Mallzee

Founders

Mallzee was founded in July 2012 in Glasgow by Cally Russell. Mallzee is based in Edinburgh.

Russell was born on 13 February 1988 in Dunoon, Scotland but moved to Edinburgh and is there operating as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Mallzee. Russell studied Politics and International Relations at The University of Dundee where he received a 2:1 degree. After completing his degree, Russell went to work for the public affairs and PR company Weber Shandwick for six months before he started his first venture Student Punch, an online student magazine. At that time he was also listed for Scottish Emerging Entrepreneur of the year. During an interview, CEO Cally Russell said that the inspiration behind Mallzee came down to wanting to create something that really helped people find clothes online.

"There is now so much choice online that it is difficult to find the clothes that suit you. When you do find something that you like the look of how can you get the opinion of friends? With Mallzee you can share your finds with your friends using the app and get their opinion before they buy. If they don't like it – then you can't buy it. It's perfect for stopping awful purchase decisions."

Team

Since its inception, Mallzee has grown to a team of twenty-three employees, including Callum Stuart as Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Jamie Sutherland as Chief Technology Officer (CTO), a finalist for best new tech product at Scotland IS awards.

Features

Mallzee uses an Algorithm to learn the style of the user of the app and automatically suggest different types of clothes. It adopts a swiping system (similar to the Tinder app) which allows the user to 'like' or 'dislike' a product. Every swipe contributes in building the user’s style profile; the more swipes, the more accurate their profile will become. The information about the user’s preferences will be then added to the current season trends.

Mallzee is a type of Social software aimed at personalizing shopping experience. The application allows the user to share items with other users within the app in order to receive an opinion and make the experience similar to shopping in a store. The swiping capability was adopted because it resembles the idea of swiping through clothes. If the feedback on the item is not positive Mallzee will disable the 'buy' button, prohibiting the purchase.

Shop – is central to Mallzee's homepage design. Users can search for a product or a brand, swipe left if they don't like it and right if they do. Users can set up Style Feeds which allows them to personalise streams of clothes based on their tastes. Users can choose which items, based on the requirements they have set, will show there. Users can set certain criteria to improve the accuracy of their search and can specify things like; category of clothing, colour, price range and originating store. However, for faster browsing, users can turn off this view, and instead shop for products in a visual grid, rather than one at a time. In either swiping or grid view, tapping an item reveals more information about the product, while the buy button redirects users to the appropriate store to make a purchase.

Saved – Allows users to see the items they 'liked' and decide either to buy them or delete them.

Trending – Is where users can find items trending at the moment, informations from fashion bloggers and stylists and Mallzee's Instagram page.

Brands – Contains all the brands available in the app and also the user's favourite ones.

My account – This is the user's profile, where personal information, 'open' and 'past' orders are stored.

Price Drop - Alerts users when the price of an item has dropped.

Users

The Mallzee application can be downloaded from both App Store and from Google Play. In June 2015, Mallzee had almost 300,000 users but the company has defined a target of 1,000,000 users by the end of the year.

Until the beginning of 2014, most users were women aged between 15 and 30, but from 2015 the majority of its users are becoming a balanced mix of both men and women. In 2014, Mallzee recorded that 75% of users are in the UK, whereas from 2015 it was trying to increase the number of global users with the expansion into the U.S.

Financials

Mallzee in early 2013 raised an initial seed round of £75,000 from family and friends, to get its app to market. In April 2013 Mallzee raised an additional £150,000 from a group of private investors from Edinburgh led by Andrew Barrie. Mallzee also won a Scottish EDGE award in the form of a £42,899 grant.

One year after its presence in the market, Mallzee completed a seed plus round of funding equal to £500,000. Among main investors there were Par Equity and the Scottish Investment Bank, together with a number of well-known angel investors on the Scottish tech scene such as Gareth Williams and Rob Dobson. The success of the seed funding has facilitated the growth both in UK and abroad, and allowed to increase the staff up to fourteen members.

In June 2014 Mallzee raised £2.5 million. This was led by the Royal Mail Group, a postal service company in the United Kingdom. Royal Mail Group also got contributions from the Scottish Investment Bank, Par Equity, and a group of entrepreneurs including Gareth Williams, CEO of SkyScanner.

Growth

The original launch of Mallzee took place during London Fashion Week in September 2013. The company has since then grown to host over 200 global fashion brands and has expanded their operations into the U.S.

In November 2015 Mallzee, which had always been focused principally in U.K., released a version of the app for the U.S. market. The release was made in time for Black Friday. Today, it claims a “six-figure” user base spread across 125 countries.[1] Mallzee's CEO explained that the expansion will attract more big brands such as Zara, H&M and Urban Outfitters to join their service and create a better offering for all of their customers.

In a statement, Cally Russell, founder and CEO of Mallzee, commented: "We know that Mallzee is going to change how Americans shop and save money"

Competition

Mallzee was not the first company operating in this sector. Competitors for the largest market share and user acquisition include Lyst and Shopcade. Since Mallzee's launch, other similar applications have emerged such as Grabble, which launched by Daniel Murray and Joel Freeman in 2014. Grabble uses a similar swipe shopping style as Mallzee and has also been coined 'The Tinder for Fashion', the same title that Mallzee has been given by a list of fashion bloggers and media companies. However, in 2015 Mallzee's user base was twice that of Grabble's.

Advertising

In September 2013 Mallzee launched the beta version of their app for iPhone and Android at London Fashion Week and promoted their updated app with a new advertising video titled 'Mallzee found me the perfect dress'. The video features fictional character Rosie, who ruins a dress the night before her friend Lauren's party and discovers that Mallzee can solve her problem and find her the perfect dress for the party. The video received positive coverage from fashion blogs, business blogs and personal bloggers throughout the social sphere. Since the launch of its beta app, marketing video and notable recent investments from big companies such as The Royal Mail and Gareth Williams from Sky Scanner, Mallzee has received media coverage from Forbes, TechCrunch, Venture Beat and The Telegraph.

In February 2015 Mallzee announced an agreement with Samsung in the UK and Ireland. This deal allowed them to feature Mallzee in a number of advertisements including the Galaxy Gifts and the Samsung Galaxy app store, with promotional pricing for Samsung customers.

Reviews

According to an interview that was made with Cally Russel, both Smarta and O2 did find the app "As one of the top ten innovative mobile businesses in the UK.".

Forbes stated that ”You're Either A Dedicated Follower Of Fashion, Or Have Mallzee On Your iPhone.”

Commenting on the funding round in a statement, Paul Munn, director at Par Equity said: “Mallzee is an innovative product addressing a fast changing consumer market. Choice abounds but shoppers and retailers want technology to help them make sense of the market. The team at Mallzee have made significant progress to date and this investment will provide a runway for the business in its next stage of growth and development.”

Dragons' Den

Cally Russell appeared in the BBC show Dragons' Den in February 2015. Russell pitched his smartphone application to the Dragons and got an offer from IT entrepreneur and investor Peter Jones. The offer was £75,000 investment in exchange for 15 percent of the company. Russel turned down the offer because he did not want to give away so much equity in his company.

Peter Jones said that he had a hunch that the app could be the next £100 million or a £0 business.