Chris Yong: Retail And Marketing Maverick Breaks Out In The Australian Fashion E-Commerce Space!

Local Threads leads the fashion industry with their Free Delivery Offer

Chris Yong moved to Melbourne (Australia), three years ago with his family – just a week after Victoria announced it first COVID lockdown. He took some time off to serve as a volunteer CEO in a not-for-profit organisation, Women’s Association of South East Melbourne (WASEMA). There he recruited the Chairman of the Marketing Committee, Adam Baodunnov, for the same organisation, whom he got to know along the way.

It was Baodunnov, a five-time serial entrepreneur who successfully exited from Turkey’s largest digital media platform, invited Yong to join him in kicking off the Local Threads project – a fashion e-Commerce website which today boasts of 30,000 products from 150 Australian Ethical and Sustainable brands.

A savvy commercial and marketing strategist by training, Yong spent 16 years working with big name global IT companies such as Microsoft, Oracle and IBM. He also successfully led a large-scale business turnaround of a 1500-staff retail electronics and furniture chain store. His unique background and experience gave him a solid grounding for the E-Commerce venture in the Australian fashion scene.

Together, Yong and Boadunnov started scaling up Local Threads, and in the course of the last 1.5 years, they have discovered the importance of being data-driven in their decision-making of the start-up. Having gone way past the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) stage of the business, they are now on their way to grow the business with a very healthy rate of return customers.

This is not surprising as the “free delivery on all items offer” is industry leading, coupled with their offer of the best prices on the top Australian owned styles which are on trend, is set to be a big hit with online shoppers. Borne out of the midst of COVID lockdowns, Local Threads now has a small and agile team of data analysts, using tools, to not only do price checking but analyse trends in their own sales data and competitor information to spot sales opportunities.

Local Threads’ account management function also carefully selects Australian fashion labels which are strive to being ethical and sustainable to be listed on their website. While they are committed to support small local businesses, Local Threads also features some of the top Aussie brands such as Belle & Bloom, Rusty, Mosmann, Eubi, Bombshell Bay, CazInc and Lionel the Label. Having had a proven model to manage and run Digital Marketing, Local Thread also offers a very competitive and affordable advertising package for its brand partners who may not have the resources nor time to effectively manage their own digital advertising.

Local Threads offers Australian shoppers the best prices for ethical and sustainable fashion clothing. They do this with a small team of price checkers who work on data, on a daily basis, to ensure shoppers get the best prices possible. They also lead in the industry with a free delivery offer across all items, with no minimum purchase amount. And that – Yong assures, is profitable business for them.

Stay tuned to this fast-growing E-Commerce player in Australia. Chris Yong says that they have already started planning to launch into the international market shortly.