A Message from the CEO

Hello

Let me begin by thanking you all for the support of the last 12 months. Over this period we have seen an increase in revenue thanks to a combination of great customers, lots of new designs and the 3 for 1 Sale.

3 for 1 Sale

Our strategy for the last 18 months has been to try to build our offline retail channels. We have lots of enquiries from customers who would love to come to a physical shop to try corsets on, this makes perfect sense as corsets can be confusing if you are new to them.

In order to offer this service globally I thought it would be best to offer a whole service so that existing fashion retailers could stock a range of our corsets in their stores. Retailers would expect a mark up for themselves for offering an additional part of the service of course, the standard mark up globally is around a 200% mark up.

I knew that we would have to increase the price of our corsets to accommodate our new retailing business partners, but rather than try to do this on existing designs, we tried to increase the prices of our new designs.

We then needed a promotion in the interim to ensure that we continued to sell corsets online whilst we built our offline retail network, in May 2019 we launched a 3 for 1 Sale.

Fast forward to today

Unfortunately the strategy of building an offline network of retailers hasn’t worked and, actually, I know think this is the wrong direction for us anyway. It appears that our customers would like the option of visiting a physical store to try on corsets, but not if they are 200% more expensive.

The 3 for 1 Sale (which is still on today 9 months after we launched it) did teach me that it is important to have a bundle deal on the website to attract and convert new customer’s (online advertising is very very expensive) however I am conscious that this offer neglects and ignores the needs of our existing and loyal customer like you, as many of you tell me you would love one of our latest designs, but you already have lots of corsets and really want to order just 1 on this occasion, not 3.

Summer 2020

I think I have a solution, which will work for everyone, but I would love some feedback from you before we proceed with the project. I will have to end the “3 for 1 Sale” in the coming weeks, we will be launching a new Multi-Buy promotion in its place which everyone is welcome to use.

Valued Customers

My idea is then to create a Corset Story account for all customers who have ordered from us in the past (provided you have kept 100% of at least 1 order). This account login will allow you to order corsets at a greatly reduced price, essentially giving you all access to the pricing which I was offering potential retail partners, corsets would then be around 60% less expensive than today.

There would be no order requirements on your account, you would be welcome to order just 1 corset at a time if you chose and your account would not lapse or be closed through inactivity.

I know that our existing customers use our returns services less (as you generally know your sizes and understand our corsets) and do not cost any additional advertising monies, I have been looking for a way to reward and retain our loyal customers for sometime and think this may be the answer.

Let me know your thoughts by clicking on the below link. Honest feedback would really be appreciated, the features which I have suggesting will be very expensive to develop so I really want to make sure that this is something you would be interested in; https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/Corset-Story

Size/Shape/Lengths

We also have received a lot of requests about different fits for our corsets. Our patterns cutters have been developing these for the last 8 months as well. We are aiming to offer every design on our site in 2 different body shapes as well as a petite, regular and longline pattern. These new options will begin to become available in the coming months.

Chris Rawlings CEO Corset Story