SAN FRANCISCO — A San Francisco-based start-up wants to turn e-commerce on its head — or, rather, make it what most shoppers already know.
Lyon + Post officially launched Wednesday with an online strategy to sell women’s contemporary clothing in a way that more closely resembles the in-store experience. Its founders include a former engineer at real estate site Trulia and media company PopSugar when those companies were in their infancy, along with a veteran in fashion public relations.
The site requires customers to sign up for a free membership. They submit their credit-card information, browse the items they want and stick them in a queue. The company then ships four items at a time, promising two-day delivery. Customers have a week to decide what they want, returning the rest, and their credit card is billed for the items they keep.
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“When I came up with Lyon + Post, it was essentially filling a problem that I was having personally,” founder Lawrence Wisne said. “I don’t really like buying clothing online because you can’t try it on at first, so you’re guessing blindly. E-commerce treats clothing the same way it treats [shopping for] a lightbulb or hand soap, which is really ridiculous when you think about it.”
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The e-tailer is set to carry anywhere from 20 to 25 brands with retail prices in the range of $70 to $700.
Brands in stock from the start will include Equipment, Cynthia Vincent, Current/Elliott, Sachin & Babi, Raoul, Bec & Bridge and Naked Undies.
“We want to maintain sort of a boutique-style [experience] and we don’t want it to be so overwhelming with thousands and thousands of options,” said cofounder Colleen J. McKinnie. “The idea being that it’s more of a curated site. You go in and it’s easy to kind of visually troll around and see what you want.”
The site will also introduce members to smaller, international labels each season, including Diarte out of Spain or Australia-based Pfeiffer.
The company buys its inventory and fulfills orders out of its San Francisco warehouse.
McKinnie joined the company in October as cofounder, bringing a background in fashion p.r.
“I came into this knowing I had a pretty good idea of fixing what I feel is a large problem,” Wisne said. “I know how to build a Web site and market it. It turns out, to get the brands on board, you need a good in and that’s where Colleen came into play.”
Wisne launched the company with a friends and family round of funding, the amount of which he declined to disclose, but said it was enough to cover inventory for the first few months in business.
The company did a soft launch last month and, with no traditional marketing, is seeing most of its customers from Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and San Francisco.
It’s already had time to begin analyzing consumer behavior, including what some investors may see as a hurdle to scaling the business: obtaining credit-card information prior to purchase.
“[Investors] are skeptical of that, but it turns out — we did a soft launch — and people are willing to give a credit card upfront if they don’t have to again afterward,” Wisne said.
The company will go out for Series A funding this year, Wisne said.
Shipping to Canada and expanding into accessories is also in the plans this year, followed by expansion into Europe and men’s wear in 2016, according to McKinnie.
“The feedback we’ve gotten is so strong and I think it’s really a matter of shifting [behavior],” McKinnie said. “We’re so trained to shop a certain way online and it’s shifting these perceptions.”
The two have tossed around the idea of a physical space, but they’ve agreed for the time being that it would need to be something unique before they make the investment.
“It would have to be something that just really fell in line with this because our whole model is really moving away from the brick-and-mortar,” McKinnie said.