Photo credit; Daniel Flower
Australian company Surfstitch, which claims to now be the the world’s largest online sports apparel and fashion retailer, is considering going public on the ASX.
The news comes from co-founder Justin Cameron as Surfstitch sits as the market leader in Asia and Australia and is starting to dominate European online fashion retailing.
According to Cameron, who co-founded the business with Lex Pedersen, the business is already the largest online action sports and fashion business in the world.
He pointed out that Surfstitch’s main competitor in the US, swell.com, isn’t doing nearly the business that Surfstich is. He knows this because swell.com is owned by Billabong, and Billabong is a shareholder in Surfstitch
“So I know what that business is doing and it’s not doing anywhere near what we’re doing [in terms of turnover],” Cameron said.
In Europe its main competitor is Blue Tomato, which reported annual net sales of $42.3 million for the year to 30 April 2012, of which 75% was generated through e-commerce.
“We do significantly more [than our competitors' revenue],” said Cameron, who also said Surfstitch would turnover $80 million this financial year.
Surfstitch now has five European online stores and also runs Billabong’s e-commerce platform. In total, it manages more than 20 different websites.
“We represent more than 500 brands and have the ability to touch consumers across a number of different genres, including surfwear, sportswear, street fashion and accessories,” said Cameron. “We have seen a significant shift of consumer spending to online and we have been able to capitalise on that.”
Cameron says consumers can access a massive 20,000 different products through the business’s sites, something no other online surf brand can come close to matching.
“We launched before there were daily deal sites. When we started eBay was really the only option [for buying apparel online]. In the fashion space there was only us and ASOS. Being first allowed us to build awareness and scale very quickly.”
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