Luxury Shoppers do not purchase 3,000 € wedding dresses through Amazon or Alibaba, and they certainly don’t purchase them without a deeply personalized retail sales experience from a talented human that knows exactly what they’re talking about.
Luxury Retailers lost significant in-store foot traffic since the pandemic, and they need to reach new consumers to increase sales. Independent luxury boutiques have highly talented and knowledgeable sales reps that often don’t have enough to do. The world needs access to them! Luxury sales reps are masters of their craft; they are expert stylists; and they know just how to consult with (and win over) luxury customers with flair and sophistication.
Luxury Brands don’t want marketplaces constantly putting their goods on sale, thus cheapening their image, and they also don’t want marketplaces allowing retailers to break product styling, content controls, & online placement guidelines.
SWER is a luxury goods eCommerce marketplace, enabling consumers to purchase luxury merchandise online through a detailed and personally curated consultative sales experience. The marketplace pairs luxury goods consumers (i.e. buyers), with luxury retailers [also referred to as boutiques] using modern technology, offered through a highly available online store that can be accessed through an internet accessible desktop computer or mobile device.
SWER is here to disrupt. We’re the retail commerce platform the entire luxury goods market has been dreaming about
SWER operates in the eCommerce industry, which itself is projected to reach US $47.73 trillion dollars by the year 2030. Growing at a CAGR of 12.22% from 2022 to 2030, the eCommerce industry in general continues to be a lucrative space for long term capital appreciation.
SWER in particular is focused on the luxury segment of the eCommerce industry, whereby luxury goods revenue reached $77B in 2024 and its CAGR is expected to increase 1.9% YoY through to 2028.
SWER identifies the luxury goods space as about as recession proof as a market can get, however a recession or economic depression does impact consumer buying behaviors in its impact on how luxury consumers transact.
Luxury consumers typically have high to greatly above average net worth and tend to demand a very sophisticated and highly consultative sales experience.
Farfetch.com, Ssense, Mr. Porter and Mytheresa, are the Company’s primary direct competitors. There are three large competitive advantages that SWER offers as it differentiates against these competitors:
- SWER charges a 15% GMV sales commission, whereby the competition charges 30%.
- SWER offers very distinctive technological integrations and inventions that no other luxury retailer in the current marketplace offers
- SWER does not have any negative brand association – some, like Farfetch.com, already have poisoned the market against themselves with retailers, customers, and especially brands
SWER is a meticulously crafted consumer shopping experience like no other. It's the first marketplace in history to consider the intricate needs of luxury goods consumers, retailers, and brands.
SWER identifies two types of customers, and one type of other significant supporting stakeholder: Luxury goods consumers (i.e. online shoppers), Luxury goods retailers (retail chains or small independent boutiques) and Luxury goods brands (i.e. luxury goods manufacturers, such as Rolex for example)
Luxury Goods Consumers
Since the pandemic, many folks now work from home as more and more companies adopted purely virtual or hybrid office staffing models. This means many retail buyers are no longer shopping during their lunch hour, or after work, but rather are more than ever shopping online.
With that shift in consumer habits, the lack of personal attention and a more “point and click” transactional sales model has been observed. This resulted in greater online sales for certain consumer goods industries, but much lower customer satisfaction (and as you can imagine, greater customer returns), as those sales related to high priced luxury items.
Simply put, consumers will rarely buy a 5,000 € watch or 3,000 € dress or suit online simply by throwing them into an Amazon.com shopping cart. Luxury consumers need to be consulted, finessed, fitted and upsold to; they demand a fulsome white-glove sales and returns/exchange aftercare experience.
SWER is the first luxury marketplace to provide “Experiential Retail” online.
Luxury Goods Retailers/Boutiques
Since the pandemic, many physical brick and mortar luxury retail stores are suffering from a significant loss (30% or more) of in-store foot traffic. Retail sales in physical stores are down since the pandemic, and retailers sophisticated enough to have an online presence are realizing significant costs and hassles in dealing with consumer returns and exchanges.
Luxury retailers need to be provided with the tools and modern sales vehicle that SWER provides with its online marketplace, along with SWER’s hassle free product onboarding and ongoing customer support process, retailers will pay SWER a monthly recurring license fee for access to the SWER marketplace, and all the tools they need to be successful to reach new consumers online.
The retailers themselves often have experienced sales representatives that are otherwise not utilized to capacity as they wait around for foot traffic in-store that never arrives. With SWER, the retailer sales reps will be connected virtually to sales opportunities from anywhere in the world, thus causing the retailer to sell inventory they otherwise would not have.
Luxury Goods Brands
Brands themselves need SWER to act as the luxury goods price and content quality police. SWER ensures that retailers only sell goods a brand approved MSRPs and never discount or put on sale their luxury items. This key policy that SWER will severely enforce ensures that brands will drive their own bulk customers/distributors or interested retail buyers themselves to our platform.
Luxury goods brands will also in the future purchase a monthly recurring license to access SWER's powerful database of retail consumer behaviors and boutique sales/returns performance metrics.
SWER was originally financially bootstrapped by the founding team, but has recently received $227,600 USD in seed funding to provide cash runway to the commercialization phase.
This seed round through Adventurees provides additional commercialization acceleration to assist the company in its ambition in preparing for an initial public offering (IPO) in 2026.
Funding requirements for the IPO are expected to be between 7,500,000€ and 12,500,000€
We’ve assembled a world-class team of professionals that are extremely passionate about the luxury goods industry
Team members