Maskool.in - bringing fashion to Indonesian men's doorstep at cheap prices
Simple ideas work and can actually work wonders sometimes. Business models don’t have to be complex, they just need to be clear in terms of purpose, process and people. Take the case of Band-aid, Post-it or Justdial – simply successful. Ilham Syafrialdi is one man who seems to be in love with simple ideas.
In 2009, he started social recommendation platform, rockto.com, with a social bookmarking model such as reddit and Digg. The idea was received well by the digital marketing strategists but Indonesian customers were not quite ready for the business model to work out. So, Ilham and his co-founder thought of starting up again with another idea. This time they made sure to research the market well and start on something that Indonesian market was more aligned with. In July 2012 they had found their simple selling idea and in a month they presented Maskool.in (read masculine) to the Indonesian men.
Maskool.in is "Indonesian First Fast Fashion E-Commerce only for Men” as Ilham says. What is so special or simple in Maskool.in then? Explaining the “win-win” business model for Maskool.in, Ilham says, “We are targeting just the left-over or off-season stocks from the brands. We're helping them sell the products and to clear their inventories. And customers always want good product with cheaper price.” Giving the products at a highly discounted price to Maskool.in is beneficial to the brands because selling the off-season stock or styles which are not left in all the sizes become difficult in physical stores. By partnering with Maskool.in, brands are able to sell those 1 or 2 pieces which would have otherwise gone waste.
With the rising middle class consumers in Indonesia, the market opportunities for e-commerce startups are increasing. Where most of the e-commerce startups try to target women first, sometimes only women, because of their higher affinity towards shopping, Maskool.in went the men-only way. “We did some research, and surprisingly the results aligned to our business model - the everyday discounted fashion e-commerce only for men,” says Ilham. He thinks that doing a start-up in Indonesia is a fun thing. One has to read the market very carefully. If a product is successful in the Silicon Valley does not mean it can be successful in Indonesia too.
Maskool.in has been invested in by Grupara Inc, who also owns Freeware – the first free co-working space in Indonesia. Besides the capital and mentoring, Ilham hopes Grupara can help them penetrate the market outside Indonesia. “Our growth plan is to become the number one platform for fashion items e-commerce in Indonesia and hopefully we can penetrate South East Asia Market too,” shares Ilham.
Maskool.in has targeted only men, but we are sure they are making women a little jealous with high discounts.
Website : Maskool.in
