London based Start-up, SalesGossip, is allowing users to access the latest in-store and online sale and promotional offers in the fashion and beauty world.

Company: SalesGossip

Sector: Fashion Tech / Marketing / Data

Location: London, UK

Regions covered: UK

Founded by: Elizabetta Camilleri and Emilio Sanz

Are they rocket scientists? Almost. Emilio has two Masters in Science from the top universities in their field in Spain and France: MSc in Computer Science by the Polytechnic University of Madrid (Spain), MSc in Telecommunications by Telecom ParisTech (France) and an MBA from London Business School.

Elizabetta has 20 years experience in Data Marketing. She’s been using data analysis and insights to build marketing strategies for multinational organisation such as Orange and a myriad of other telecoms companies and growing a number of start-ups. She has business degrees from the University of Malta and an MBA from London Business School.

Who are you major backers? £850k raised so far from high profile entrepreneurs including Sean Phelan (MultiMap sold to Microsoft) and Russell Buckley (AdMob sold to Google)

What’s the track record? SalesGossip is an award winning online and mobile service that curates all the fashion and beauty promotions in the UK, both online and in-store: We leverage promotions to engage shoppers when they search for information online/mobile. We then use the shopper’s behaviour data collected to enable retailers to target their promotions to the right customers, increasing traffic, footfall and sales.

Since launching the service 2,5 years ago, SalesGossip has grown exponentially to:

• 1M registered members, over 75% active in last 6 months, growing at 2,000 users per day.
• Features over 1,300 fashion and beauty brands at every price point from high street to luxury.
• Commercial relationships with 250 retailers including John Lewis, Nike, Net-A-Porter, Ted Baker and Marks & Spencer.
• Won multiple awards including The Guardian start-up of the year 2014, IBM’s People Choice Awards 2014, Entrepreneur of the year 2013 and Most Disruptive Start-Up 2014.
• Often featured by leading industry and consumer publications such as The Drum, Decoded Fashion, Retail Week, The Times and The Telegraph.

What do they say? SalesGossip is experts in all aspects of online marketing. There are very few companies who accumulate as much knowledge and practical skills in: online, ecommerce, emailing, CRM, leads capture.

What does this mean? Digital channels, especially mobile, have become a crucial part of the shopping journey, influencing both online and in-store shopping. However, fashion brands & retailers spent most of the £150Bn 2014 marketing budget (UK = £6b) on inefficient traditional marketing channels and PR. As a result, retailers fail to influence shopping behaviour in an omni-channel environment, struggle to attract the right footfall and are left with 25% of stock unsold.

What makes your company different to its competitors? SalesGossip’s proposition is unique because it combines the brand awareness of traditional marketing, thanks to engaging editorial content, with the efficiency of performance marketing thanks to data and technology. This unique approach enables retailers to trigger the emotional need to shop with a targeted “call-to-action”, driving traffic, footfall and sales more efficiently.

First clients: Nike, Ted Baker, Belstaff, Topshop, The Body Shop, Desigual, Marks & Spencer, Under Armour

How could your company change the world? Today we are using data insights to convert the digital browsing of 1,000,000 shoppers into in-store footfall and online/mobile traffic. Our vision is to become the preferred shopping information service for shoppers around the world, building around it the most efficient digital marketing channel for retailers to understand and influence shopping behaviour in an omni-channel environment.

Who do they compete with? SalesGossip is a double-sided network, and as such has 2 types of competitors:

• Other marketing channels for retailers. These include traditional channels such as print magazines, TV, and PR that are used to increase brand awareness and continue to attract most marketing spend. These channels also include search engines (mainly Google) to drive online sales. All of these traditional channels fail to create the “emotional shopping need” so critical in fashion.
• Other shopping information services for shoppers. These include product discovery services (e.g.: Lyst, ShopStlye) and other sales aggregators (e.g.: LoveSales, LoveFashionSales). The former focus on online shopping (not in-store), whilst the latter monetises the audience via online affiliate revenues. These services fail to understand retailer needs in an omni-channel ecosystem.

Who should be worried? Traditional publishers.

If you could choose any investor globally who would it be? Sequoia

If you could poach any member of staff from any company in the world who would it be? Alexander Priest – Digital Brand and Content Lead at Uber