E-tail firm Mycashmere.com launched a small catalog this week 2000 that is designed to promote the site as much as it was created to generate mail and phone orders.
Decorated with screen shots from Mycashmere.com, the eight-page catalogs will be sent to 2,000 people who requested additional information at the Web site or through an ad the firm ran in E-Elle.com, a print, Internet-oriented supplement for fashion magazine Elle.
The catalog and Web site offer the debut fashion line by Brieanne Cameron, the creative director/co-founder of the site and a 16-year veteran of the modeling industry. Cameron founded Mycashmere with Kei Mori, who spent 25 years in business development with his mother, Hanae Mori, a Japanese haute couture designer.
Mycashmere clothing ranges in price from $100 to $500 and is the only product line offered by the site.
Cameron said her company would probably drop additional catalogs next year. Her firm is also considering opening a brick-and-mortar store in 2001.
However, Cameron said the offline sales channels would not be paramount to her company's bottom line. She said Mycashmere, Los Angeles, is banking on finding loyal online shoppers among 18- to 45-year-old women.
“The current market is a concern, but it will always be a concern,” Cameron said. “You look at what happened to [defunct online retailer] Boo.com and all their hype and how they were trying to be everything for everybody. That's not our plan. We are going after a niche.”
The site is also offering its garments at fashion sites Elle.com, New York, and StyleClick.com, Los Angeles.
StyleClick, also an e-commerce services firm, will handle fulfillment on all Mycashmere sales, whether they are direct or third party. StyleClick said it has become leery of taking Internet-based clients after being hurt by revenue-sharing fulfillment deals with dot-coms.
The company believes, however, that Mycashmere.com will survive the current e-tail fallout.
“It's gotten to the point where you want to be sure [the sites] aren't going out of business before you take them on as clients,” said Bruce Goldstein, vice president of business development at StyleClick.
