Ella, the Saint John-based app-developer that helps women sell their used clothing, has opened a retail outlet where women can get together to close more sales.
Founder and CEO Kelly Lawson announced Thursday that the company is opening a store called Ella: The Shop at 101 Prince William Street in Uptown Saint John. It will sell high fashion clothing, but it will also serve as a meeting place for women to get together and try on clothes they might buy from one another.
Ella is a mobile app on which women can sell or buy slightly used clothes. The idea is that women who love fashion have closets full of wonderful clothes they might never wear again. They can post the merchandise on Ella and users can buy them.
Lawson estimates there are $50 billion worth of slightly used fashion sitting in American closets, and she wants to help women capitalize on it. She added that women spend on average $300 a month on clothes and within a month most of it is obsolete.
“The challenge for Ella and every other online peertopeer sales platform is finding a place where people are comfortable to meet and try on clothing items,” said Lawson in a press release. “With our new shop, we are creating a shopping and sharing centre where everyone will feel safe and welcome. It’s more than a store and an app; Ella is a community, a movement.”
Ella has graduated from the Propel ICT accelerator and has been working with the Fashion Zone, an incubator for fashion companies affiliated with Ryerson University in Toronto. It launched its app a year ago and women are using it. Lawson hopes that the meeting place will encourage more sales by users, which will lead to more Ella retail outlets in other cities.
"Our long term goal is expansion,” said Lawson in an email. “We want to offer the same features and services in other cities that we are now able to offer to our home base. We will be engaging our most active app communities to choose markets where women really value high fashion.”
Ella now has a staff of four and plans to add more next month. Lawson has not raised capital for the company, preferring to bootstrap while the company gets off the ground. It hopes it is now laying the foundation for future growth.
“Everything that we do, including the opening of The Shop, is a response to the what we're learning from our users,” she said. “We will always be learning and evolving."
