Challenge

Adastria Group, which recently celebrated its 70th anniversary, operates a chain of clothing stores in Japan, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the United States. In addition to developing a wide range of businesses in areas other than apparel, such as accessories, furniture, and food, the company aims to increase its appeal and maximise the value it offers its customers by expanding the number and size of its stores. At the same time, the company began planning to enter the customer-to-customer (C2C) space for the first time in October 2022.

Adastria previously produced an online STAFF BOARD, which showed popular clothing-store employees wearing outfits from across its fashion brands. This encouraged customers to buy the same “look” as the staff members, who in turn became fashion influencers for the company. Over time, employees noticed demand from fans to buy their pre-worn clothing. In addition, employees struggled with how to dispose of their older clothing without contributing to waste and faced several challenges: used-clothing stores offering lower prices for their items, flea market apps that were often difficult to use, and concerns about sharing personal information when connecting buyers on social media.

“As a method of responding to our customers’ needs while resolving our employees’ issues, we started thinking about creating our own second-hand clothing marketplace,” said Megumi Kawamura, senior manager in the media department at Adastria Co., Ltd.

However, unlike the existing e-commerce site, the new model required the ability to aggregate sales, deduct fees, and deposit balances into sellers’ accounts. With features unique to a C2C platform, Adastria had to find a new payments partner. The Japanese apparel company eventually chose Stripe to power the company’s new second-hand clothing marketplace, dot-C. The dot-C app is the first of its kind in Japan, allowing Adastria customers to purchase second-hand clothing directly from their favourite staff members.

In addition to advancing the company’s sustainable development goals (SDGs) by diverting clothing from landfills, the app would also grow the company’s points ecosystem. With these benefits in mind, development began.

Solution

After comparing various products, it became clear that Stripe was the ideal choice. Stripe Connect and its offerings provided all the necessary features for a C2C platform* and allowed for flexible integration with existing business logic, such as the points system. Ultimately, the success of other companies using Stripe influenced the decision.

To implement Stripe, Adastria got help from Stripe’s professional services team, which supported everything from requirement definition to development. The payment function was completed in just three months.

“Our company had no prior experience with C2C platforms, so learning best practices – like managing irregular purchasing patterns such as returns – was invaluable,” says Yuji Amano, assistant manager in the development department at Adastria Co., Ltd. “They also offered significant guidance on handling pooled sales and integrating our point system, enabling us to implement the payment function, typically the most challenging aspect of the app, smoothly. Despite a tight timeline for a full release within a year, we made consistent progress without delays.”

Results

Since its launch, the platform has operated smoothly, providing the accounting department with easy access to essential information on sales, fees, and points usage through the Dashboard.

Additionally, the application flow mitigates issues during the wire transfer stage by registering and verifying the recipient’s account before listing, addressing any incomplete IDs or changes in last names. With Stripe Radar in place, fraudulent activity is effectively blocked, and no significant payment breaches have occurred.

“After integrating Stripe, we requested paid support.** Our Stripe liaison was very well-versed in the structure of dot-C. Even for complex inquiries from sellers having issues setting up a bank account to register for sales, we had a quick response explaining both the cause of the problem and how to remedy it,” says Mari Nihachi. “We were also able to get in touch with Stripe’s support team in many ways, via chat, phone, email, and so on, which gave us confidence working with the system from the start.”

Following the launch of dot-C, Adastria also decided to use Stripe as a payments platform for the sale of avatars and other items on its fashion-centric metaverse platform, StyMore. Using the lessons learned from working with dot-C, they were able to launch this platform without incident.

“Going forward, we’d like to expand the services and features that connect our staff with our customers,” Kawamura says. “We’re considering ways to maintain active connections around subjects aside from shopping.”

*At present, C2C use cases require prior approval in Japan.

**User support may not be available without the presence of a sales representative.