For years, the luxury resale platform Fashionphile has sold bags, jewelry and watches via its website, its showrooms in San Diego and New York City and its shop-in-shops at Neiman Marcus. Now, the company is opening two permanent stores as it looks to have a firmer footing in physical retail.
Fashionphile is turning two of its mall pop-ups — one in the Carlsbad Premium Outlets and one in the Irvine Spectrum Center — into permanent stores. The pop-ups first opened in November 2023, and Fashionphile found “there was huge demand from customers to come see the product,” Fashionphile Founder Sarah Davis told Modern Retail. Eight thousand to 10,000 people visited each location monthly, and more than three-quarters of the customers at each pop-up were new to shopping at Fashionphile, the company said. All of this motivated Fashionphile to have a more long-term presence in both areas. Fashionphile is now looking at opening additional stores in other markets, Davis said.
Fashionphile, which was founded in 1999, sells authenticated, pre-owned handbags, purses and other accessories from brands including Chanel, Hermès and Louis Vuitton. All items are vetted by in-house specialists who are experts on certain brands. Eighty-one percent of the merchandise at Fashionphile is unique — meaning that there’s only one of a particular item, in a particular textile, in a particular size, with particular hardware. Online, that’s not so much of a challenge — customers can search for one of thousands of SKUs and mostly likely get a result — but it’s been tricky to replicate that formula in physical stores with limited space, Davis said.
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