ModCloth, an online clothing, accessories, and decor retailer, has released some news on its performance over the last year — there has been a lot of activity on its site. It says it ended 2012 with over 1,200 featured designers sharing and selling their designs to consumers. From a mobile standpoint, the company saw its traffic from smartphones at least double, while those coming from tablet devices tripled from those that shopped in 2011.
Started in 2006 by Eric Koger and Susan Gregg Koger, two high school sweethearts, the company is focused on helping to provide customers with a “fun and engaging shopping atmosphere”. The company currently has three offices in the US: San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Pittsburgh, the latter being its headquarters. There are 370 employees in the company, along with 28 dogs (it is a pet-friendly group) — equating to a 50% growth in company size year over year.
Each day, ModCloth said it adds an average of 40 new items to its website each day.
From a customer service standpoint, it appears that its users appreciate what ModCloth is doing. Just last year, nearly 480,000 minutes were spent on the phone with customers. It received over 6,000 compliments on its service team. Nearly 1.2 million orders were shipped from the company’s fulfillment center in Pittsburgh.
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During the holiday season, the company said it saw its holiday requests increase 52% year over year. As more shopping became popular online, ModCloth most likely reaped the benefits of it. When one of its investors, First Round Capital, launched a Cyber Monday shopping site, that also helped to contribute to an increase in holiday buying.
Where exactly did most of the sales come from? ModCloth says that California, New York, and Texas were the top three states.
We spoke with Menlo Ventures’ managing partner Pravin Vazirani recently about what he saw were the e-commerce trends for 2013. Vazirani, an investor in similar services like Poshmark and Fab, tells us that this year, those industry startups that succeed will have a strong mobile and social presence. In ModCloth’s case, from a mobile standpoint, it appears to be moving in the right direction, with more traffic coming from mobile and tablet versus the year prior.
From a social setting, ModCloth certainly has built a following on services like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Pinterest. The company says that each of its social media presences have grown by at least double digits, with YouTube, Tumblr, and Instagram growing by several hundred percent. Not surprisingly, ModCloth’s Pinterest page has a larger following and has grown over 42,000%.
ModCloth has put together this infographic which summarizes its progress in 2012.
Photo credit: VANO SHLAMOV/AFP/Getty Images
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