Otrium – An Amsterdam-Based Fashion E-Commerce Startup, Challenges Faced By the Company, Its Partners, & More!

The most trending thing after entertainment is fashion, that too online fashion. People are more occupied than ever in this busy world, so what they prefer is to get everything available over the internet or online, it can be groceries, study material, clothing, and whatnot. 

Nowadays, Platforms are also available for these services, you can have anything online within a few minutes.

If we talk about clothing there is a huge competition between applications and websites which sell clothes of different brands and promote them at an immense level. These applications, websites, or companies have partnerships with these brands through which they earn revenue by selling their products.

People even get better deals with these companies on the brands of their choice. Similarly, there is an Amsterdam-based company named Otrium. 

So, in today’s article, we will discuss Otrium in brief –its struggles, strategies, partner brands, and so on.

Introduction

 An Amsterdam-based E-commerce startup company named “Otrium” was founded by Max Klijnstra and Milan Daniels in the year 2015. Otrium is an online store that is in partnership with multiple brands and helps them to sell their excessive and unsold products, providing several offers to the customers as well. And provides immense revenue to these fashion brands. 

The headquarters of Otrium is situated in Amsterdam, Danzigerkade 16A, and is currently operating with several other countries such as France, Netherlands, and Germany.

Otrium is known for its constant profits which this company provides to its shareholders, also it helps in reducing the excess unsold products. 

For any successful business, a company must provide constant profits to its partners, that’s what Otrium is famous for, as it has been giving constant revenue to its shareholders.

In more simple words, we can say that Otrium helps fashion brands to reduce their waste products. The company is an inspiration to prevent fashion waste and make the most of revenue out of it. 

Otrium deals with all kinds of garments, all over the globe. It provides an internet-based commercial platform with a huge number of clients with different deal assortments, Otrium works for each of its clients individually according to their viewpoint. 

The company uses various strategies, and pictures to make the product look more attractive.

Further, we will discuss Otrium in detail, have a look!

About Otrium

One more valuable fact about Otrium is that it does not just deal with items of clothing, but every product which is required for a complete look. It can be shoes, accessories, clothes for different occasions, and innerwear, every product is sorted into several categories over the online store Otrium.

Otrium can be accessed on every operating device not just a laptop or desktop, but on your smartphone as well, no matter if it’s an android or an iOS mobile. It is easily accessible to sell or buy the products of your choice.

The organization is mainly focused on not wasting any product, story behind it is that the founders of the online store faced huge losses due to unsold products before the establishment of Otrium, which gave them the idea to make such an organization that will help the upcoming entrepreneurs to avoid these kinds of losses and wastage of products. That is why the organization has partnered with various brands to make sure that not even a single piece of cloth or product goes in vain.

Also, Otrium has given all the authority to fashion brands to set the prices for their products, do advertisements, or in whatever way they want to do the marketing for their product.

The best thing about Otrium is that it does not force customers to purchase its product if they don’t like it. If there is any product, which is not getting any attention from customers for long, Otrium itself removes the product from its catalogue.

Below we are mentioning a few plans of action that Otrium suggests to their partnered fashion brands:

• At first, Otrium provided homes to fashion brands where they can store their unsold items for sale.
• Secondly, by giving planners, Otrium also guides the price setting of the product to be sold.
• The organization creates an analytical report by which they decide their strategies so that they can have more and more profit in the future.

How does Otrium work?

The organization enables brands to help get the most profit from their unsold products by creating some smart strategies for their sale. On the other hand, their pricing engine optimizes conversion with the help of renovation centers to ensure tired, crumbled, or products without labels are ready for sale. Otrium helps in product modification and pricing as well to make it saleable. Currently, they deliver in countries such as Austria, France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Hungary, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Spain, The United Kingdom, Sweden, Denmark, and the Czech Republic (except the island states).

How does Otrium make money?

The Amsterdam-based company – Otrium makes money in a couple of ways mentioned below:

• The organization takes a commission on the successful purchases of the products by different fashion brands.
• And it also provides logistic services, as a lot of the products it sells are in Otrium’s distribution centers themselves.

Difficulties faced by the company

Earlier, Otrium was dependent on outsiders to get their tasks done, which resulted in being both inconvenient and unconventional at the same time, especially when their business expanded all over the globe. 

It has been said that as soon as the organization developed, it suddenly went out of contributions. 

To tackle the situation, the organization was badly in need to have extra command over its specialized foundation as well as to advance its workforce. 

Along with the development of the organization necessities also changed for which Cloudflare offered a cure that was capable of resolving these issues.

Utilization of Cloudflare Security center

The organization started facing security issues as soon as it developed or expanded and was becoming a noticeable association. At present, Cloudflare gets rid of a huge number of mechanized risks every other month for the Otrium stage. Following are the three major security concerns of Otrium’s CTO:

• The first one is Dos,
• The second one is Bots, and
• The third one is Human or automated security hackers.

After the Cloudflare application security and its advancements, Otrium is working firmly without any fear of being hacked. The utilization of Cloudflare security applications has made it way too easy for Otrium to expand limitlessly.

How did Otrium gain so much popularity?

By raising 120 million dollars, just in its fresh round of funding, the news made the headlines, how Otrium was expanding so instantly with such immense growth. 

At present, it is available in many countries all over the globe, as the investors were so impressed by the startup idea of the association. People keep waiting patiently for its end-of-season sale so that they can get their products from different brands at very low prices. 

Also, you can add sales products to various channels by brands, all this would have been still a dream without Otrium as the platform is one of its kind.

For any business to be successful it must have good management, expert people who stay longer with the business, and consistency in the practices. And to lead the respective markets, management should be good at quality, customer service, innovation, and providing effective offers, as we are aware that Otrium is the perfect blend of all. 

The organization had only one focus, to change the way people used to look at fashion and it succeeded.

Also, the reason behind its gaining so much popularity is that it provides several customized plans, amazing discounts during season sales, and so on. 

However, the headquarters of Otrium is located in the Netherlands (Amsterdam), when the organization had its set up in the US, it has grown immensely in all possible ways. 

Now, it has more than 20 markets within Europe and the US which are satisfying the needs of customers as well as making a constant increase in the revenue

Revenue Earned through c funding

The Amsterdam-based e-commerce company Otrium became successful in a very short period of time. In the beginning, it was expanded in the US market, which accelerated its growth to another level through C funding.

Otrium has raised $120 million in a fresh round of funding, headed by BOND and Index Ventures, and later on follow-on investment was made by Eight Road Ventures.

The series C round is considered the ultimate push to Otrium’s entry into the US market, which suddenly increased the level of additional unsold fashion capabilities, and hired new staff. Juliet De Baubingy, the general partner of BOND also joined Otrium’s board as a part of the agreement.

Liz Bacelar, the Global Executive Director of IT Innovation for Estee Lauder said that “the surge of online shopping triggered by the pandemic could grow online sales up to 25% in next few years, as most outlet stores are not connected e-commerce and Otrium could be a catalyst for growth in this space”.

At present, approximately 12% of produced clothing remains unsold due to various reasons. If we consider roughly that is 230 million garments just in Germany alone, and the country has a population of approximately 80 million. 

The main focus of Otrium is to utilize this huge number of clothes, and reduce these numbers as much as possible. The association has over 300 fashion stores within the app, 3 million registered members, and partnerships with several major brands.

To help the users to find the closets of their choice, Otrium has launched a set of advanced features for brands that will help them with forecasting. 

To have an idea about what products sell and what don’t, the organization’s partners have insight as to what could become their iconic product for sale.

Sayings by Otrium CEO and co-founder Milan Daniels “We believe that the fashion world will see rebalancing in the next few years, with more sales being driven by iconic items that brands sell year after year, and will be less reliant on new seasonal launches. We work with brands to help them understand which of their items will stand the test of time, at what price and quantity”.

Brands Collaborated with Otrium

Otrium has now become a family of over 300 brands after its incorporation which has taken the association to another level of success. Below we are mentioning some of the newly added royal brands:

• Theory
• Alchemist
• Closed
• Joseph
• All Saints

The organization has also joined respected affiliate companies such as:

• Alex Chung
• Karl Lagerfield
• Adidas
• Beistaff
• Calvin Klein
• Scotch & Soda
• Reiss
• Puma

Update on the Recent growth of Otrium

If you want to know about the recent growth of Otrium, you can go through the revenue reports of the company with current data, past few months, and year data, that all would be sufficient to provide you with the idea about company’s revenue, assets, or liabilities.

The simplest way to identify its revenue is by advertising, the more advertising fees any company charges, more the revenue it will earn. Considering this factor, it can be concluded that Otrium must be earning huge profits as it heavily promotes it on influential online platforms.

Top of all, Otrium itself gave information about how they tripled their income in 2020 as the company gained an immense number of users which was over 3 million in the lockdown period with 200+ fashion houses on its application.

Further, it also announced its revenue doubling in 2023 and forecast to be increased in the coming period of time.

Top competitors of Otrium

As we all know, Otrium is one the leading e-commerce platforms nowadays and every successful association has its competitors. Below we are mentioning some of the main competitors of Otrium:

• JUNIQE
• The Editor’s Market
• Grailed
• The Black Tux

How to order with Otrium?

You can place the order from Otrium in two different ways – via application or the website. Application is available for both android and apple users. You just need to download the application and follow the below mentioned steps:

• If you are visiting Otrium for the first time, you need to create an account, when you open the app, a screen will pop-up as a register, there you need to fill up the required details.
• Once you are done with the details you’ll have a username and password to sign in to every time you visit Otrium.
• As you are now an official member of Otrium, you’ll have access to hundreds of brands to shop from, and many exciting offers.
• Once you select the product of your choice, click on the add cart option visible on your screen.
• You can add multiple products to the cart by following the same procedure. Once you are done selecting the products, we are good to go for the payment procedure.
• Go to the cart, there you will see your selected items and an option as “Add promo code” above there will be an option as “continue to checkout”.
• In case you have any discount code available, you can add that to the promo code option and in case you don’t have any discount code click on continue to checkout.
• Further, several payment modes will be visible. Select the payment mode, after which you’ll be directed to another page, where they’ll ask for the delivery address.
• Once you are done filling in your delivery address. Instantly you’ll receive an order confirmation mail at provided Email address along with your order details and a tracking ID.

Shipping & Delivery process of Otrium

There are different delivery times for different destinations. Some of them we are mentioning below:

As discussed above, as soon as your order is out for delivery, you will receive a mail at your Email address with tracing Id and other details. You can easily trace your product by providing details.

It is possible that sometimes you receive the order in two packages, this is because Otrium has multiple warehouses in Europe. In such cases, it may take longer for the other package to be delivered as compared to your first package. For every package, you’ll receive a different track & trace ID to track the respective.

The procedure of Returns & Refunds

First, we will discuss the process to return your order or the product, returning any product is too easy, below is all that you need to do:

• For the product which you want to return, place that back in the box carefully along with its packaging.
• Fill in all the details asked in the return form, and place that form in the box as well.
• After that, you need to attach the return label outside the box, and attach it carefully. Please make sure that the label is attached clearly as it will be scanned by the courier department.
• Now, take your parcel to the parcel point, and also check the parcel points of your country.

Note: Recently return costs have been charged again for most of the countries. If you have placed the order before 27-7-2023, in that case, you can still return your order free of charge.

After the return process, now comes the refund procedure which we need to discuss. So according to the company’s policy, the amount is refunded within 14 days (excluding holidays) once the company receives the product at their warehouse. You will also receive a confirmation email as soon as your return gets processed. The refund will be processed within a few working days. You can also check the track & trace which you would have received at the post office, to get the information about your return to their warehouse.

Note: The return costs of 6.50 EUR will be deducted from the refund amount as per the policies.

Customer support of Otrium

For any further questions about service, products, or your orders, you can also contact their customer support team. You can connect with them via chat, Facebook, Instagram, or mobile phone.

Also, a form is available on the official website to submit your request. Which you can simply fill out and send to the support Team.

You can write as well to Otrium over their official Email ID which is:

• https://www.Otrium.com

To contact over mobile number:

• 0031 (020)221-7184

Conclusion

It would be so true to say that to make any business successful it requires time, effort, and most importantly expertise, you need to stick with your business to make it successful. 

Many other factors play an important role such as a specialized team, new discoveries, excellent customer support, and decent offers which will help you to attract customers. And, Otrium is one of those successful businesses, it is one of a kind that gained so much popularity and success in such a short period of time by fulfilling the above-mentioned factors. From the very start, it was focused on a single motive that it will change people’s perspective on fashion, which was the main reason behind the successful journey of Otrium as fashion e-commerce.