How Onport Empowers IVALO.COM to Promote Sustainable Alternatives to Fast Fashion
Customer Introduction
IVALO.COM is an international fashion marketplace offering more than 100 sustainable fashion brands in one place. IVALO.COM's selection is constantly curated to meet the needs of the modern dresser. In addition to ecology, ethics, and social responsibility, Their product portfolio is characterized by timeliness, urbanity, and individuality.
Company Representative
Maiju Schreck | Head of eCommerce & Tech
Can you explain how the IVALO.COM concept came about and the core idea behind the brand?
MS - “Well, the name comes from a town in Northern Finland in Lapland called Ivalo. It's quite a common brand name here in Finland. All IVALO.COM brands are validated before we list them for sale on our online store. IVALO.COM's 360 Sustainability Validation ensures that the brands on the marketplace meet the requirements of truly sustainable fashion."
"The marketplace is a particularly versatile online store, offering a wide range of products. At IVALO.COM you can order from as many brands as you like at once. The fashion brands deliver the products directly to the customer without any additional warehousing or intermediaries."
"Even with good intentions, people often struggle to recognize the ethical or environmental impacts of their choices. Distinguishing truly responsible companies from those engaging in greenwashing can be challenging. IVALO.COM 360 Sustainability Validation offers a professional evaluation to help both brands and consumers reliably assess sustainability."
What challenges did you encounter when you were starting and building your marketplace?
MS - “IVALO.COM was created as a mobile app to help the public interested in individual fashion to find emerging fashion brands. Later, the app was abandoned and IVALO.COM continued as a sustainable fashion marketplace."
"When changing the business model and switching platforms, the primary concern was how to effortlessly integrate products from various brands into our store and ensure smooth delivery of order details to these brands. Onport could address these challenges effectively."
How does Onport support IVALO.COM in addressing and overcoming those challenges?
MS - “Onport is a fundamental software for our business. It allows us to integrate all the product catalogs and manage our orders. Unlike most marketplaces, we don’t have our own warehouse, so it’s crucial to our business that everything works automatically. Onport offers us a customizable dashboard that allows us to manage all our backend operations effectively."
Which features do you believe bring the most value to the collaboration with Onport?
MS - “The Product integration features are core to our business model, as well as the order routing functionality that integrates into our Shopify store; without those, we simply wouldn’t be able to operate our marketplace as we do now.”
What trends do you see emerging in the sustainable fashion space?
MS- “Since inflation has risen in Europe over the past few years, we have seen more and more people move towards sustainable fashion shopping - people want something that is made to last and not simply disposable, unlike garments created under the fast fashion model. There’s definitely a growing demand and opportunity for sustainable clothing brands and platforms such as ours.”