How Onport Empowered Ad Hoc Atelier to Promote Bespoke Brands
Customer Introduction
Ad Hoc Atelier is a bespoke online fashion marketplace showcasing the best in Italian artisan fashion. During the 2020 lockdown, Ad Hoc was created to help bring the Made In Italy badge of quality to a wider audience and help hand-crafted fashion brands gain greater visibility online.
Company Representative
Giovanni Friggi | Co-Founder | Ad Hoc Atelier
What inspired you to create an online fashion marketplace?
GF - “So during the lockdown, I was in Barcelona, doing my masters with two friends, and we saw that ecommerce was booming but realized that Italy is a country that always falls behind when it comes to ecommerce."
"The term Made in Italy carries a lot of prestige abroad, but Italian companies have always struggled to adapt to digital transformation, so we decided to change things. We interviewed 20 - 30 potential partners, and from there, we kept onboarding new partners and got some funding to help bring the marketplace online.”
What value do you feel marketplaces give to fashion brands?
GF - “What we have seen is that many Italian brands artisan brands don’t have the know-how when it comes to getting online, and they remain tied to their traditional channels - since we work just on commission, they see the opportunity to showcase their products on a highly valuable platform which shares their beliefs and values as well as the possibility to sell abroad. We have over nearly 100 partners so far and plan to reach 150 by the year's end.”
What value do you feel marketplaces give to consumers?
GF - “I believe that the products we sell are nearly impossible to find in a normal shop, especially for customers outside of Italy, for instance, Germany. I think marketplaces allow customers to find unique, sustainable, and durable products - I feel customers are increasingly searching for those features and turning away from fast fashion, even if that means paying more.”
How did you first hear about Onport?
GF - “So before using Onport, we once had a situation where an order had been placed, but the item wasn’t available - one of our partners told us about how they used Onport to manage their operations, so we decided to try it out. Onport has always worked very well for us, and we can see the value we get for the price as Onport is vital to our business model.”
How do you feel Onport has aided your overall performance? In which areas did you see the most improvement?
GF- “Up to now, I feel like we have yet to use Onport to its full potential. We primarily use it for inventory optimization as we have integrated with partners and managed their stock."
"We do plan to make use of the shipping and returns management functions within the coming months, but at the moment, we mainly use the inventory management function as it’s crucial to us, especially for some of our high-volume brands.”
How well do you feel that Onport allows you to respond quickly to changes in your market?
GF - “The biggest added value of Onport is that everything is automatic - our feeds are continuously updated and respond automatically to our partner inventory feeds, so we know that Onport is crucial because it removes the need to manually update feeds ourselves."
"When we upload products, I know that everything is being taken care of and that we don’t have to worry about things like changes in order quantities.”
