Today we meet, Florence Faure, CEO & co-founder of Dress in the City, the first second-hand shop connected to your wishes
What’s the Dress in the City concept?
Dress in the City modernizes and dusts the traditional sales depot. We offer women who want to sell their fashion items to take their items directly to their homes and register for them on our platform. The items are then sold on our e-commerce site and in ephemeral shops, we organize in malls and downtown, for all those who want to see and try the products before buying. Dress in The City is the first omnichannel sale depot.
Please, tell us about how you got here
Before launching Dress in The City, I worked 15 years for big companies like Lagardère, TF1, Bouygues Telecom … I’ve always worked on marketing and digital strategy positions. I have a good experience with female media, thanks to my experience at the Elle magazine, paper et on-line.
La particularité de mon parcours c’est d’avoir systématiquement pris des créations de postes. J’aime être à l’origine d’un projet, créer et voir « mon bébé » se développer. Je savais que je finirai par lancer quelque chose par moi-même.
How did you come up with the idea ?
It wasn’t my idea, but my associate’s, Antoine Leloup. When we met in June 2015, He started to lead Exaqtworld, a society that make connected locks and that we actually use to manage our logistic. Coming from the fashion industry (he led Brandalley during several years), he had the idea to use his experience by building an omnichannel sale depot, the last thing was to find a partner to launch the idea. For my part, I had just left my job at Bouygues Telecom and I wanted new adventures that allies digital and physical, in a female universe if possible that missed me in my last experience. So the idea, immediately, seduced me and we started it together!
Is Circular economy important in the fashion industry? Is it a more sustainable and ethical vision of fashion?
Sure. In a general way, I don’t like a waste. At the office, I usually go on war with all the team to recycle what can be recycled, even if I have to get the plastic bottle back myself in the trash!
Same thing for fashion. Before launching Dress in the City, I had been selling my clothes and my children’s clothes as well. When we see the ocean garbage, we can see that we can’t continue to consume without limits. Recycle our dressing and buy second-hand clothes is a way to please ourselves, renew ourselves, follow fashion while limiting its production.
Do we need to be a fashion addict to build a fashion company?
No! But you have to be sensitive about the universe of fashion. Look at me, I’m not what you can call a fashion addict, but fashion is a universe that I know well because I worked 10 years for females magazines. For Dress in the City, I surrounded myself with experts, that know materials, brands and are able to recognize what can be sold. I think we can launch a company in any domain if we are interested if we surround ourselves with the right peoples and most of all you need to make sure you are useful.
What is your ambition for Dress in the City?
We want to implant physically and quickly in the main cities of France (for now we have an office in Paris and Lyon) and Europe. The difference between us and online’s actors is in fact that physical dimension: be able to give us items to sell (empty your dressing and take care of absolutely nothing) and be able to see and try the items in “reality” before the purchase. The recycling economy is booming, mentalities have changed and our service offers a real difference in this market. We now need to accelerate this market to make it work.
You integrated the third incubation promotion at Look Forward. What does this years at Look Forward mean to you?
We received this year of incubation as a real gift! We won it after receiving the big price of the Look Forward jury last June. For us, it’s an opportunity for us to be accompanied by a reference in the world of fashion tips. We also have the help of experts that we would have gad difficulty to access, to go faster on certain projects and test actions that we could not have done alone. The team are super responsive and understand our need very quickly. So it’s a real chance for us to be incubated by Look Forward.