Finding the perfect dress for an event used to mean going down to the shops and paying full price for something you may only ever wear once. But times are changing, man. Since your high school ball in 2001, there has been an explosion in boutique dress rental services existing online, including Dunedin-based Love Me Rent Me.
Sole proprietor Karen McCormack has been leading the charge for online dress rentals since 2017, now boasting over 650 dresses in her collection. That's a lot of dresses. She came to us with an existing eCommerce store wanting an upgrade in features and functionality - both for her own administration and customer experience.
Karen's website needed to be able to cope with a high number of orders coming through week-to-week and offer options for customers to try on their choices in her fitting room (yes she even has a fitting room). We used Shopify as the eCommerce platform to build out the inventory (remember how I said there were 650 dresses, Karen added almost all of these to the store, manually), payment gateways, page content and imagery. We implemented a booking system to the store that was able to manage try-on appointments and handle if, when, and to whom dresses were rented out. A complex structure of dress preparation, just-in-time delivery, returns, dry-cleaning, damage repair, and back on the rack in time for the next booking. This process only survives when the Machine works for the Human and not the other way around.
The end result is a modern online store that is simple to navigate and easy to use. Since launching in May, Love Me Rent Me has had over to 30,000 site visits leading to over 850 total orders... Holy shit indeed!
It goes without saying if you need a dress for your next event, look no further than Love Me Rent Me. Thank you Karen for all of your hard work to help us get this launched for you!