Sydney-based digital creative agency Mentally Friendly launches The Grand Social – online marketplace for local emerging fashion designers

The Grand Social, created by Sydney-based digital creative agency Mentally Friendly, is an online marketplace for local emerging designers and was one of the first multi-vendor retailers to launch in Australia 5 and a half years ago. It has helped some of the lesser-known brands promote their ranges to the masses without the large costs of creating a full online shopping cart themselves.

Multi-vendor retailing is becoming the norm when it comes to online shopping, but there are very few that focus on local designers. Many of the big name online fashion stores are often run offshore and have a website skinned for the Australian market.

With most Australian’s preferring to buy local, sites such as The Grand Social has seen incredible growth via sales of existing products and a plethora of new brands utilising the platform.

In fact, The Grand Social has seen an impressive 46% growth in revenue in the past 6 months. They’ve put this down to huge marketing spends by their competitors that has actually helped drive the success of their own platform.

Nick Gower of digital agency Mentally Friendly, co-founder of The Grand Social, says the online fashion boom is pushing the entire sector forward, but more importantly is promoting local platforms along the way.

Says Gower: “Companies such as The Iconic, ASOS and Shopbop are doing great things for online retailers and fashion labels in Australia.

“These bigger guys are giving the online shopping experience legitimacy. In the past the mum and dads may have been skeptical about shopping online, but now, they are feeling comfortable with the whole online process and delving deeper.”

The Grand Social has now landed brands such as Toby Jones, Premonition, Lulu in Chains, Zanerobe and Rebecca Vallance. The current catalog is sitting at over 10,000 individual products.

With the market still loyal to Australian brands this localised online retailer has the capacity to move beyond their current stable and launch larger more mainstream labels in the future.