Text by Stanley Lui | Photos by John Tan
Lisa Crosswhite is the founder of Gnossem, launched with the goal of advocating "artisan fashion" through providing an e-commerce platform for independent fashion labels. Unveiled in April 2012, more than ninety brands are now stocked on her site to date, with no signs of slowing down.
Lisa recently made Louis Vuitton's "Top Ten Most Stylish Women of 2012" in STYLE: magazine and regularly dishes out fashion tips in top magazine titles. Prior to starting Gnossem, Lisa worked as a Brand Strategist at Ogilvy & Mather, where she was responsible for providing strategic insights into brand building, business expansion and customer acquisition.
Lisa's inspiration to build Gnossem was fueled by research insights she had previously gathered, noticing that working professionals in the Asia Pacific region were increasingly turning to online shopping. Having been an advocate of independent fashion labels, for their more affordable price range and design authenticity, Lisa believed more fashion-lovers would fill their wardrobes with independent labels if only they had better access to them.
SENATUS speaks with Lisa to find out more about the Gnossem way of doing fashion e-commerce.
Gnossem is a really interesting name for your startup. How did that come about?
I used to play the piano into my late teens and remembered there was this great piece titled "Gnossienne" by Erik Satie, a French classical composer. I've always loved the word "Gnossienne" and the composition itself was really mysterious.
So "Gnossem" became my own derivation, to represent uniqueness and innovation.
How did you go from working at Ogilvy & Mather to starting your own business?
I have always been into fashion even while I was working at Ogilvy. I also knew I didn't want to keep modeling but wasn't sure in what capacity I would be involved in in the fashion industry. I was working on a client project and it inspired me to look deeper into online apparel retailing, analyzing the industry and finally made the inspired decision to enter the market myself, creating an e-commerce space dedicated to independent designers.
Gnossem has a unique way of positioning the labels, using campaign shots. Tell us more about these photo shoots.
We wanted to build Gnossem as a quality brand, and our photo shoots showcase our creative direction. It continues to be one way for us to bring across the authentic luxury and uniqueness that Gnossem stands for.
Conceptualizing the shoots is actually one of my favourite parts of the job.
In what others ways do you look to build on your brand awareness?
At this point, brand awareness has been growing very organically. Our marketing spend has been extremely low in these early pre-external funding stages, and yet we have been covered in all of Singapore's top fashion magazines, and continue to be featured month on month.
We sponsor events selectively, working with organisers who appreciate the quality we bring, our sense of style and the progress we have made.
One of the events was the Women's International Tournament held at the Singapore Polo Club, with other co-sponsors that included Jaeger-LeCoultre, McLaren, COMO Hotels and Veuve Cliquot. It was great participating with these renowned brands with Gnossem by far, the youngest and freshest.
The more recent event was for Elite Model Look Singapore where I was one of the judges for the national casting and Gnossem sponsored the swimwear show held at W Hotel, featuring four different swimwear labels: Aqua Di Lara from Canada, Tatjana Anika from UK, Silvian Imberg from Italy and Wanderlust from the Philippines.
For the competition's grand finale show, we showcased our casual and workwear pieces in a street chic segment as well as our collection of evening wear consisting of gowns from Sougat Paul from India, Justin Yap from Malaysia and Georgine.
All these interesting labels by independent fashion designers seem to roll off your tongue! How do you choose whom to work with?
We make our consideration based on three factors. The first one is exclusivity — how much do you produce per style? As a shopper myself, I like the fact that I am one out of twenty people in the world to own a design. We want to be able to carry exclusive items like these at Gnossem and in turn, we raise the visibility of these designers through our platform.
The second is the designer's story or personal statement — who does the design? We look for designers who not only design but are also actively involved in the whole manufacturing process. For example, do they hammer their own silver or stitch on the lace? We don't want something mass-produced, we want something special.
The third is craftsmanship — how well is the product made? We look at the materials that are being used and evaluate the quality of the merchandise.
It all seems so glamorous! Tell us about the challenging parts that we don't see.
Getting the website to work. Previously, I had outsourced our development and when you do that, you are obviously held hostage by a thirdparty's timing and efficiency. Gnossem is a website that was built from the ground up — It is extremely customized and it's not just about getting a template and filling up all the contents.
Getting the platform right and functioning the way I want it was a constant huge challenge for me.
Funding. Currently, I own 88% of this company with another shareholder. I have been trying not to get too much funding from external sources for as long as I can. This is just so we can have a chance to really prove ourselves, do well and get a high valuation so that I do not have to give up so much of my equity stake in the business.
What are your plans for the new year?
The first would be going into Korea. I am really excited about the Korean market because it is one of the biggest online retail markets in Asia. The thing is, they love their local designers so our challenge is to introduce them to other Asian and Western designers.
The next is going to be the U.K. market. We have been planning that for about a month now and that will happen for Spring 2013., timed to launch on our first anniversary on 19 April 2013. We will have be rolling out campaigns via social media social media, themed "Asian Fashion Invasion" held over 3 months with pop-up events in London. We are also looking to involve design schools in London so it'll all be quite exciting.
We are going to try our best, monitor what fails and works, and keep pushing into those two big markets.
We are also rolling out new developments in the pipeline for our website. We want to get to the cutting edge of usability as quick as we can and keep our position there.
Find your artisan fashion from independent labels at Gnossem
