“Revolve is a whole new species of fashion retail,” says Jesse Timmermans, the CFO at Revolve, in an interview with Entrepreneur Network partner Business Rockstars. “We’ve taken the traditional retail model and evolved that experience to be laser-focused on the largest buying power in the world, the millennial.” (View video below)
Timmermans says that the biggest challenge of being a CFO for him is balancing risk, cost, opportunities and reaching the right decision for the long-term. “There is a vast amount of data available out there, so how do you take all of that data, translate it, find the right indicators, and make the right decision for the long term,” he said.
On Competition: You Have to Offer More
Customer behavior is changing fast and customer expectations are increasing all the time with the larger more transactional based digital retailers making it harder and harder to compete, so you have to go beyond that and offer more. Beyond free shipping, it has to be fast shipping. Beyond free returns, it has to be easy returns.
We at Revolve treat the home as a dressing room, so we allow the customer to return, we encourage the customer to try new things. We offer a lot of emerging brands, so it’s important for that customer to try something on in their home and to be able to return free and easy.
Constantly Monitoring Data to Read Brand Performance
At Revolve we carry a lot of emerging brands, so we need to continually read and react to the performance of these brands. After launching on the site we read within 24 hours how that brand is performing, how that style is performing. We read many many attributes on each piece of clothing and then we make a quick call on do we go deeper or do we cut the brand and the style?
About Revolve
Revolve is an ecommerce startup that was founded in 2003 and is headquartered in Cerritos, California. The company describes itself as the virtual home for an unrivaled collection of over 700 of the world’s most-coveted established and emerging brands in women’s and men’s designer apparel, shoes, and accessories. Based in the Los Angeles area, Revolve’s is deeply rooted in the Southern California lifestyle from which it was founded, where a savvy view of fashion and fun-loving attitude are infused into the entire customer experience.