E-commerce: Knickers with a profitable twist

Take underwear then add speedy service. That's one e-tailer's recipe, reports DITA DE BONI.

Women, spare cash, shopping and the net: it's a juicy proposition that has e-tailers rubbing their hands in delight.

As well they might. Female net shoppers are a growing breed. If US trends are followed - and in the Western world they probably will be - women will eventually make up more than 60 per cent of online shoppers.

The target consumer of the 21st century is the independent career femme. She is technology savvy - almost half are online at work - and she "lives well, dresses well, enjoys leisure hours, and pampers [herself]" according to a global survey published in this month's DLB magazine.

Even from New Zealand this market can be captured. Manukau-based lingerie e-tailer jenniferann.com is heading towards "many millions of dollars in sales" in the next year, says founder Jenny Hannah.

The company has taken a simple concept - knickers and bras aimed at the middle to high end of the market, sold through a website - added a twist (speedy service and no postage or handling fees), and created the foundations of a business which plans to set up bricks-and-mortar operations in Australia in the next six months and in the US some time after that.

Exports to the US and lingerie supplied to companies as part of loyalty programmes make up the bulk of sales, says Ms Hannah. Eventually the company hopes to offer other items attractive to its overwhelmingly female customer base - everything from chopping boards to handbags.

There are a few bedrock rules that the company has followed.

"First, we invest a lot in our suppliers," says Ms Hannah. "We are nothing without them."

Service is vital. "All orders are processed and out the door in four hours, and we have made a real effort to stick to that."

All orders cross the virtual counter in US dollars - even within New Zealand - and overheads are kept very low by working out of spartan headquarters dubbed "Hitler's bunker" by Ms Hannah and husband Martin Rotteveel.

Fourteen part-time and full-time staff pack and ship the goods. The suppliers - Calvin Klein, Holeproof and Berlei, to name a few - pay the cost of advertising and marketing their own brands.

The only major player not to have signed up with Jenniferann is Bendon, a notable omission, but one which Ms Hannah says she is not too concerned about.

"Bendon is only really big in Australasia, while a lot of our customers are from the UK, Singapore, Japan and the US," she says determinedly.

To help make it in the US, the site downplays its New Zealand origins, in line with research which suggests US consumers do not like buying from foreign sites. Similarly, Ms Hannah shied away from using a co.nz domain name for the website.

But even in the anonymous realm of cyberspace, it is important to retain that personalised touch if you want to sell lingerie. "What we try to do is make shopping on the net something that is personal," says Ms Hannah.

Service-oriented e-businesses are too rare, she argues. "We are incredibly service driven, and always try to keep in mind that there is a customer at the end of the mouse."

But the story of rapid growth and multimillions has not been without some hitches. Ms Hannah says one fundamental mistake the company made was not hiring their own IT person right away.

"We found that contractors would often say one thing and do another, and sometimes charge differently to what they quoted. We wanted things to move quickly but found there was little flexibility without our own IT employee."

The company also overstocked its virtual storefront. "There were originally around 200 items, with each range having several different colours and sizes,"says Mr Rotteveel. "So we trimmed our range back, got rid of the slower moving stuff like older fashions and bustieres, and stuck with things that were both colourful and trendy, but also stuff that was practical and other stuff for the fuller figure."

In fact, fuller figure lingerie provides some of the company's fastest moving product. The couple believe it might have something to do with the fact that larger women are more comfortable shopping in the privacy of their homes.

A survey showed that the main customer group was working mothers who "don't shop with their girlfriends for fun any more," says Mr Rotteveel.

Marketing is important to drive people to the site, and Ms Hannah is keen to "think outside the square" to attract attention. Renaming her hometown of Pokeno as jenniferann.com was one idea; refining their search engine positioning is another (the words 'lingerie' and 'fuller figure' tend to pull up X-rated sites as opposed to more modest underwear hawkers).

"I think the problem for some e-tailers is that they are growing too fast," says Ms Hannah.

"Basically, we think that income equates to bottom line. I don't believe internet retailing is that much different to other businesses. The thing that has contributed most to our successes is that we've grown only as much as we can afford to."

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