Company: Moxie Jean
Website: www.moxiejean.com
Founder: Sharon Schneider
Headquarters: Arlington Heights, Illinois
Year Founded: 2011
Twitter: @moxiejeankids
Pinterest: pinterest.com/moxiejeankids
Facebook: facebook.com/moxiejeankids
Brief Company Description: Moxie Jean: the online consignment store that makes it easy for busy moms to buy and sell gently used kids’ clothes any time of day or night.
By Sharon Schneider, founder and CEO
I spent a dozen years working for non-profits trying to make the world a better place. In that role I was a witness to the constant struggle of charitable organizations to convince everyday people—as opposed to hard-core believers—to act in the best interests of their particular cause: don’t eat endangered seafood; buy fair trade goods instead of those that are produced with exploited labor.
The charities that accomplished their mission most successfully made it easy for people to take the action they wanted: a wallet-sized guide to which seafood was okay to eat and which was a no-no; placement of fair trade goods in Macy’s right alongside the rest of my decorating options.
But in most cases, charities failed to account for the fact that people are motivated by some combination of price, convenience, and signaling to the world some aspect of their identity. Some folks want to signal their fashion savvy, some their frugality, others their social conscience. Although it’s becoming more popular than ever to signal your social conscience, I became convinced that any attempt to reach massive scale for social change had to make convenience and price equal to traditional options in order to allow signaling to become a significant decision-making factor.
Moxie Jean was founded on this principle.
Moxie Jean is the only online consignment store that makes it truly easy for busy moms to buy and sell gently used kids’ clothes any time of day or night, so they can spend Saturday morning with their kids.
As the mother of three young kids, I have found that my kids constantly grow out of perfectly good clothes! That means I continually need to acquire new sets of clothing, while I also need to get rid of the clothing they have outgrown before it takes over my house. I founded Moxie Jean to solve this problem for busy moms like me, moms who want great values like you can get at a local pop-up consignment sale, but who don’t have the time to stand in line and spend hours on a precious Saturday morning in search of those deals.
We differentiate from other online consignment sites by making it super convenient for moms to use our service. First, you can visit our site to request a Moxie Jean Mailer Bag and it arrives at your door. No need to schedule an appointment or come to our location: just fill the bag, seal it and leave it for your postal carrier. Within a few days you will receive an email containing the credits you received for the clothing we were able to buy (anything we can’t purchase will be donated or up-cycled so it is still put to good use).
When your credits arrive, you can cash them out, donate them to a children’s charity, or use them to shop at moxiejean.com. Just a few clicks and you’ve selected a bundle of several name-brand, like-new outfits in the size and style you like. We pride ourselves on styling the clothes into outfits and grouping similar outfits together so that you can quickly fill your kids’ dresser without spending hours searching for matching pieces—in person or online. When your order arrives, it will include a new Moxie Jean Mailer Bag so you can continue the virtuous cycle of buying and selling great kids’ clothes at great prices!
Just eight weeks after our pivot and six weeks after the launch of our new site, Moxie Jean already has thousands of dollars in revenue and a growing army of passionate advocates among moms: in our first full month (August), we shipped more than 300 bundles of like-new baby and kids’ clothes as we bulk up our inventory in larger sizes and moms continue to spread the word. Twelve percent of our customers have already returned for a subsequent purchase within 30 days.
We are currently testing different marketing and customer acquisition channels, including mom-focused daily deal sites, search engine marketing, partnerships with companies serving similar demographics, and a content marketing strategy through which I am sharing my life and lessons on how to juggle everything as a busy working mom.
We are currently participating in one of the top-ranked startup accelerators in the country, Excelerate Labs. On Demo Day August 29th, we’ll be presenting our expansion strategy and current funding needs.
Moxie Jean – www.moxiejean.com
