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THE LIST
“WE ARE MOBILE FIRST” If Germany needs a new figurehead for entrepreneurship, the country should look no further than this man. Andreas Skorski, originally from Nuremberg, founded The List, a marketplace for stylish luxury, in Dubai. He is now challenging the more established names in the business. Text: Martina Müllner-Seybold. Photos: The List
Andreas, is it fair to describe your business model by calling you the Mr. Farfetch of the Middle East? I suppose so. Our business model is similar; we are a marketplace. The List connects retailers from all over the globe with consumers. The customers are still primarily from the Middle East, but we deliver to 190 countries. The business model is scalable; we are now taking on the European market. We strive to thrill customers with our mobile experience. Nobody has managed to create a truly genuine mobile experience - and founded a real mobile business - before us. Mobile is where the customer is. More than 80 percent of our traffic comes from mobile devices. The List curates the best merchandise from the best stores worldwide, but much more dynamically. We utilise micro-moments. We try to suggest the right products through personalisation, embedded in content that is also tailor-made for the respective products and brands. Does the fact that you also use external content, at least to a certain extent, enhance the shopping experience with entertainment value? Exactly. Customers have no interest in switching between channels or apps. They want to read a Vogue article and then buy the product in question immediately. The same applies to videos. We strive to offer the right products to the right people at the right moment. I understand the principle, but others are attempting the same thing… How do you ensure that The List does it better? Our marketplace model means that we offer an incredible range of products, more products than an e-commerce company that buys and stocks. We are more agile and faster. When something exciting surfaces in LA, New York, or Moscow, we can present it on our platform three weeks later. How do you define luxury? Luxury is not defined by a price tag. We are a curator and aggregator of cool, individual products. It goes without saying that we also offer classic luxury brands, but always in combination with products that are hard to find. Who decides which products of a retailer’s range make it onto The List? If basic conditions are met, the retailer decides. These conditions range from product quality to a check whether the retailer is authorised to sell the brand online. We perceive 134
style in progress
The business was started in a living room. Today, The List has offices in Dubai and Lisbon. The aim of Andreas Skorski, the founder of The List, is to be the luxury shopping destination offering the best mobile experience.
ourselves as consultants. We provide data that enables stationary retailers to buy more precisely for the needs of our customers. Please describe how the integration of a retailer works… Once an agreement has been reached, we analyse the inventory in order to determine the depth and width of the product range in question. A certain depth of stock is important for our business model. We sell products quite quickly and are keen to avoid sold-out items. We have teams that take care of data preparation. Most retailers and brands simply don’t have product data in the form we need it to be in order to describe and present the goods in a context appropriate for e-commerce. We handle that aspect for them. From a technological point of view, the merchandise management is integrated via an interface. As soon as the products are online, the sale and all promotional measures begin - controlled by us. When an item is sold, the retailer merely needs to pack it. We handle everything else: the correct pricing for every market, customs, shipping service providers, and returns. For which you charge a small fee, probably in the same range as Farfetch. What’s your so-called winning point over the top dog? Our compensation model is a little more favourable; our take-rate and service fees aren’t as high. Our target audience is younger, our average shopping cart value is higher, and our return rate is lower. Seeing that we aren’t as large, we offer individual solutions for our retailers. Moreover, fashion is only part of our business. We also collaborate with watch, art, and interior design dealers. How did you convince your investors? And what is the ultimate goal? All the points mentioned above and our team… Some great people from large competitors have joined us. They are eager to prove their mobile expertise. We don’t look at a ten-year-old website and wonder how we can optimise it for mobile use. We are what is called mobile first. We are the first genuine mobile brand in this segment and we strive to earn a permanent place on our customers’ home-screens. Our goal is to establish ourselves as the luxury fashion platform in the mobile sector.
