The UK fashion startup, SalesGossip, which offers members exclusive access to fashion sales events and promotions, has relaunched today with a much-polished redesign, following on from the cash injection it received last month. Whilst the size of the angel round remained undisclosed, our sources pegged it at around £300k — money that was earmarked for exiting Beta and today’s official launch.
SalesGossip aims to tackle the difficulty that fashion retailers on the high street have with promoting and shifting discount stock and consumers’ lack of knowledge of when and where sales are taking place. There’s little point putting on a sale if nobody knows about it and it doesn’t generate the desired increase in ‘footfall’ — and it’s here that SalesGossip’s pitch to retailers really comes into focus.
It promises to solve this problem by alerting members to such discounts through personalised emails based on their buying preferences and via the SalesGossip site itself. The idea is to give users the very first access to discounts, offers and sales events.
Meanwhile, at launch, the startup is already working with “over 700 brands and partners”, while it currently targets London, Manchester, Liverpool, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Leeds.
In a statement, co-founder Zabetta Camilleri, talks up SalesGossip’s ability to help save the high street by using online to generate interest offline: “We will be working with retailers and brands on all different levels – from exclusive sale partnerships, to daily sales updates – to help them get more from sales, just as our members will. It’s time to unlock the web’s potential to help the high street rather than hinder it, as we know footfall is where fashion retailers are struggling”, she says.
And taking a sideways swipe at Groupon, co-founder and CTO Emilio Sanz, adds: “Until now, web technology has been used to either offer an alternative to the high street or by services such as Groupon to give retailers an over-simplified shot in the arm rather than a sustained and valuable connection with customers. In that respect, SalesGossip is revolutionary.”
Revolutionary may be over stretching it, but certainly anything that increases footfall without fleecing retailers must be a good thing. And perhaps sites like SalesGossip can help save the high street — one sale at a time.