99designs Snapshot - Online Shopping Sites Get Graphic (Design)! Customer Blog

Online shopping can be a hassle and a pretty significant time-suck – and if anyone sympathizes, it’s 99designs customer Kassie Rempel, founder of Kassie’s Closet. Kassie’s Closet (or “The Closet,” as Kassie refers to it) is dedicated to making women’s experience shopping online for clothes and accessories easier and more fun. 99designs spoke to Kassie about how she turned her passion into a viable business.

Logo design by gina1881996.

Tell us about Kassie’s Closet: Kassie’s Closet helps women get dressed in the morning, all while making online shopping more fun and efficient. Outfits from across the web are built by the Closet Style Team using a diverse selection of sites, brands, price points, and styles.

That’s so cool! What made you want to start the company? I found that there were too many options online. The more options available on the web, the harder it was to actually shop: online shopping took too much of my time and was becoming more of a chore than a hobby. Kassie’s Closet takes the overwhelming options of online shopping and serves up the content in coordinating outfits. So now it’s easier to see not only what styles are available across different stores, brands, and price points – it’s also easier to imagine how to wear them.

What made you think your idea had real potential? The Closet was born from customer requests. Customers kept asking me for styling advice through SimplySoles, which was my first online venture. So what started as a blast email – which we coined “What to Wear Wednesdays” – has transformed into a standout site. I can’t really explain how awesome it is starting a new business with an automatic fan base.

How did you fund the company? The business has been self-funded to date, and has been supported by myself and two partners, David Richard of The Richard Group and Matt Craine of Craine Consulting. David and Matt have been consulting with me for years starting with SimplySoles. They are experts in their fields (development and user experience, respectively), and I was pretty excited that they believed in Kassie’s Closet enough to partner with me. We each have experience and unique skill sets that we bring to the table.

What’s your advice for business owners just starting out?: Keep the passion for whatever you are doing, but be flexible with the outcome and allow for alterations or all-together overhauls. We tested The Closet with our top 200 SimplySoles customers to gauge their interest before building the majority of the site. They had great feedback – feedback we hadn’t thought of and ideas that we hadn’t planned to pursue. The site interface changed significantly due to the test and we are expecting to continuously evolve as more feedback rolls in.

How are customers reacting to the brand image you’ve shaped through your logo and website designs? People are excited. They want to be a part of it. Choosing the right brand design all plays into that experience.

Kassie not only founded Kassie’s Closet and Simply Soles, she’s also the designer behind lillybee shoes. She’s relied on 99designs for several projects including a web design contest for lillybee, logo design contest for lillybee, and a logo design contest for Kassie’s Closet. To learn more about her 99designs experience, check out her blog post!

Kassie is just one of many fashion-oriented entrepreneurs who has turned to 99designs for design help – here’s a quick look at a few more of our favorites:

Fashion’s About You - This soon-to-launch site comes to you from well-known Australian personal stylist Jo Blankfield.

Logo design by shanashay ; view the logo design contest here.

Zestii - If you’re the bargain-buying type, this online shopping community gives members cash back for purchases made at its designer partner websites. (Note: this was a logo design contest, and you can see, below, how the contest holder implemented the logo in the company’s website).