What we found so special about Pomelo is it’s unique vision and positioning in the highly competitive e-commerce fashion industry. They started off because they saw an opportunity in the Southeast Asian fashion market, where there were high price differentials between clothes sold in local markets and mall brands. Moreover they see themselves as a digitally native vertical brand for the fast fashion market, where they are vertically integrated, controlling everything from designing, manufacturing, selling, to logistics, all while launching 3 collections per week. And while players are shifting to online from offline, Pomelo goes against the tide and launches their own retail stores across Bangkok, from originally being online-only. This is because they firmly believe that fashion retail can never go 100% online. This daring and entrepreneurial mindset is what has made Pomelo grow exponentially these past years.
In terms of technology and information systems, Pomelo is great example of a blend between a tech and fashion company. While they are fashion forward, the company invests a lot of efforts in hiring engineers and developing their own softwares to integrate into their operations, both front end and back end.
Lastly, we are truly thankful for Ajarn Laddawan Kaewkitipong, BBA staffs, and the Pomelo team, for organizing this educative and interesting company visit that allowed students to get a deeper insight into the fast fashion e-commerce landscape.
Posed on February 22, 2019
