Popular fashion site rebrands as marketplace

Heather McIlvaine

1st Nov 2017

Popular Australian fashion site Esther.com.au has relaunched as an online marketplace, Esther & Co.

Esther & Co now offers everything from homewares to beauty to jewellery products from 27 brands in addition to its own apparel products.

The move comes on the heels of a string of marketplace launches in Australia, including Catch Marketplace, MyWardrobe and today’s announcement of Myer Market.

Esther & Co first experimented with the marketplace model six months ago, before making the decision to relaunch as a marketplace entirely.

“We felt it encompassed who we were becoming,” Esther & Co marketing manager Travis Wright, told Internet Retailing.

“It’s been exciting more than anything because our offering has expanded really rapidly. It is hard to be sourcing beauty, jewellery homewares…that’s something a lot of fast fashion retailers don’t have. It’s been amazing to be able to provide that to customers. They know they can get a lot of different items on their list from one store,” she said.

Last week, Esther & Co featured its first apparel seller on the site, a significant step for the fashion retailer turned marketplace. Wright said the company is looking to add more clothing brands in the next few months.

The company has also redesigned its e-commerce site to better reflect the new model, with expanded categories requiring several changes to the navigation bar.

At the same time, Wright said Esther & Co has revamped its shipping offer.

It now offers free standard shipping for orders over $125 and express shipping for $9.95. For orders under $125, standard shipping costs $7.95 and express costs $9.95.

Wright said the next few months will entail bringing new brands on board and launching collaborations ahead of Christmas.

“You’ll see a lot of marketplace brands come through. The partnerships from them are automatically developing. We can really work together,” she said.