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Lovvd is a marketplace for buying and selling pre-loved bags and shoes

Fashion startups are quite popular, especially those that run on the e-commerce model. Lovvd mixes the e-commerce and social media models in an interesting twist by enabling users to buy and sell pre-owned designer bags and shoes.

Fashionistas would probably prefer calling these items “pre-loved” rather than “pre-owned,” much like how car enthusiasts would treat their rides, or how gadget lovers would be reluctant to part with even their obsolete gadgets after upgrading. Lovvd connects shoe and bag lovers with each other, focusing on finding a new home for premium brand items that have been pre-loved but no longer used. e27 spoke with co-founder Ralph Wintle, who explained that the service is still currently in beta, but the marketplace for buying and selling pre-loved bags and shoes is gaining traction, especially with its recent launch of their MVP program. Ralph actually got to the idea of building a marketplace for these pre-owned items after a first-hand experience with his sister — Anicka, who is likewise co-founder — trying to sell her own stuff. “The problem of re-selling or recycling of second-hand or vintage fashion has been around for a while now, and I noticed it first hand when my sister was trying to off-load some of her pre-loved designer shoes, this past Christmas.” There were two challenges here. First was the price. Brand-items like Louis Vuitton and Chanel don’t exactly have a mass audience. However, if you’re trying to reach out that premier audience, you will need to attract them with the platform in the first place. e-Bay doesn’t exactly cut it here, especially given the proliferation of fake (or “class A”) goods out in the open market. Ralph says he got interested with the concept of selling on photo-oriented social networks. “I also noticed that all of [my sister's] friends were trying to sell (rather expensive items!), and they weren’t just using eBay. Instead, these girls were selling their stuff on Instagram. I thought this was really interesting and believed we could make it better by creating a dedicated marketplace that could handle payments etc and use Instagram as the main tool of distribution.” Lovvd lets users choose photos from their Instagram accounts, thereby making it easier to source media for their listings. Ralph is also working to incorporate live listings when certain hashtags are used, such as #lovvdbags or #lovvdshoes, for instance. Focusing on premium items, though, we can’t expect the startup to have big numbers at first, especially because they’re still picky with accepting users. “There aren’t many products up for sale at the moment, since we are quite picky as to who may sell on Lovvd. Once we finalize this latest version, we’ll be approving a lot more sellers and you should see quite a few products go live.” This is actually great for the brand, as Anicka writes that Lovvd is “dedicated to having quality rather than quantity by hand picking each of our sellers to ensure our buyers are purchasing only the best pre-loved goods.” Lovvd takes a 10 percent cut from sales, which includes the PayPal fees (about 3 to 4 percent, depending on jurisdiction and transaction type). Lovvd is not funded at this time, and the team consists of Ralph himself and his sister, Anicka. Ralph works out of startup incubator/accelerator Proudcloud, and has coded Lovvd with a bit of help from Proudcloud’s Jason Torres, who is also behind Artiste Connect and Startups.PH. Anicka, meanwhile, is based in Sydney, Australia, working in the fashion PR industry. An interesting note is that Ralph actually graduated with a law degree, but seems to have found entrepreneurship to be his calling. “I decided I wanted to have a go at building startups. After a few failures I realized my biggest weakness was not understanding the technology and thus decided to learn how to code. I attended CodeAcademy (now known as www.thestarterleague.com) last Spring in Chicago, and now I develop Rails apps out of Proudcloud for myself.”

Check out what Lovvd has to offer at lovvd.com.