Mark Rowland, co-director of StyleTread.com.au, said a six-week-old television campaign had been “amazingly successful” in driving traffic to the online shoe store.
“We started the business in November [2010] and we're currently doing at least 20 times more [sales] than the first month we started,” Rowland said. “We have tripled in the last six weeks. Every week is a record week, we haven't gone backwards yet.”
Rowland said the ultimate goal was to turn StyleTread into a $100 million revenue business within two years.
“The [shoe] industry is $2 billion, the online percentage of that in two years' time will be 15 per cent so that's a $300 million market. We would love to have 30 per cent market share.”
Aiding Rowland and fellow managing director Bjorn Behrendt with business growth is new StyleTread shareholder Nine Entertainment Company. The latter bought a minority stake in the business for an undisclosed amount in May 2011.
“Getting Nine on board gives us a good opportunity to improve our standing in the community with people,” Rowland said. “People trust Nine because it's a big TV station, everyone knows it, so having them as an investor gives us a bit of trust and credibility. They do have a lot of online expertise as well.”
He added the hunt for further investors was under way.
“We purchase everything that we sell so we're a capital intensive business. We've just purchased all our autumn/winter range and now we've got the spring/summer range coming in which we'll need to raise [money for] again probably around August/September,” Rowland explained.
Currently StyleTread carries 70 footwear brands and buyers are adding “one or two” brands a week.
“The limitation on size is purely and simply the warehouse. This weekend we're moving from an 800 square metre warehouse to a 4000 square metre warehouse. That gives us five time the capacity to really grow the business... We really want to emulate the success of Zappos and Zalando and they've got hundreds of brands. We'd like to be the same,” Rowland said.
He added the seed investors in StyleTread.com.au, Switzerland's Klaus Hommels and Oliver Jung, were looking at other online opportunities in Australia. The pair already have a stake in online shopping club BrandsExclusive.
“They see Australia as a very attractive market,” Rowland said.
Erin O'Loughlin