Hong Kong fashion e-retailer MyDress plans to leverage new owner SCMP Group’s strengths to replicate success in SE Asia
City’s popular e-commerce site says synergy with publisher’s major titles like Elle, Cosco a boon, no plans to enter mainland China due to market saturation
Hong Kong online retail platform MyDress.com will be able promote itself more aggressively, expand to Southeast Asian markets early next year and develop its product lines to include Western brands in the wake of its recent acquisition by SCMP Group, the company said.
MyDress co-founder Edmund Wong said he is also making efforts to bolster its share of the Hong Kong market, improve user experience, including customer service, and enhance how the site works on mobile devices.
READ MORE: China-focused media group SCMP pivots into e-commerce with acquisition of Hong Kong fashion retailer MyDress.com
“The major portion [of new funding will be spent] on marketing. In one way, we have to continue to gain our market share to become the number one in the local market,” Wong said, listing as other priorities enlarging the overall market and generating customer loyalty.
The company can also leverage the group’s strengths, he said, giving the example of how it could combine the content and communities developed by titles like Elle, Esquire and Cosmopolitan - all under the SCMP Group umbrella - with the e-retailer’s offerings.
“Through MyDress, we will gain a firm foothold in the e-commerce space in Hong Kong and extend along the internet value chain of ‘content-community-commerce’, thus enabling new monetization possibilities,” said Robin Hu, CEO of SCMP Group.
Wong founded MyDress in 2009 as a fashion-sharing platform based on a similar model to the one employed by Pinterest. But the concept proved hard to monetise as its membership was too limited to draw in advertisers. The company had up to 30,000 members at the time.