ASOS

ASOS

Dressing the digital generation


Founders: Quentin Griffiths and Nick Robertson OBE


Age of founders: 32 and 33


Backgrounds: Advertising/media planning and co-founder of Entertainment Marketing


Founded in: 2000, UK


Headquarters: London, UK


Business type: Fashion e-commerce




W



ith nearly four million customers worldwide and growth of 50% in 2011–12, if you don't already know about ASOS, you soon will. The online-only apparel business, best known for its young, fashion-forward collections, is the largest online fashion retailer in the UK. Furthermore, the website's collection of womenswear, menswear, footwear, accessories, jewellery and beauty products is attracting an increasingly global customer base, with international sales soaring 150% in 2010-11.

However, despite the current popularity of the fashion site, ASOS started in 2000 as a portal for celebrity-linked furniture and products under the name As Seen On Screen. The following decade has seen the business evolve into much more than just a fashion e-commerce site; it has become one of the defining brands of a generation.


So, how did a man who left school with his tail between his legs create one of the most respected digital businesses in the world?


Cutting the cloth


With Austin Reed, founder of the eponymous British menswear retailer, as his great grandfather, you might think it obvious that Nick Robertson would enter the fashion industry; but in his early years it didn't look as though Nick would follow in his footsteps.


The son of a high-flying advertising executive, Nick enjoyed a comfortable upbringing in suburban Surrey and attended a £28,000-a-year private boarding school in Dorset. By his own admission, he didn't make the most of his privileged education, describing his school results as 'diabolical'. He achieved a mere two Ds and an F at A level.


After leaving school at 18, he spent the first years of his adult life as a 'ski bum' in Meribel, France. However, upon his return to the UK, aged 20, he decided to follow his father into advertising and picked up a job as a media buyer for advertising agency Young & Rubicam in 1987. It was here that Nick cut his teeth, developing a real understanding of consumer behaviour, which would underpin the rest of his career. After nearly four years with Young & Rubicam, he crossed over to work for rival agency Carat – the UK's largest media planning and buying business. But Nick was restless and growing frustrated at working for other people. He had seen his brother Nigel set up business directory firm Scoot in 1991 and a few years later decided to take the plunge into entrepreneurship himself.


The first template


Having seen an opportunity to cash in on the popularity of cult television programmes such as Friends, Nick founded Entertainment Marketing with Quentin Griffiths in 1996. The marketing services business was among the first to work with advertisers to, for example, get Weetabix featured in Eastenders, by offering the product to the television programme's producers as a free prop.


The business model, which relied on the power of celebrity to sell products, proved to be a success and Entertainment Marketing was soon attracting big-name clients including Carlsberg, Coca-Cola, Ford, Mars, Pepsi, Tetley and Samsung. While Nick worked closely with the television and film industry over the next four years, the idea for a sideline business – As Seen On Screen – emerged. He came to his new venture from an unconventional angle, he recalls: 'Entertainment Marketing was a product placement business, where we were being paid by big brands to associate them with celebrities. The idea spun out of that.'


The idea that emerged from their product placement business was to create a website where viewers could source, for example, Meg Ryan's coat in You've Got Mail or Jamie Oliver's pestle and mortar in an episode of The Naked Chef – or else a very good knock-off. Nick explains the inspiration for this idea further: 'We read a stat back in 1999 that when the programme Friends aired, NBC got 4,000 calls about some standard lamp in one of their apartments asking where it could be purchased. So that was the real idea behind the business', Nick says. 'Anything that gets exposure in a film or TV programme creates desire among the public, so we based the shop around that.'


But far from having visions of what ASOS has now become, in its earliest incarnation, the founders weren't especially focused on clothing at all.


'We read a stat in 1999 that when Friends aired, NBC got 4,000 calls about a standard lamp in one of their apartments asking where it could be purchased. So that was the real idea behind the business.'





Finance and fashion


Leaving Entertainment Marketing behind, Nick and Quentin launched As Seen On Screen online in June 2000, just after the dot-com bubble had burst. With the good fortune of having entrepreneurial families who were willing to back the venture, the pair raised a total of £2.4 million in start-up capital and purchased a variety of celebrity-linked products to launch the business. Nick's brother, who had sold Scoot two years earlier for £30 million, invested £1.1 million in the venture.

Although the full extent of the comedown from the dot-com boom was yet to become apparent, launching an online business in the mid-2000s was still a risky business. Yet the co-founders were undeterred. 'It was always going to be an online business, because of the amount of products that came up after being on TV. It needed to serve that function', Nick says, highlighting the wide reach and fast turnover of e-commerce. 'Also, our expertise wasn't in the "normal" high street, so this was more comfortable for us.'


While the founders had a wealth of business knowledge, Nick acknowledges that they had little background in consumer spending – something that would be crucial in making their business an online success. So one of Nick and Quentin's first hires was buyer Lorri Penn, whom they scouted from Arcadia – Sir Philip Green's umbrella retail group, which includes Topshop and Dorothy Perkins. She believed deeply in the potential of focusing the business on fashion (rather than furniture and other goods) – and they trusted her judgement.


'It wasn't until our first buyer came in, who was a fashion buyer, that we were pushed in that direction', Nick says, recalling the As Seen On Screen's first few months. 'Fashion is where we got the most returns for the business. Rather than saying "here's a standard top", we could say "here's a top that Jennifer Aniston wore in Friends".'