The Octopus Club used to be #1 parents-to-parents marketplace for second-hand, open-box, and sustainable brands in London at a time. Judit collaborated with the Founder, Ana and the team to find the niche strategy to re-gain competitiveness - and find a new path forward.
Challenge
Babies grow fast, therefore baby gear is used for a very short amount of time. Parents are left with barely used products and a dent in their bank accounts. Founded in 2019 by a hard-working mum, The Octopus Club was born: an easy to use online platform dedicated to parents, to buy and sell baby, kids' and maternity items. The Octopus Club quickly found its product market fit offering a much needed service and a strong community and sense of belonging, so needed in the early stages of parenthood.
Resale is not just a trend, it's a behavioural shift that is expected to account for 10% of global fashion sales, $350bn in 2028. However, recent economic and competitive pressures forced marketplaces in the second-hand space to adopt aggressive growth strategies, like cancellation of seller fees, which caused an extremely difficult situation for smaller players.
Approach
Specialized second-hand and access supply marketplaces have shown incredible growth in Europe in the past years, showing price and volume is not the only thing you can compete on. However, traditional growth strategies require external funding. Learning from wider industry success stories a new business model and radically new direction was developed together with the founder to build on the strength of the platform and its community: focus on quality, curation and community.
Outcome
After the strategy the company started building a more robust and curated B2B2C partner network and launched its first physical pop-up for a duration of 6months in the Young V&A, the UK’s museum of the year. The unique curated sustainable pop up was a great success, leading the company to change direction and close the peer-to-peer marketplace operations and pivot to something new : stay tuned!
