Lauretta Roberts. The Session recognised three individuals who have made an impact in reducing returns through innovation.

Priya Downes, the Co-founder of Nudea

Priya Downes, the Co-founder of Nudea, has been recognised by TheIndustry.Fashion for incorporating expert fitting tools into its ecommerce platform. According to Downes, “fitting tools are the keys to strong conversions”.

A key takeaway from TheIndustry.fashion LIVE! ‘Gain a return on returns’, is that return rates are sliced when fit is improved. This is a key factor in online retail, particularly in the size-intensive category of lingerie and underwear – which is where Nudea steps in.

Downes began her career in finance, later moving into luxury fashion. Most recently she worked with Burberry, which gave her an appreciation for well-fitting pieces that were made to last.

After becoming a mum, she looked at a draw of underwear that neither fit nor could she donate. The Co-founder felt there must be a better way to consume underwear rather than heading to M&S and buying a run-of-the-mill standard bra that her mum also owned.

Downes commented: “The whole category needed rethinking, and that’s something that I wanted to do.” She recognised that, “sizing is a huge part of this category, and what comes with that is the issue of returns.”

Nudea bras retail between £30-£50 and briefs are between £10-£25, which Downes says is an accurate price point for “an everyday luxury”.

Understanding that to be successful, the digital-first brand needed to ensure customers were educated about fit before purchasing. Downes introduced the Fit Kit from the get-go, adding: “The biggest issue to conversion online is sizing, and its extremely true in lingerie in particular as it’s a sizing first category.”

A year before launching the brand, she worked with 100 women to collect data. This led her to ask: “What about the measuring tape and how to people measure themselves?”

This informed Nudea’s Fit Tape, which “became iconic” by doing exactly what it says on the tin- simply showing bra sizes rather than the need to convert numbers.

When customers buy tape for £5, they get that back towards purchasing their first Nudea bra. This ensures a strong 30-40% conversion to buying bra. As the average woman wears six different bra sizes in their lives, the Fit Tape was designed to last in order to remeasure every six months or so.

The company is constantly innovating fitting tools, recently relaunching the Fit Quiz two weeks ago. This innovative tool was created in partnership with Live Sell, a platform designed for QVC to showcase shopping demos to large audiences. This technology has been adapted to perform 1-1 fittings that mimic an in-store bra fitting. Downes laughed, “it’s like Zoom on steroids”.

She noted: “Our return rates are around 17-18%, which is low for a size-intensive category. Part of the reason is because of these fitting tools. For example, we know that our third-party retailers such as John Lews are seeing higher return rates – so we can see that benchmark”.

Liam Young, CEO of Harper

Liam Young started the concierge service Harper back in 2017. Young’s background was in engineering, which led him to tackle his new business from a consumer perspective.

Young joked: “I was spending far too much time in the post office.

“The future of shopping is online, and this can’t be the future of the experience.”

The CEO told an anecdote of a bad experience with DHL, spending hours knocking on neighbour’s doors to find his package, later having to fish out the bin. After this, Young set out to create a seamless delivery system for ecommerce: introducing Harper.

Harper revolutionised the online shopping experience by asking the question: “how do you take the experience of luxury shopping in-store to home?”

Young’s business is a concierge service that drops off and picks up clothing, allowing customers to try on in the comfort of their home, while receiving styling advice. What’s more, customers only pay for what they keep.

The try-before-you-buy service is available currently in greater London (anywhere on the M25), but it will be expanding the entirety of the UK by end of this year.

Couriers return to homes in 40 minutes and collect unwanted items, recommending alternatives. This also means additional purchases are made and returns aren’t subject to damage and delayed postage.

Furthermore Harper's stylists gain real-time feedback from customers about why items are kept or sent back, which retailers can feed into their online experience and product development to help reduce returns.

Isabella West, Founder and CEO of Hirestreet

Isabella West founded the rental service Hirestreet in 2017. The inspiration for the circular fashion business came organically. West told Roberts: “I grew up with two sisters and my mum is a Fashion Editor. So, I love fashion but I was used to sharing it.”

She continued, “While I was at university, around 2011, there were three huge shifts happening: the rise of Instagram, the rise of sharing economy and the rise of fast fashion.

“I started Hirestreet because I was consuming very wastefully and my peers were doing the same thing.”

While working at Selfridges, West had access to Rent the Runway's data and knew she had to bring this concept to the UK. And, she had a pile of clothes in her house share in which to start the company. There was instant demand, and organic networking continued to push momentum.

West joked: “You can’t imagine the states in which I received items back. People were leaving their underwear in clothes.” Lauretta laughed, “These people are raised by wolves!”.

As the business grew, West decided to partner with retailers because it was a scaleable business and they preferred to control their services, which meant the consumer benefit. If you work with a retailer, you can have 20 units per size, for example. This can generate 50+ rentals, not just one.

Over the years, as in-house circularity teams began to pick up, there's been a higher demand for rental services. Zoa was built off the back of this. This white label platform is based on Hirestreet's infrastructure and implements on-product page rental offers on retailer's sites to acquire new customers. West is now seeing an opportunity for brands and retailers to plug a rental service into their returns process. For instance if an item is returned too often – perhaps because it's a very dressy piece that customers have second thoughts on – it can be diverted to a rental service where it will generate income for the retailer.