Dubai-based Dresos has launched in the emirate offering a styling service to residents from the comfort of their own home.
The e-commerce start-up, which is based in the in5 Tech incubator, is the brainchild of co-founders Vladimir Radojevic and Aleksandar Jankovic, who together board 30 years’ experience in the retail sector across Europe and the GCC.
In an exclusive interview with Arabian Business, Radojevic explains the thinking behind Dresos and shares their ambitious plans to grow.
When did you come up with the idea of Dresos or realise there was a gap in the market for the business?
While I was still doing my MBA with IESE Business School in New York City, I became very interested in the business model of Stitch Fix. This is a very successful company from the US that pioneered this business model 10 years ago. With some small tweaks we launched it in the UAE.
One other thing that helped me make the decision was the fact that the customer service in physical retail is deteriorating and that provided a great opportunity for an online business that offers a free styling service.
Dubai-based Dresos, co-founders Vladimir Radojevic and Aleksandar Jankovic.
We also felt that Dubai residents are increasingly tired of spending their spare time in the malls. Add to this a shortage of parking, crowded shopping malls, waiting times in some of the retail outlets, and you can see why you’d want to use Dresos – trying on new styles from the comfort of your home, ordered by the touch of a button without an additional cost.
E-commerce penetration in the UAE is far below the developed e-commerce markets (UAE has 4 percent e-commerce penetration, and in the US and UK this number is currently 15 percent), but [it] has huge potential.
With nearly 30 years of retail and fashion experience between myself and my co-founder, we felt it was time to change something in the way we shop. Dubai is a busy place as it is. We want to give people time back to do what they really care about.
What is your business plan?
In December 2020, we started with the UAE market for men and women. We plan to expand to Saudi Arabia in 2022 and add a kids’ category in the same year. By 2025, we will cover the entire GCC.
We are aiming to have over 100,000 registered customers by 2025.
Is the company bootstrapped or have you raised capital from investors? Can you take us through your funding journey?
We are currently self-funded with one angel investor (a friend) with the initial capital of $150,000.
We are looking to raise a seed round of $1 million for the next three to six months and are actively talking to a few VCs and individual angel investors.
Our Series A should be raised by July 2022 for expansion into Saudi (a $5 million ticket).
Raising capital will be the biggest challenge we have at this stage as the business model works and we already have paying customers and good average basket size.
Where would you like to see the company in the next five years?
We would like to see a successful expansion in the whole GCC region and tapping into European market.
We want to be the most successful company in the region for personalised styling boxes and rely heavily on data and algorithms while scaling – so successful, in fact, that major traditional e-commerce companies as well as Stitch Fix would be interested to take over the business for expansion in the region.
Stylists will add only the final touches to each box, while the items will be automatically prepared by the data analysis and automatic recommendations for each customer.
After collecting a significant amount of data we will be able to create a brand that will be modern, clean, trendy and above all – very commercial.
We are striving to reach personalisation at scale – that’s how we win.
What is your vision for the company?
We truly believe that online business will be the future of retail with so much more room to grow and reach between 25-30 percent of total retail sales by 2025 in mature markets and in the UAE between 12-15 percent.
We want to be part of the future of shopping that is coming – good service at no additional cost is what people will opt for, and Dresos wants to play a significant role in that.
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