Blog: My-Wardrobe's try-before-you-buy scheme leaves me confused

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When I was at school my friends would hassle their parents to buy a new frock or top from the catalogue. These big fat books stuffed with pages of clothes were a godsend to people who loved to shop, but couldn’t afford to pay for the goods that day.

My-Wardrobe, the premium etailer that’s carefully carved itself as the middle ground between Asos and Net-a-Porter, has rolled out a similar idea but, of course, without the catalogue. Its My-Dressing Room scheme sends out orders to customers and asks them to pay afterwards. If customers like the clothes, they’re charged seven days later.

My school friends would have lapped it up. A Michael Kors dress to try around the house and send back? Wonderful. But My-Wardrobe isn’t targeted at schoolgirls; it’s targeted at professional women. The site stocks premium labels (note expensive) like a Marc by Marc Jacobs leather skirt for £425, a 3.1 Phillip Lim silk dress for £1,030 and a Cédric Charlier shoulder bag has a price tag of £689. Quite simply, if a customer is shopping on My-Wardrobe, they’re not scrimping and can most likely afford to pay upfront. Do you need a service that devalues the brand, and makes it appear to have a similar strategy to a catalogue?

I like, and have shopped at, My-Wardrobe – it’s clean, simple and the customer service and packaging is top notch. My-Dressing Room is one part of a strategy to woo customers after the company hit tough ground, namely falling into administration and making redundancies last year. Finding new initiatives is all part of the plan to get on track – I’m just not sure if this is the right line of focus. And this is a policy that needs full transparency so customers know that payment will be taken out of their account after seven days. And they should be reminded, which needs more customer service investment, because there’s nothing worse than an aggrieved customer.

Where My-Wardrobe needs to place its attention is on bulking up its portfolio of good brands that seemed to have dropped dramatically in recent months. Crack on with this and forget about emulating the ethos of a catalogue, that’s how you’ll win back your core customer.