Picture the following, (and if you’re anything like us, it’s an all too familiar scenario), you’re sick dragging yourself from shop to shop in a bid to find the perfect dress, and nothing is going to plan.
You’re sweaty, tired, thirsty and fed up of fellow shoppers bumping against you as they too search for that important item.
All you can think of is a coffee break and why is it that when you’re searching for something specific, you can NEVER find it?
Enter OPSH, a revolutionary way to shop.
We spoke to Jennie McGinn, who together with her sisters, Sarah and Grace, has created an exciting way to OPSH. Blisters from scouring the high street in terribly unsuitable shoes are no longer, as they have made it impossible to search all the major retailers from the comfort of your couch.
Starting Out
The background lies in What Will I Wear Today, a fashion blog we set up about six years ago. There’s a lot of girls in our family, there’s six daughters. On family holidays, we would end up chatting and have mad brainstorms around the kitchen table. We all liked fashion and writing even though none of us were in the industry at the time. It was before blogging really took off and we thought it would be a nice way for us to express our opinions but also stay in touch, as not all of us were in the country at the time.
It was a hobby, a labour of love. I’m not sure what was in the air but somehow it took off. Over the four years that we ran our blog we took on a lot: from photography to coding to becoming ambassadors for different brands. We ran cool competitions and built a really loyal audience.
We could see it snowballing but at the same time we weren’t getting paid much, apart from advertising pieces here and there. For the volume of work and creative output, we just weren’t seeing a return on our investment.
An opportunity presented itself then, in that Grace had finished college. She was in Cork and decided to come up to Dublin. Sarah and I decided to quit our jobs and everyone around us thought we were mad,considering it was during the height of the recession. Thinking about it, in a way that’s the best time to do something as there’s little expectation.
We took that summer off and brainstormed about how we could take this something like What Will I Wear Today to the next level and monetise it, but we knew nothing about the start-up scene or tech scene in Ireland.
We did a little bit of research and found out about an accelerator programme called Launchpad and really that’s key to where we are today. It’s a three month long programme in the National Digital Research Centre, on Thomas Street, Dublin. They give you office space, mentoring and seed capital. Basically, they take your idea from scribbles and help you get things off the ground.
We were three girls, interested in fashion and the demographic was mainly male (people who had a lot more experience than us). This spurned us on to really apply ourselves and while it was very full on, in that three months we collectively probably learnt more than we have in our entire lives.
We had some ideas on how to build a new type of lifestyle network and how we could monetise it through advertising and promoted posts etc. Experienced mentors talked through our ideas, ripped them apart and helped us build them back up again and this is how Prowlster was born.
We were lucky that they were willing to take a risk on our ideas. Things are very competitive and the standards are very high, you either sink or swim and that’s how I understand the business now.
OPSH isn’t wildly different, it’s the same type of concept. Everything has been an evolution of the same idea. Prowlster was born out of our frustration at picking up the Sunday Times STYLE magazine, making dog ears out of pages and picking out items, yet not being able to shop the items you want. We thought of having an online magazine, where you could purchase the items you wanted without leaving the magazine.
A lot of our loyal community followed us over to Prowlster and the access we had to marketing and PR through Launchpad was invaluable. We were then accepted into the Irish Times Fusion programme (another accelerator programme at a higher level) which opened so many doors and contacts. It was around this time that we ran into a couple of issues.
Prowlster
The concept of Prowlster is shopping the clothes straight from the page which was a bit of a problem when working with emerging designers. The level of supply and demand and the quick turnaround as you can imagine, made it difficult. We were also tracking how people used the site and what they wanted and we could see there were bigger opportunities with OPSH. We had to make the very tough heartfelt decision to let Prowlster go and this is how OPSH was born.
There was a much bigger opportunity for us with OPSH and trying to run two separate businesses at the same time just wasn’t possible. Our staff were trying to work on OPSH and Prowlster and it was just too difficult, they were working around the clock and were completely stressed. There was a much bigger opportunity for us with OPSH. We had been in conversation with the Le Cool guys, during the course of the Irish Times programme and the subject then changed from what projects we could work on together to if they wanted to take Prowlster on. Really fortunately, Le Cool decided they wanted to take Prowlster and make it part of their portfolio of online publications.
The guys wanted something different to what they have with Le Cool and they’re bringing Prowlster to a whole new level which is nice to see happening.
Sarah, Jennie and Grace McGinn of OPSH (r-l)
OPSH
Female shoppers need to be able to shop the high street, the same way they would in real life. So ideally they can shop for everything from the one place, all of the major retailers under one roof, so to speak. It’s a different environment online, there are different customer viewpoints and different customer desires and they have to be managed in a different way than they are offline.
People working in the fashion industry have been invited to test the site first and then we will launch OPSH nationwide from the end of May. We would be hoping to get into the UK by the end of the year as many of the major retailers are UK based.
In this game you have to be thinking ahead honestly, you have to be thinking of a five year plan. We are constantly looking ahead at emerging markets and e –commerce rates.
What’s interesting about a start-up is that you can have a defined role but you’re always working across the team. Grace isn’t trained in coding at all, she has an architecture background but she handles all our tech and product issues.
Her brain must be wired to it, we work with an external contractor but Grace is in charge of all our product build and design. Sarah looks after our customer outreach and engagement and marketing as her background is PR and marketing.
I oversee everything but look after business development, business plans, funding and sales. We’re a really close team and have a lot of complimentary skill sets but we also have areas we take care of specifically. We’re the founders and all have to make the big decisions together. We have a manager Niamh, who is fantastic and stylist Justine King has recently started working with us.
When we think about the girl who’s going to use OPSH, she’s every girl. She’s not a River Island girl, a Topshop girl, a Warehouse but shops everywhere. She shops online and loves to browse.
While she loves social media, she also loves to meet people which is the thinking behind the events we are planning. We had a series of OPSH fashion chats online and they went really well which got us thinking about taking them offline through styling workshops and meet-ups.
Check out OPSH here.
