Flair Magazine Introducing one of Egypt’s biggest designer closets, La Reina Gowns is the fairy godmother we’ve always wished for. With the mantra ‘expand your closet or cash it out’, La Reina essentially allows you to rent or lend your high-end dresses at a more affordable rate. From their fabulous dress collections to their styling services, they have all your needs anticipated for a glam night to remember. We sat down with the cofounders Ghada Eltanawy, 26, and Amr Diab, 27, to talk about the challenges associated with their business, upcoming projects and much more.
What kind of challenges do you face in this business?
The biggest challenge is to break down the social taboo of renting a dress or wearing a pre-worn dress. We’re addressing a very specific market – A and B. For most of them, renting is associated with a lower social economic class. Another challenge is that many clients don’t fully trust e-commerce yet and they are not familiar with the online buying process. Most people don’t use our credit card system so most of the orders entail cash on delivery, which can be risky. Credit is so much better when it comes to sustaining the business.
Quality management is also very hectic. You have to ensure that around 2000 dresses stay in the same condition after going through multiple client try-ons and events. Across the region, we haven’t seen a known brand with a similar business idea so there’s no one to really learn from either.
Tell us about your home trial services and people’s feedback on them so far.
The service allows you to go on our website and choose up to five dresses. They come to your door, you try them on and the guy waits up to 45 minutes to take back what you want to return. First time delivery is for free and after that you get charged 150 EGP for courier fees. People really like that they get to go through this process in the comfort of their own homes, try on the dresses with their own accessories and the fact that it starts out as a free service. Home trials have definitely spread our reach to those living on the other side of Cairo and couldn’t actually come all the way to La Reina in New Cairo.
When did you deicide to make Hijabi and Kids sections available?
The Kids section was very recently launched but the Hijabi section we had in mind from the beginning. They’ve been a good percentage of our market since we first started. As for Kids, our supply team saw that it was a trend for brides to ask for flower girl dresses when they came in for a fitting. We record those insights and we rely heavily on data analytics. There are actually a few surprises for new product lines coming up soon.
If someone is going to lend a dress through La Reina, what criteria do they have to pass first?
It depends on the timing of wedding seasons and what our data tells us about style shortages, so this benchmark is actually adapted on a monthly basis. However, our general requirements for a bridal dress is that it has to be high-end couture, in great condition, come with all its accessories and bought less than 2 years before being submitted. We’re more flexible with evening dresses and we even accept custom-made but only if the dress looks like an original piece with a creative concept. Nonetheless, we’re mainly after dresses from a well-known brand or designer.
All dresses actually go through three inspection phases. Firstly, you post a picture of your dress online and we decide if there’s a current demand for it. Then, we pick it up from the owner and bring it here for physical quality assessment. Based on how much trials we think the dress can endure, we put a price on it. The third stage is the photo shoot and if we can’t find a model to fit in the dress, it probably means that the size won’t fit most of our clients. In that case, we have to reject it.
Having taken part in the Women’s Expo this month in Galleria 40, what values do you hope to promote with your business?
Our company has around 55 employees and 95% of them are women. You’ll also find girls in our engineering team. This is something we are very proud of. La Reina is definitely about empowering women. If your dress is hanging in your closet collecting dust, we give you the opportunity to make some extra cash off it. We also want women to have a special dress for every event without having to break the bank.
What kind of dresses do you see most Egyptian girls opt for these days?
Everyone is becoming more daring with their fashion choices. They used to go for very simple styles and basic colors like black or navy. Now, most of our rentals are dramatic dresses with bold colors.
Where do you see La Reina Gowns taking off to in the next five years?
We’re looking forward to expanding our inventory to ten thousand dresses. We want the biggest closet ever with several product lines. We want to be present and noticed in every wedding. Getting feedback and reviews is really important to us because we want to figure out how many are wearing La Reina on every guest list and what barriers are preventing people from renting our dresses. We’re also looking to expand to other African countries in the future.
Our latest project is the La Reina application. We’re not launching it just to be trendy and add another app to the market. It will revolutionize the whole renting experience because it adapts according to your personal style. You do a little quiz that collects data about your style and accordingly, presents the dresses you will most likely prefer in the first place. Our goal is to use AI to provide an optimized, personal experience for every client.
By Sarah Guirguis
