User story United Wardrobe

Over the past period we have gained a number of nice customers, including clothing platform United Wardrobe. The company, founded in 2013, grew into a great success in 2.5 years. United Wardrobe is a hip and safe platform for buying and selling clothes. It is also interactive and social: for example, you can search per user, follow your favorite provider, easily get in touch with the seller or create a list of favorites. The platform now has more than 205,000 users and about 100,000 items of clothing are already online.

At Mollie we once started as a small team, in an attic room, with a good idea. We find it fascinating to see how start-ups work and are curious about their experiences. In addition, we are also secretly curious about the reason that such a start-up opts for a collaboration with Mollie for the payments.

We spoke to Sjuul Berden, co-founder of United Wardrobe.

How is United Wardrobe doing now?

“Great! We have a new office on the Neude in Utrecht, we have welcomed a number of new colleagues and we doubled in the first half of 2016. The atmosphere is at its best and the team is motivated to compete so we can double again in the second half of 2016.”

What are you working on right now? Can you already reveal something about new features?

“In the short term we will launch a new chat. It works faster and the messages you send get a status, just like on WhatsApp or Facebook. So you can see when your buyers/sellers have read your messages, so that the interaction between buyer and seller is better and faster. At the same time, we are launching the ability to rate sellers. To give good sellers a better place, we first need to know how buyers rate their sellers. Buyers can leave a nice message and one to five stars In addition, this radiates more confidence.”

“Much respect for the programmers, by the way. Last month we also launched saved searches and a completely new onboarding. Those are four major updates, available on the website and in the Android and iOS apps in two to three months. And with 2.5 full-time programmers, we continue to develop our product to provide the perfect experience for both buyers and sellers of second-hand clothing.”

What were the requirements when choosing a payment provider?

“A payment provider must always do its job, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In addition, the checkout process must be smooth and with as few clicks as possible. These basic requirements are provided by many major payment providers. As a start-up, expect we do more, however, international payment methods, a partner who is at the forefront when innovation is taking place in their field and who wants to grow with your ambition.”

And then you decided to work with Mollie…

“In April we switched from another payment provider to Mollie. As a (fast) developing start-up, United Wardrobe is much better suited to Mollie than to the previous provider. Mollie is ambitious, wants to be the best and anticipates its competition through a good product, but in the service you are again very personal and thoughtful. A perfect combination.”

“The switch only took us half a day of work and really only involved server-side adjustments. Since we switched to Mollie, we have never had any problems with payments!”

Do you have any tips for other start-ups that are developing a platform or webshop?

“Yes, talk to different payment providers. Payments via iDEAL are the same everywhere. The network, the service and the rate are not. Switching is little work, a switch can be very rewarding. Our rate is better now and so is the service!”