Interview with Gianluca Belotti and Beatrice Pedrali, respectively CEO and president of Sisterly, the platform that allows you to rent luxury bags when and for as long as you want.
The bag is one of those accessories that are useful, but also able to “complete” and make perfect, our outfit. Not all the bags we want, however, are affordable… that’s why the idea of Sisterly turns out to be winning and above all desirable!
What is Sisterly? If you like bags, you’ve come to the right place!
Sisterly is an e-commerce website where you can find many models of luxury bags. Where’s the news? – you might be thinking.
The news lies in the concept of Rental! All the bags that you have always wanted but never had the courage to buy, are now available for renting on SIsterly. But wait, that’s not all: it is not just a platform where you can rent the bag of your dreams, because its architecture is peer-2-peer, based on trades between users! In other words, in addition to renting the bag that you have always dreamed of, you can also rent that bag that you never use in order to give it a second life and make money from it.
But how does it work?
Just browse through the brands and bags available, choose the one you like the most or that is in line with your budget, book your rental by choosing the duration and times you prefer and start enjoying your wonderful extra-luxury bag. Booking is very simple, the communication channels are in fact the most common we used to use: Instagram, Mail, Whatsapp.
Want to know more about the Sisterly world? Read the interview with Beatrice Pedrali and Gianluca Belotti.
Hello guys, nice to meet you and thank you for your time. Sisterly: tell us this beautiful story.
Beatrice: Sisterly is a novelty that was not present in Italy and that will make the dreams of many women come true. We all know how much appearance counts nowadays, also because of social media, and how those create more and more the need to have the most fashionable bags for every outfit. For people with low budget or others who are more attentive to waste, the best solution is the RENTAL that is gaining more and more space among the people. Renting a bag means saving money and guilt, but also being able to have a different bag for every weekend. The real revolution is the PEER-TO-PEER rental, that is, that the users themselves put and rent the bags, transforming them from unused assets to a source of profit, in addition to being a real step towards sustainable fashion.
How and when was the idea of Sisterly born?
Beatrice: How was it born? From a personal need… Seriously, the springboard for Sisterly was the SDA Bocconi during the Master in Entrepreneurship and Business Strategy (MISA) in which, for a startup laboratory last October 2020, we had to start from an idea and develop a project to be presented to investors. From here we started to work on the problem-solution strategy, market analysis, target, validation of the idea, marketing and business plan, until the pitch deck, where Sisterly won first place. From a mere academic exercise, we have identified a great interest of the target audience and therefore a great potential, deciding to take it outside the university field.
How long did you spend to shape the project?
Gianluca: The startup’s lab lasted for a month, but the real start of Sisterly was in May 2021 when we decided to start working full time on Sisterly, leaving our jobs and dedicating ourselves completely to the project. So, much of the “desk” work had already been done during the master’s degree, but what we needed was a shift from school work to a real company.
We started by imagining the customer journey and while doing so we hypothesized all the possible pitfalls and problems that the consumer would deal with: rental security, assurance in payments, continuous support from Sisterly. Currently, we believe that we have solved all these problems and we are ready to present our service to the market as soon as our application goes online. So I would say that, in total, there are 6 months of work behind this new reality: one among the business school desks and, the rest, on the ground.
Who does Sisterly target? How is the market responding?
Gianluca: First of all, I would like to remind you that Sisterly combines two needs, a first need on the Lender side and a second need on the Borrower side. On the Lender side, we are mainly addressing (but not exclusively) those women who have numerous bags, many of which are unused. Sisterly offers to them the possibility to upload such bags on the online portal and to rent them earning money, all in safety.
Talking about the Borrower side, we turn our attention to those girls who do not have the possibility to buy the bag of their dreams or, simply, prefer not to buy a luxury bag to use on a single occasion. The feedback we have received has been all positive, both borrower and landed side. People are already using the rental service from the temporary showcase site and showed strong interest in loading their bags online in order to give them a new life.
Sisterly, what does that name mean?
Beatrice: We curated the image of the brand and nothing is left to chance, starting from the name Sisterly that just wants to indicate the relationship of sisterhood that is created between users, or as we like to call them: Lender Sisters and Borrower Sisters. Just like sisters exchange clothes, in the same way lender and borrower sisters share bags. One of the core values of the platform is in fact the community that is created through a system of ratings, feedback, chats and forums in which the sisters can ask for “sisterly advice” to match the bag with clothes.
The term “sisterly” means “properly of the sisters / sisterhood” and the logo itself wants to symbolize the combination of two bags which represent the link of two users.
How did you launch your project?
Gianluca: Currently our project is in the MVP phase, that is we are performing a controlled test on the market. In fact, what you can find at the link www.sisterly.it is nothing more than a temporary showcase site to validate the market, the real site and especially the application will be ready soon. To make ourselves known we will use social channels at first, focusing our marketing efforts, especially during the first period, on the Borrower side. Considering the “cold-start” we are fortunate to have available, even before the official departure, a catalog of about 100 bags and this helps greatly in the initial launch of a P2P service, because on the one hand it makes our Borrower-side offer attractive from the start, and on the other hand , Lender-side, legitimizes the platform and encourages women to upload their bags to the app.
Curiosity: do you also use Sisterly to complete your outfits?
Somehow I’ve always used Sisterly without even knowing it… It was actually called “motherly” because whenever I needed a bag, I used to access my mom’s wardrobe. Then I asked myself “but what about those who haven’t got a mother/sister/friend they can borrow bags from?”. Now the answer is that there is always one sister with the right bag for you out there! It feels so good to be able to share the passion of the bags with other women.
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