Andrew Pallett is on the fast track to success. His online clothing store Urban Alpha was recently awarded by the Shell LiveWire judges panel for its great work. Andrew is slated to appear on the BBC in the upcoming months and he truly has what it takes to carry his company to high places.
1. Give us a brief introduction to Urban Alpha and yourself
My vision for Urban Alpha is to build it into a key competitor in the international men’s clothing market, which we aim to achieve by combining a great selection of products with useful content that customers can add to and improve upon, all enhancing the online shopping experience.
As for me, I guess in many ways I’m a typical entrepreneur. I’m thinking and creating all the time – so much so that my bedroom walls are literally covered in pieces of paper and post-it notes, and I have to carry around a notebook in case I think of something while I’m away from my office! I’m not interested in making money – if that comes as a by-product then that’s great, but I started this business because I just want to make things work better.
2. What were the most effective marketing strategies for your company?
In many ways, we are still learning and experimenting with online marketing. What has been a good consistent drives of sales for us is listing our products on comparison shopping engines like Shopzilla – it takes a while for someone to rate you up but once you do it slowly builds like a snowball, which is great.
I also do interviews with websites and blogs, and write articles related to my experiences and the products that we list which have been picked up and lead to bigger things. We have also had some success with competitions ran though social media, which has been great for driving bursts of traffic but time will tell if the ROI is sustainable over the long term.
For a small company like ours, our marketing budget is always stretched to the limit, but our strategy is to slowly build awareness so that our sales grow at the same time as the company, allowing us to reinvest our profits.
3. How does your overhead compare to a brick and mortar store?
I would imagine it’s a lot lower, but having never operated one I couldn’t tell you!
I think the debate between online businesses and the high street is really interesting – more so when you consider that ecommerce is 18 years old this year. It goes without saying that online retail has the most growth potential making it the big player, but does it necessarily mean the end of the high street all together?
I don’t think so – if you look at the success that some huge brands have had with multi-channel advertising, then it will only be a matter of time before the small, independent brick and mortar stores start doing the same thing, but on a smaller scale. The main advantage that the high street has is that customers can physically interact with products, which is one of the main drivers behind my vision for Urban Alpha. I’m also interested to see how augmented reality develops, and how businesses like www.fits.me are adopted by the large online retailers.
4. As a young upstart is it difficult to gain credibility in the online community?
I think you get a certain level of credibility just by getting out there and doing it, which is great. I think what makes the difference is how well you can hold a conversation with people who really know what they are talking about – so I made sure I spent a lot of time reading, learning and asking questions so that my knowledge of the industry grew, which in turn had positive effects on my business.
5. What have you done to set yourself apart from the thousands of other clothing providers online?
At such an early stage in our business, I feel that it’s not what we have done now, but what we are going to do that’s important. On a start-up budget, it’s impossible for me to achieve the huge vision I have because it would cost hundreds of thousands of pounds (or dollars) to develop what I need, so I’m reinvesting the profits of the business so I can grow the company until such a point where I can invest the resources and bring my idea to fruition.
In the mean time, I’m focussing on the customer experience – both on-site and off. Navigation and functionality are two things that I will always be developing on the site, but our primary focus is on customer service before, during and after the sale. Our response times and delivery are really fast, which has lead to some great feedback, free word of mouth marketing and most importantly, repeat custom!
6. You recently won the Shell LiveWIRE award, tell us a little more about that
Shell LiveWIRE is an online community for young entrepreneurs – which is fantastic for exchanging ideas, discussing the latest news and learning from each other’s experiences. The award itself was voted for by fellow entrepreneurs and a judging panel, which for me was a kind of motivational pat on the back from my peers.
The PR that I’ve gained off the back of it has been more than I could have ever hoped for – in a few months I’ll be doing some TV work for the BBC – plus the £1000 grant was also very welcome! If people would like to find out more and view our video pitch, they can do so over on our ‘about us’ page!
7. Do you have any advice for people trying to break into the e-Commerce market?
You really need to spend time before your launch thinking about and planning how you are going to drive traffic to your website. You can worry about refining and customising and testing further down the line, but traffic really is the lifeblood of anything online. It’s relatively easy to build a website these days, and even if you have just launched something that could rival Facebook and Twitter, it’s really of no use if no one knows about it!
Andrew is the owner of Urban Alpha, http://www.urbanalpha.co.uk/ an online designer men’s clothing retailer. You can find Urban Alpha on Facebook Facebook or twitter Twitter , and you can follow Andrew on Twitter at @AFDPallett .
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