This For That – India’s First and Only Fashion Swapping/Sharing Platform for Women

The online fashion market is projected to grow to $14 billion by 2020. At present there are about 27 million women shoppers online. All of them are potential swappers. And this number is set to grow exponentially in the coming years. “Looking at 75% of a woman’s closet as our base, and estimating women shoppers to be at 50%, if not more by 2020, the market opportunity sits at over $4.5 billion,” said Nancy Bhasin, Founder, This For That.
This for That is a social, fashion swapping, platform for women. It is also the most sustainable alternative to shopping. Women can use the This For That platform to exchange/swap, clothes, shoes, bags, accessories, cosmetics from their closets, things they don’t use much or don’t use at all, for things that they like from someone else’s closet, without any money changing hands. Swaps can be either temporary or permanent, entirely upon the users.
The process is quick and easy.
·         Click and upload pictures of the things in your closet (clothes, bags, shoes
Accessories and cosmetics) to your profile
·         Assign a Credit value to your stuff (whatever you think it’s worth)
·         Browse photos of fashion from other women’s closets and take your
pick
·         Swap
·         Get stuff delivered
·         Post a SOS for your fashion emergency and get help from the community
After nearly a decade in advertising, Nancy was itching to make a significant switch. Up until that point she had only created things that helped other brands. She wanted to use all her experience and create something that would have a larger impact. She was watching a lot of TED Talks, listening to podcasts and stumbled upon a TED Talk by Rachel Botsman on Collaborative consumption. She was fascinated by the concept and began looking at ways to apply it to the Indian context. After loads of iterations, This For That was born. She decided to test waters with a couple of swap meets in Delhi. They proved to be a great learning ground for the This For That app. The test market version of the app was launched in 2016 and over 15,000 women signed up for it. Observing how customers interact with the app and each other, and how they strike deals gave Nancy immense amount of confidence in the power of the idea, and how it could become a part of the day to day lives of Indian women. All of these experiences have given shape to the current avatar of This For That.
This For That (TFT) claims to be the first platform of its kind in India. Even globally there is no player using the same business model as us, stated Nancy. Below are the special key features of TFT which she shared with BW Disrupt:
Shopping but for free: 75% of a woman’s closet is either completely unused or underused. TFT lets women use this 75% that is of little or no value to them, to get things that they will actually use and cherish, without any real money changing hands. It’s a proposition never offered before by any brand and that is what makes TFT truly unique. The whole idea of shopping without spending money is like a dream come true for every woman.
Positive impact on the environment: On the other hand, it is helping women increase the shelf life of their clothes by trading them with others, saving a huge negative impact on the environment from clothes ending up in landfills and also clearing up space in a woman’s wardrobe.
The social connect: This For That is a community in the making. Women on its platform really talk to each other. They discuss their sizes, taste, and extend each other favours by blocking items. It’s an unparalleled social experience.
SOS feature: To take the social engagement on the platform to the next level, TFT has a unique feed called the SOS feed. Here, women post their fashion emergencies, questions and queries and the community reaches out to help them, almost instantly. Women also often ask for things they are looking for on the feed or take opinions from their virtual family on fashion, beauty and life in general.
Credits- A unique currency: TFT has its own unique currency called Credits. Credits gamify the swapping experience and form the basis for all swaps and transactions, including shipping. Sufficient credit balance means, a user won’t have to pay any money in a credit swap or for shipping. Credits can be purchased from the app at a nominal rate of 10% but once purchased they cannot be converted to cash. This makes maintaining an adequate credit balance, top priority for active swappers. There are users trying to convince other users to take their items for credits, or asking other users to block items till they score enough credits from other swaps to pay for the item they really want. The company also gives away titles and free credits to swappers for uploading, swapping, etc., to gamify the experience further. Credits make temporary/occasion based swaps fairly simple, it gives women who don’t have much in their closets the license to swap till the other user refuses.
While speaking about TFT’s competitors, Nancy added, “Since we are trying to build a highly engaged community of women who wish to share their wardrobes and lives with each other, we actually look at other social platforms where women are spending their time as competition. So Facebook, Instagram, even highly engaged groups within Facebook, are platforms that have succeeded in building great communities. From a commerce perspective, our aim is to be a long term, sustainable alternate to shopping, so we want to convert women who are online shoppers into regular swappers and reduce dependence on new purchases. From that POV, we look at Myntra, Jabong, Flipkart, Amazon, etc., as competition too.”
TFT was bootstrapped till early 2018, but a couple of months ago, right before the launch of its new app, the startup raised a friends and family round. The company is now looking to raise its seed round.
“We are still in our first market, Delhi NCR. But we have been getting downloads from all over the country. Our current product and partnerships, gives us the scale to launch in any part of India. So we are just looking to expand the team to get to that phase. Next stop is definitely Bangalore (because the city is big on sustainability and we have a community waiting for us to launch there), followed by Mumbai, which is actually where we get maximum number of downloads from aside of Delhi NCR,” mentioned Nancy.