Permanent Designer Collections Coming To Bezar

Online pop-up shop Bezar turned heads when it launched in March with a unique proposal: Products are only available for purchase for a maximum of three days after going on sale. Customers listened though, which has led to another big move for the young startup.

TechCrunch reported that the online fashion pop-up shop will be launching permanent collections from designers known as “Storefronts.” Co-Founder and CEO Bradford Shellhammer explained that the decision to add fixed product offers to Bezar’s current flash-sale format has been in the making for some time.

“Launching a marketplace has been the plan all along,” Shellhammer told TechCrunch. “After systematically speaking with designers, it became clear that there is a wide range of designers who are too big to be considered hobbyists and too small to manufacture their products for thousands of stores. Plus, they are afraid of being ripped off by big chains.”

Though Bezar will be moving away from its strict pop-up sale only policy, Shellhammer was careful to explain that this doesn’t mean a departure from the high-fashion ethos that customers have come to expect from Bezar. He emphasized the fact that Bezar won’t be turning into an Etsy-like clone filled with kitschy designs. Instead, the Shellhammer told Fast Company that the echelon of designers he wants to attract to Bezar gravitate away from hobbyist sites like Etsy anyway.

“A lot of our designers could set up a shop on Amazon,” Shellhammer said. “They could set up a shop on Etsy, if they’re handmade. But most of our designers are not craftspeople. It’s not a hobby. It’s not one-of-a-kind pieces. Most of the things that we sell are mass-produced, have some kind of production run.”

The move also means tweaking of Bezar’s business model. Under its flash-sale format, Bezar purchased products at wholesale and then marked up prices for sale on the site. With its Storefronts program, Bezar will take a percentage of sales while handling all processing and fulfillment tasks on behalf of the designers.

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