Anastasia Nikiforova - CEO and co-founder of Olivia Bottega Fashion Corp. in the USA and Venezia-Wedding in Russia. At the beginning of the journey, she did not have large investments and business experience, but she had an idea. That allowed her to gain the trust of thousands of brides. She told us about how an ambitious decision to sell wedding dresses online allowed her to create a successful international business.
In 2013, when choosing my wedding dress, I noticed that there is a problem on the market: there are very few brands that are able to provide high-quality service and beautiful designs. Because of this, if some dress model suddenly turns out to be successful, more than a thousand copies can be sold in one season. There is a risk of seeing the dress of your dreams on another bride.
I approached my wedding dress creatively by collecting from several inexpensive dresses that I wanted. So I realized that I could create a wedding salon for brides who found themselves in the same situation. I came up with a service for customizing dresses. How it works: the client describes to us the dress of her dreams, and we, using existing models, transform them according to her wishes. For example, add the sleeves of one dress, take a top from another, and a skirt from a third.
Сurrently I am engaged in a business that was started with this idea. I opened my first salon in Russia, having no business experience and no initial capital. During the year, all sales revenue went to the development of the brand, and gradually, the salon began to bring a noticeable profit, thanks to the original concept.
Wedding dresses will always be relevant among buyers, taking into consideration the peculiarities and seasonality, there are no significant obstacles for the wedding business. Many famous salons can boast of a great demand for running models, however, there may be some prejudice on the part of buyers towards young and not very well-known brands. Even so, wedding salons, where you can go and choose a dress right on the spot, despite their reputation or quality, are no less desirable for many brides, who simply do not want to spend too much effort on choosing a dress.
Getting on our feet, we opened the second wedding salon in St. Petersburg. At that time, we already had enough resources to develop the first full-fledged collection, because it was too energy-consuming to buy dresses from manufacturers with whom we had already worked. That's what I did: I created visuals in Photoshop and technical descriptions, found fabric suppliers and a sewing contractor, took photos of new models. The collection made a splash, and many brides began to write us asking where they could order dresses.
I suddenly realized that many clients are ready to buy a dress remotely without coming to the salon. It was a surprise for me, because buying a wedding dress is a very big responsibility, then how can someone decide to buy it online? However, it turned out that even a wedding dress can be bought online, and it is often more convenient than in the salon. Time has shown that the decision to develop in the direction of E-commerce was the right one: in 10 years, revenue has increased by 17 times, and sales growth exceeds 170% annually.
At the beginning of the journey, we used international marketplaces, but at some point we decided to create our own full-fledged website aimed at the foreign market. This was much more effective, because marketplaces are often characterized by strict rules, large commissions, and infringement of sellers' rights. It all started with a simple, search engine-adapted version of the site, which was literally created by my husband overnight. Then the site developed: page navigation became more convenient, it became possible to quickly receive a response from managers and leave feedback. Now a team of 30 specialists is working on it.
Creating a reputation as a reliable brand online is not such an easy task. You need to take into account everything: the work of applications, marketplaces, time zones of the target audience. You need large budgets for advertising, planning, statistics. And also - a high-quality customer service, so that you can receive a timely response from anywhere in the world and provide high-quality advice to your customers. Doing business online cannot be easier, or more convenient than doing the same business offline, as it may seem at first glance. In recent years, it has become obvious that the number of people who are ready for online shopping is actively growing, and if your brand can provide a decent and interesting offer, there will be willing ones.
This is especially true today, after the world experienced the Covid-19 pandemic, and many brands were forced to go online. Lockdown did not allow visiting salons, and more than half of the weddings were canceled - the dress could not be bought, the groom's suit, restaurants and wedding venues were closed. More open-minded brides, who were not afraid of changes, decided to order a dress online and celebrate their weddings. Therefore, for the wedding business to go into online sales is a logical decision.
In the wedding business, the most important thing is trust, and seeing the quality of our service and the feedback of satisfied customers, brides are ready to put into our hands the responsibility of creating their dream dress. Our results speak for themselves: 95% of the reviews we receive have a rating of 5 out of 5. It is important to understand that brides do not buy a "pig in a poke"- we approve any order before sending via video. We also provide the opportunity for online fitting, provide fabric samples before purchase, and always stay in touch to take into account any wishes that arise from the client. The delivery itself takes only 4-6 days.
Buying a dress online, even a couple of years ago, before the pandemic, might have seemed like a crazy and thoughtless action. Although for a bride from a small town, who does not have the opportunity to come to the nearest major metropolis for fitting, online buying clearly has more pros than cons. Now it is difficult to imagine a person who would not take advantage of the convenience of online shopping at least once.
Initially, it was very difficult for us to assume that we would be doing business online. Because judging by myself, I had doubts how can you decide to buy such an important thing as a wedding dress online? When buying online, you can not try on a dress, see it, feel. But when the time of the pandemic came, we had to react as quickly as possible. To begin with, we prescribed the top objections to buying dresses online, and began to turn them into advantages. Consequently, we have come to a competitive advantage. But this path took some time. At first, the idea of video reviews with dresses appeared in order to show in detail the quality of seams, the wrong side of corsets, skirts. We paid enormous attention to photo and video reports.
Then came the idea to create an online fitting room to make an online purchase as similar as possible to offline. At these online fitting sessions, we zoomed in on the bride's dress, various customization options, informed how any dress would look on the bride through a mannequin and so on. Now you can find many brands that offer customization services for wedding dresses. Despite this, the Olivia Bottega brand enjoys genuine popularity among foreign brides, and such demand can be easily justified. Now the online fitting of the brand is scheduled for weeks in advance, and the service of payment for customization only, not the size, definitely captivates most of the clients.
When we realized that it was possible to sell dresses online outside the Russian Federation, we immediately decided to expand the size range. We bought three different mannequins, including plus-size ones, so that the size grid became larger, because the idea arose to turn our wedding dresses into an all-inclusive brand. Taking into account the different characteristics of brides from different parts of the world, it was decided to work out a color line to create dresses that complement the different shades of the brides' skin colors.
Among the first it was important to create a guide for taking measurements. Not every bride has the opportunity or desire to seek assistance at the nearby atelier, so the main thing we needed was to perfectly clear get into the brides' sizes. We have done a lot of work and improved the guide by standards, so it is very easy to take measurements and send them to us so that the dress fits like a glove. We have even developed a method of fitting dresses for pregnant brides, this is generally a very relevant topic, but we succeed. By the time the guide was ready, we had already entered most of the international market during the pandemic, and we did not lose. The system turned out to be even more effective than for the Russian market.
At first glance international sales may seem more serious than sales to the local market. A lot of pitfalls are difficult to avoid, without the full-fledged mentoring of more experienced businesses or even corporations. It seems that the Olivia Bottega brand quite easily manages to join the market of a foreign buyer, anticipating demand and creating a stir very gently and gracefully.
There is practically nothing that distinguishes a foreign client from a Russian one. Of course, language can become an obstacle, but this is only at first glance. It is enough to understand which market you are targeting, and offer the customer a service in the native language. English is a universal solution for most areas, in my opinion. We have been figuring out how to reduce the delivery time of the dress for a long time, and signing a contract with a fast courier service was an important decision. Our dresses go to any corner of the globe in 3-4 working days, it is very convenient. There are exception countries, of course.
Despite the pandemic, entry to the international market and the frequently changing business conditions, wedding dresses online are definitely becoming an increasingly popular solution for many brides. Olivia Bottega has not only wedding dresses in its product line, but also the opportunity to perform almost any wedding dress in a different color. And has a number of formal / evening dresses for bridesmaids, proms, various events. The biggest achievement will clearly be the creation of a full-fledged and universal system of dress selection and consultation, including even the selection of accessories and a holistic image of the bride. This is a whole cycle of services, and it's really convenient to get all this information in one place without leaving home.
Thanks to a thorough study of the system from and to, during the first month of the pandemic and lockdown, brides purchased our dresses in larger quantities than we sold before the creation of the online services. This has affected not only Russia, but also other countries. It was amazing, because at that moment we realized the possibilities of the market, its flexibility and, most importantly, the relevance of buying a wedding dress online. So developing online sales further was a very confident decision. To this day, we are constantly improving the online consulting service, and now our website looks amazing. It is completely rebuilt for online purchase, for the greatest comfort. Ordering the perfect dress on our website is no more difficult than ordering pizza delivery. We are also very proud of our team, our managers work online and are available 24/7. We have signed contracts with various transport companies, and this allows us to make more than 90% of sales online. We are the first brand of wedding dresses who successfully managed to bring online sales to the international market.
Of course, in the future online sales may completely displace offline from the market. Whether this will happen in the nearest future or not is a basis for argument. So far, every bride can enjoy the convenience of buying a dress online, because with high-quality service it doesn't matter where you make a purchase. Sometimes it's more enjoyable to pay for the service itself than for a material thing.
Thanks to our experience, we are the first in Russia to transfer the wedding industry to E-commerce. We already have a lot of experience and further vision of business development. We are planning to continue improving the customization option of dresses. Perhaps we will create some kind of convenient builder. Many factors influence the next steps, so I do not consider it necessary to disperse into several projects at once. It is better to focus on one and do it very efficiently. For example, transformer dresses (Convertible) are becoming more and more popular, so our range of removable bows, skirts, sleeves will be constantly supplemented. Here the bride herself collects the dream dress, as a designer. There is no such option in any offline store.
Now we are developing an application to make it comfortable for brides to place an order immediately in the application. This is a very energy-consuming process, and so many nuances need to be taken into account so that the release of the application is planned, but it is unlikely to happen very soon. I would also like to note that we stand for eco-friendly fashion, we really want to keep up with the times and pay a lot of attention to the ecological safety of our production. For example, the remains of fabric will not be thrown away - they will definitely find use in creating accessories for dresses.
There can be an infinite number of plans, and there is no need to predict the behavior of the market. It is enough to hear your client and his needs and success is guaranteed.
