From regional fashion store to leading online retailer: New case study for digitalbusiness.gov.au

13 December 2011

So when the farmer finds his wife in the city and takes her back to his farm in regional NSW, what does she do? Well she launches one of Australia’s leading online fashion stores of course!

It sounds like the plot to a TV show, but that is the story behind Birdsnest, which features in our latest case study video. With a successful bricks and mortar fashion store located on the main street of Cooma (population 6,500), founder and ‘Big Bird’ Jane Cay recognised that online was an open space of limitless opportunities for her business.

The team at Birdsnest have worked hard to create a great online experience for its customers. They proudly proclaim on their website that, “We want you to have just as much fun as coming into the store, in the comfort of your home”.

Today the Birdsnest website records over one million views a month, making it one of the top 50 apparel sites on Australia. As Jane describes it, “We are sitting next to... big names in the retail industry”. They were a finalist in this year’s BRW Australian Retailer of the Year Awards.

That’s pretty impressive for a small business located in a small regional town. But as Jane points out, location is not a barrier when it comes to digital business. “Google doesn’t care where you are... If you are the most relevant person or the most relevant site, they will find you.”

Jane sees running an online store as needing the same kind of commitment as a physical store: “you really have to understand who you want to be online and resource that”. That’s why the team has grown to 40 people. They have people ordering and managing the stock, photographing outfits for the website, writing detailed descriptions about every item they sell, and carefully wrapping and posting orders out to customers. And they have someone there to answer the phone when you need that extra personal help. A lot of love goes into managing their online store.

Jane didn’t have any guarantee that their online experiment would work, but having the bricks and mortar store provided a safety blanket. When they started the online store they were literally selling the stock off the floor of the physical store, so if “the online thing flopped”, they still had a way to clear any extra stock.

To learn more about how Jane gets to “live in the slow lane and work in the fast lane” you can check out the Birdsnest story on our case study page or the embedded video below.



By Natalie, DBCDE