Trouva: An online "lifevest" for independent boutiques

This Outliers podcast episode is in English.

There is a big prize for any business that figures out how to bring inspirational mind. Because inspiration, yes, exists in platforms like Pinterest, but Pinterest is not attached to the supply chain. So, when you think about inspiration in retail, you need both sides of the equation.

Welcome to Outliers by Endeavor Greece. The podcast is all about the entrepreneurs who transforming entire markets and changing the narrative in entrepreneurship. Each week we speak to the minds behind some of the most successful startups in Greece and beyond, and discover how they make decisions and assess risks. Through their journey and the opportunities, they see on the horizon, we uncover what it takes to be an outlier. I am Panagiotis Karampinis, managing director of Endeavor Greece. Today we are joined by Alex Loizou, co-founder and CEO of Trouva. Trouva.com draws in 1.5 million unique visitors every month. It sources and curates rare products from over 950 independent European stores and boutiques, from London and Paris to Kent and Valencia. You’ll find anything, from unique clothing and decoration to beauty and technology products. Lately, Trouva has proven to be a life line for each independent sellers, allowing 70% of them to continue trading during lockdown. A few months ago, Trouva was included in the Sunday Times Tech track 100 list of fastest growing technology companies in the UK. It has managed to raise 36 million dollars in investments from the likes of Octopus Ventures and Intech Ventures among others. The company employs 100 people between London and Lisbon. Alex joins us to discuss his vision for Trouva, the economic impact of the pandemic on independent boutiques, and how physical stores can act as an inspiration for the digital world.

Hi, Alex.

Hello.

Thank you for joining us.

Thank you for having me.

Can you give us a quick intro on Trouva, for those who are not familiar with the business?

Trouva is basically a marketplace. What we do is we find beautiful, independent shops that are run by professional curators, so people that have a very distinctive taste or style, across 13 countries in Europe. And what we do is basically bring them all together in one centralized platform, and allow people around the world to buy from these physical shops online. The main reason we exist is because we believe that beautiful inventory exists in the offline world, and right now, the online experience of buying is very much driven by, I already know what I want and it's just like a surge or a category driven experience of getting that thing, finding that thing and then getting it in the post. But what we believe is that, in retail specifically, there's this experience of inspiration that exists very strongly in the offline world right now in concept stores, independent boutiques and so on, that hasn't made itself online, right? So how can we build out the supply chain, which is a fundamental part of retail, but then build out also the experience of discovering inspiration, like how we can bring those two worlds together… and so that's what Trouva is trying to do.

Would you like to tell us a little bit about your background?

I am a Greek Cypriot; I grew up in Cyprus. I'm half German. When I finished the army in Cyprus, I moved to Germany, studied computer science there, then moved to London, did a Masters at the LSC, and then basically started the business as the technical mind or the product minds in kind of partnership that initially existed, and then over the years I built out the platform, built out the product, and then took over as the CEO of the business, about a year ago now.

When the business started, it was called Street Hub, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, the vision was always the same, right? The vision was always that there is inventory in physical spaces that is valuable online, but is currently not recorded online and people don't have access to it. So, with Street Hub the thinking was “okay, can we create a hyper local proposition? Can we do a mobile only version of walking around the city and discovering products from different small shops”? And we started that in London. Initially just in shortage, and then expanded it from there. But then what we realized was that, whilst the physical experience was an interesting part, it was just one part of the experience. At the end of the day, retail happens in all the different channels and people want to get products in their post, they want to get it in 24 hours, they want to get in seven days, they want to get on demand or they want to walk in the shop and get it there, right? Like you have to facilitate the entire breath of the experience. So, Trouva was kind of the reincarnation where we really refocused the business on thinking about, “okay, how can we solve a bigger problem of inspiration?” Whereas the other problem was around accessibility. So that's how the transition happened. And it was by no means an easy transition or a planned one, right? It was a story of lots of failures, trials, errors and then figuring out what the actual value of proposition is.

You started the business when you graduated from entrepreneur First, which is a government backed programme.

So, I got into Entrepreneur First. I was in the first cohort of Entrepreneur first, alongside with the Avocart guys and a few others. And that was an experience that kind of introduced me to the world of startups. But you could almost say in a safer way, back then you wouldn't get paid anything or anything like that. Now people get paid every month and all that kind of stuff, you know, to be able to also financially survive, but what it did give us was a very broad network of people that we got access to, and quite a bit of like basic knowledge of like, how startups operate, how you have to, the mindset that you have to employ in order to be able to iterate quickly, to figure out your value proposition and then to move forward with your business. So, for me it was a great experience. I tried building one company there, lasted about like six months and then basically moved on. But I think those kinds of experiences, if you take advantage of them, do really give you a softer or even you could argue both sides, either softer or much harder in a good way, in terms of the world of entrepreneurship and at the end of the day, it's like how you perceive the signals and then what you do with them, which for me was, was very valuable later on. I think the other part is, I did meet my co-founders basically through some people that I knew at Entrepreneur First as well, right? So, the network, that you do get out of it, is quite strong.

So, you meet your cofounders and you start your business. How did they come?

Yeah, so we, initially my co-founders I got in touch with because they had an idea on… they were coming out of private equity. We're doing quite a lot of retail investments there and what they saw was that, whilst online penetration was growing, and would continue to grow even further in ecommerce generally, there was a very big difference between online penetration when it came to, or online share when it came to the big chains versus the small rats. So, when the big chains were doing 50-50 or 60-40 online, offline, the small guys were still very much reliant on the offline space and the question was, well inevitably these small guys, the share is going to shift or they're going to have to shut down. So, how do we help these guys make that shift? And so, they came to me with kind of like an idea of like hyper locally… how do you could solve that problem? More as an okay, do you think from a technical perspective… how could we solve this? And so I just took a pun and I thought, I thought to myself to be quite honest. I was like, well, sounds interesting. Guys seem cool. I've never worked with them before, I met them maybe a couple of times. But worst case what's gonna happen, right? Like we're gonna shut it down in three six months and then I'm gonna move on and do something else. Now we're like 8 1/2 years later. So that was kind of the beginning, but it's always like, it's a progression. You know, like whatever the starting point of an idea is, you work on it, you extend it, you try stuff, you rinse and repeat. And the key is to always think about “okay, so how do I adjust the different parts so that I actually am able to create genuine value for the end user?” And so, overtime you know it has progressed to what it is today. But if you think about the core, it's always been the same.

Absolutely. And one question that comes to mind very quickly when someone goes through the business is OK, your tagline and your narrative is around independent stores, right, and boutique stores. How do you find them? Or do they find you? And how do you create… How do you manage to create all this content and products?

Very good question. So, early days, we were just going out in the streets and signing shops up. I mean it was just, it was literally going into the streets of shortage in Bermondsey and all the different kind of more quirky areas in London as well and just walking in and talking to the guys getting a lot of nose and then trying out some more, and then you would get someone who was crazy enough to be like, oh yeah why not? But then overtime, you know, like you Start learning more. So, referrals started playing a big role, like Keno Network. If our network recommends someone else, then chances are that someone else is actually a good one, as long as we're keeping the curation level high. And then as you drive more sales to them, then you start utilizing things like okay, the brands that they're selling and are selling well. What stockies do these brands have? The categories are selling really well, the regions that are selling really well. Like, okay what else do we know about that region or area or whatever? So, at this point there's multiple different ways that we look at how to find more aesthetically strong and commercially savvy traitors, and that ranges from looking at the data that we're creating, the insights that we're getting out of the sales that we're producing, the products that we're selling, and combined with where the supply sits, with network effects that come from the community that we've set up, and you know, our retail brand is getting stronger and stronger as we are. We are very selective, right? Like with street up back in the day, we did go down the approach of just signing up as many as we could. We were like, well, that's not the business we wanna create, like we're gonna be very, very picky on who is on the platform because our proposition lives and dies off their taste and the quality of the products that they have. And so, we're not going to take the easy way out. We are going to visit every single curator that we get on the platform, we are going to make sure that the quality is at the quality that we needed to be, once the aesthetic and the style might be completely different.

Perfect. I'm not sure I'm up to date with the numbers, they keep changing every day. I wanna say 900 stores in 13 countries, is this still valid since yesterday?

Yeah, around 950 across 13 countries in Europe.

Okay, okay.

Yeah.

Amazing. And you know, you see how much attention and how many awards and how many recognitions is going into Trouva for driving all these curls? Would love to hear your thoughts on that but first, do you see any differences in managing operations from a national story into a multinational story across Europe?

Yeah, I mean the, you know, if you boil it down to the basic business model, theoretically you're applying the same types of capabilities, right? So, from that perspective, the capabilities you need to build out through your technology platform, but provided you are a decentralized distributed marketplace, like, you don't control logistics, you don't have the warehouses. You don't have all these things, so you have to build the integrations in order to do that. So, from that perspective the complexity of running an international operation is much more around. Okay, the technology I've built for the national kind of initial roll out. What extensions do I need to do in terms of localizations, currencies, all the good stuff and my logistics integrations and all that. What kind of changes do I need to do on the underlying technology platform to be able to support that? And then from a kind of business mentality and business strategy perspective, what are the main shifts that I expect to have because of maybe launching a new market, or because I'm trying to accelerate a new market that didn’t exist before. So, like your economics and your older economics and all that, they're not gonna have the same maturity, right? So, you have to think ahead and understand what losses you might incur, but then also understand what conviction do I have, and I'm going to be able to recover them at the end as well? So, it's kind of those two sides, technological complexity and then business complexity or financial complexity as well. Like, what am I to expect and how can I make sure that I'm progressing in the right direction?

So, yes. And I can only assume that through all this growth and scalability, there's a mass shift in priorities, and new challenges arise every day. I'm wondering if you can point out what are the top challenges or the biggest needs that you know you find in your everyday life, and if that has anything to do with your co-founder stepping down and you stepping up.

So, in terms of the main challenges, the number one for me, is keeping that balance between aggressive growth versus sustainable growth, and viable growth. And you know businesses go through different phases, and I fundamentally believe that. And so, you have to understand at which point do you need to rebalance, either your supply growth or your demand growth to ensure that you are establishing a new baseline from which you can grow again, alright? So, it's fundamental to have the right type of business metrics. The right types of objectives and clarity over the direction, the metrics and the objectives that you set, not just on a leadership level, but across the organization. And to have the ability to interpret that depending on what phase the business is in, in a way where you understand where the warning signals are and you know when you need to pull what lever in order to either accelerate the growth further or rebalance the growth in order to ensure that you're moving in the right direction. And it's almost like you know, some people that will listen to this podcast probably will either have windsurfed in their lives or have used some kind of like stand-up paddling for example. Very good example, right? When you paddle on your board, you don't really know how the weather is going to change, where the waves are going to come from, what wind might come up from somewhere at any point in time. And all you have is your paddle and your stroke, right? So, you need to constantly look around. You interpret what is happening so that you understand. Okay, how do I take advantage of what is going to come in order to propel the growth without running out of steam myself, because if I run out of steam myself, God forbid I lose a puddle, then we'll have a problem. And I think that is a very good like, analogy to how it is to be in a high growth business. So, you know like something happens in China and has a massive impact in the UK and in Europe as well, and we've seen that recently. So, how do you make sure that you have your eyes wide open and you are taking the right steps to either protect yourself or in the best case take advantage of what's gonna to happen to stimulate your growth even further. And I think that's a constant challenge for any leadership team CEO, but any company as well out there, to be able to do that, and that comes through a high growth mentality as well. Now in terms of my co-founder, I think, you know, the business in its original incarnation has been around for more than eight years now. And again, people go through phases, people build families, all that kind of stuff. So, none of these changes related to kind of business performance or activity or anything like that, it's purely more of a personal kind of decision of like okay, where are we going and how priorities change as well. So, that's kind of one of the reasons I took over as the CEO, is because I still do not have a family or anything like that and I can focus on making sure that business is going on. Not that that is prohibited, but you know, like it's just a matter of prioritization and life.

What was the experience like? I mean was it scary at all? I mean I would be scared…

Taking over.

Yeah, I mean I specifically like the story of the technical guy, the CTO becoming the CEO. It's not something that you see every day.

You know I've always been, whilst I'm quite technical, I've always been very much into understanding the commerciality of the idea that, you know, like how do I tell a story, how do I explain what we do in a way that people can understand and how do you align people around you so that you're all going into the same direction. You know, like I find that extremely interesting. So, it's always been something that helped me in my career, and my degree was computer science and philosophy, which also really helped to understand the social context within which you operate. So, from that perspective, it wasn't something that I felt was a complete step out of my depth. But to be honest, the key to the equation was the team around me. And, you know, when people around you believe in that, and trust that you are, you have your heart in the right place and that you're going to make it happen. Then everything becomes a lot easier because you're not on your own in that path. That being said, I thought it was going to be much like, it was going to be like, Okay, finally, like I've been involved in many things, like how different could it be? And it actually is extremely different, right? Like it is a fundamental change in the way you think, in the way you act, in the way you talk, in the way that you align people around you. Like, it has a massive difference to what I was doing before and I enjoy every day. It's been amazing. Even through a pandemic, it's been a great experience for me and, like, I'm very happy that my team is following there as well.

That's really, really good to hear. And actually, Mandeep, your co-founder in his last letter to the employees or the stakeholders, he called 2019 a stellar year. And, you know, it really was. 22 million from investors like Octopus and C4. I mean, what are they betting on? Where's the opportunity?

So that everyone who's ever invested in us, first of all understands the risk of investing in a business like ours, right? Like, its marketplaces are notoriously hard to build and notoriously hard to get right. But they're also extremely valuable because when you get the flight we're running, and when you figure out your basic, like some basic growth levers to the business, then it just becomes a massive play, right? And what we're seeing in the new age of marketplace, we're no longer talking about marketplaces, we're talking about ecosystems, we're talking about platforms, right? And what they do see with Trouva is, on the one hand side that there is definitely the case for creating a platform for the professional curator. But that person that makes it their life goal to find the right brands, put together the right kind of curation for their aesthetic and style, and provide that to people out there. Because the professional curator right now is the buyer that sits inside retail businesses. And that doesn't have to be. Like, there is a space for that person to be independent. So, they're looking at that on the one hand side, and then on the other hand, there is a big prize for any business that figures out how to bring inspirational mind. Because inspiration, yes exists in platforms like Pinterest, but Pinterest is not attached to the supply chain. So, when you think about inspiration in retail, you need both sides of the equation. So, anyone who figures that one out. We've seen some business, like Stitch Fix, for example. That's exactly what they do, right? Like they bring inspiration back online through stylists, right? So, I think there's still a lot to be done in that kind of direction, as opposed to Commoditized products and just making things, selling shits. Like, that that we solved right? But when it comes to inspiration, I think we're way behind and that's something that other people are betting on as well.

It was a pretty hard year and I'm wondering, how much of this aspiration for the independent retailers and the independent stores has been posed or put on hold because of covid crisis? How has the covid crisis affected the small independent retailers?

My honest perspective is that, now it is even more important to provide those capabilities to independents, because when you go out on the streets today, you will see physical shops that are beautiful, concept stores that are beautiful, that have the greatest inventory, shut, because of the regulations and because of COVID and so, how do we as a society ensure that independents who do not have the capital that the big chains have, how do we ensure that these guys, not just exist, but thrive through the massive move that is coming into online. And how do we make sure that these guys are not the ones at the end of the line but at the front of the line, because people who are on the work ought to know and ought to be able to get access to that type of inventory. Alright so, for me, this has just made the mission even more important. You know, like when your shop is shut down, how do you keep on selling on the one hand side and then on the other hand, If I'm all day sitting in my home and working from home, how do I still get inspiration when I can't just walk into a bar, a restaurant, a coffee shop or a small independent shop? Like, how am I still able to experience some form of that, even if I'm at home? So, on both sides it just makes absolute sense to step it up on that side.

Yeah. And what was really exciting is that you would see all these different initiatives, local or international initiatives to support small and medium companies, right? And small medium retailers.

Yeah.

Did you host? Did you organize any sort of this initiatives or any other support line to your partners? And what else do you think will be needed going ahead?

Yeah, for sure. I think there's two sides to this. One is that we had a direct communication line with all of our shops constantly during all of covid, even through lockdowns. We changed our entire operating models so that they are able to fulfil either from warehouses or from their own residences if they couldn't fulfil from their shops, so that they were kept online, right? And of course, some of them had to shut down during the lockdowns and then we opened, some of them have stayed shut. But, like generally, we kept the majority of them open, and taking and really selling, because during that time online demand was just flying and it's continuing to fly now, right? So, dire communication line, making sure that we're feeding back information, what we're seeing in Italy for example. Like, we saw in Italy what was happening with the lockdowns and straight away that informed our plans of what we were going to do in all the other countries, because all the other countries were pretty much two weeks behind what was happening in Italy, right? So, we were already like, oh okay, this is going on here, we need to make sure that everyone else is on top as well. So, when it comes to advice around covid, when it came to kind of, like, okay, how do we keep you guys open? How do we make sure that you're still getting sales and all that stuff? I mean, as a business, we didn't go out there talking about, oh, we're going to support curators or independents or whatever. That's our mission anyway. Like for us, it was much more like, okay, so how do we actually make it happen? Like how do we make sure that these guys are able to pay their rent or like renegotiate their rent or whatever else? You know, to be able to keep their business open. It's one of those where you just have to keep on watching and seeing what happens.

What are the next milestones for Trouva? Is it geographical expansion? Is it technology and automation?

Yeah, I mean international expansion always plays a role for us. Because we do fundamentally believe that the value proposition behind Trouva is not something that is locked into a certain country or a certain market. It’s something that is universally applicable. But what more beautiful would be if you had one space to buy fines from, like Shibuya District in Tokyo and Berlin? You know, like that would be amazing. Right? So, I think there is kind of like, and that applies to any person in the world that wants to surround themselves and has a little bit more, not a massive amount of disposable income but a little bit more income spent for something that is truly unique, but like or truly special for them. So, I believe connecting independent spirits with independent buyers and retailers like, that is beautiful and we'll do whatever we have to do in order to make that happen. Now, how do we make that happen? One part is around, yes of course, international expansion. How can we connect more people around the world? For sure that is something that is very important for us. We have, as I said, shops in 13 countries right now across Europe. A majority of our customers are… half of our customer base is UK, the rest is like Germany and the rest of Europe and the middle of US, and Australia as well. So, how can we grow that even further? Amazing. And then there's another part around, like, we are able to gain a lot of insights from the selling activity and from what people are buying. So, how can we help independents get better at their buying choices and better at like how they're forecasting the future, by feeding some of those insights back to them? And then thirdly I think the user proposition of true art right now is very much ecommerce. It's very much surge driven very much category driven, all that kind of stuff, but I think there's much more there that we can do to really kind of drive home this notion of inspiration and we're working on a few changes. Some core features on our user experience and our customer experience, to help people find more relevant things that they will find interesting.

Sounds exciting. And is Greece and Cyprus part of your plans?

Greece and Cyprus are always in the plans. The question is not if, the question is when. You know, both in terms of our supply. There's beautiful shops in Greece that I would love to have on the platform. In Cyprus as well, like there’s a few really cool stores that I would love to have. From a demand side, we do ship to Greece and we do ship to Cyprus as well. We do have customers, which is great, but we haven't really localized the experience yet, so there's definitely more way to go there. But then from the other side, in terms of team as well, you know, like I'm spending a lot of time in Cyprus myself during these times, and tried to travel back and forth. I think the future will show, you know, like there's a question around how teams are going to evolve, generally how companies are going to evolve. And what does the word look like post covid, that a lot of people are kind of going back to their roots, right? Like does that mean they shouldn't be part of your company anymore, or does the company have ways to facilitate that, so that the experience you made is beautiful? You know, like those are big question marks that I think every company is facing right now, and the way we're going to deal with it is going to dictate the talent that we're going to get in the future as well. So, it's a really interesting times that we live.

We ask all our guests one final question. What do you think makes an entrepreneur an Outlier?

Yes, very good question. I think… So, first of all, it's the ability to not just have conviction about what you're doing, but the ability to build a narrative around it, and gain the buying from all the people that you have around you, whether that is other stakeholders, whether that is your team, whether that is like your suppliers or your demand, whatever it is. Gain that buying about, like this is important, and this is worth making happen, right? So that ability is extremely crucial. But then, on the other hand, being able and this is kind of like double side. On the other hand, is being able to whilst you do have that conviction to internalize the signals that you're getting and adjust the message so that you are able to breakthrough. And I find it very, very hard to be able to do both. And I think exceptional entrepreneurs or the Outliers or whatever you want to call them, are people that are able to do that and not lose that fundamental kind of thinking around the conviction that they have on the idea that they're pushing forward. So, that's kind of how I think about it, but still learning so... Maybe those answers would change in a few years.

Thank you so much for joining us today. I really enjoyed our conversation.

Thanks for having me.

That was Alex Loizou, co-founder and CEO of Trouva. Thank you for listening to this episode of Outliers. It was produced by the Greek podcast project. You can subscribe to Outliers on our website: outliers.gr or wherever you listen to your podcasts, and please leave a review. I am Panagiotis Karampinis. See you in the next episode.