Scaling Sneaker Success - How Novelship uses Wise to pay overseas suppliers

Established in 2018, Novelship is a leading online marketplace for sneakers, apparel and collectibles. It is dedicated to empowering a diverse community to champion their unique style and lead trends. Originating in Singapore, Novelship has grown to serve over 1.5 million users in 15 countries, driven by their mission to be the go-to fashion hub with an unparalleled customer experience.

In a market where authenticity is everything, Novelship is proud to fully authenticate all items being sold, to allow buyers to shop confidently online, even for the rarest of picks. Novelship was founded in Singapore - but as a fast growing e-commerce platform is now stepping beyond limits and taking its model and market to the world.

To offer its reliable, trusted and safe services with the lowest possible costs, Novelship works with Wise Business to pay international suppliers with low costs and the mid-market rate. Read on to learn more about how Wise is helping Novelship grow.

Story of Novelship

Novelship was founded by Richard Xia and his co-founder Chris Xue, Singapore locals who had always dreamed of building a business. In fact, while the pair were still at the National University of Singapore they already had two ventures to their names - a mobile café and a software platform for customer service. These startups were showing positive signs and attracting attention from investors - but didn’t fully align with Richard and Chris’ passions.

So, like any natural born entrepreneur, they decided to rethink and come up with a business venture built around their interests, which met a need they’d both experienced when buying collectible sneakers.

Here’s what Richard has to say:

“As a consumer of the sneaker industry, we often found ourselves in long queues to get our hands on the latest drops and were also the victims of multiple scams. Thus, we knew that there was this gap that we could fix as well.”

The answer: Novelship. Just 3 years since launch, and Novelship is already a fast-growing online marketplace in Asia for authentic sneakers, apparel, and collectibles. By providing a safe and trusted ecosystem for buyers and sellers, Novelship has built a community of over a million customers, and offers over 500,000 SKUs. As you’d expect of entrepreneurs with a passion, Novelship’s plans don’t stop here:

“Our mission has always been simple. To become the go-to fashion hub, underscored by an unparalleled customer experience. We aim to connect people to the products they love, no matter where they may be from, with customer satisfaction as our top priority.”

Novelship has customers around the world, and ships globally. Interestingly, Novelship also caters to a large number of women - and expects to see a 181% increase in their female user base by the end of 2024 - an unusual factor in a male-centric industry. By focusing on increasing trust and providing assurance when buying rare and collectible items, Novelship has built an impressive customer base - pushing the boundaries of the market and bringing their unique and exciting products to more people than ever.

Authenticity, security and trust

So what makes Novelship stand out in such a competitive market? One key factor - as we’ve seen - is the Novelship approach to authenticating all goods sold. This creates trust from both the buyer and seller - and has led the business to quickly build a loyal customer base.

Unfortunately for buyers, enthusiasts and collectors, the market for sneakers and collectibles is a popular target for criminals making and selling fake products. Buying items in person gives you the chance to check the authenticity and quality before you part with any money - but it’s not a practical option when hunting for popular items in a globally competitive market.

After struggling with this issue themselves, the Novelship founders realised that the market could be improved, to protect buyers and sellers alike.

Novelship sells through two different models - a buy now option, and a marketplace style option in which you can bid for the items you’re looking for. All goods sold are unworn and new, and sourced through a broad range of suppliers, distributors and individuals globally. Importantly, though, when you buy through Novelship, all items are thoroughly authenticated and checked before any money changes hands, removing the element of worry and uncertainty. Sellers dispatch the item to Novelship for checking, and once the goods have been authenticated and dispatched, the customer payment is transferred to the supplier.

Novelship uses industry expert authenticators to make sure that goods being bought and sold are the real deal, and takes action against any seller who tries to use their market to advertise fake or counterfeit goods. This reputation for trustworthiness and security is a big factor in Novelship’s stellar rise over the past few years, building a customer base in Asia and beyond.

Trust is a two way street - building relationships with both buyers and sellers

As a business operating a marketplace model, Novelship has responsibilities to both buyers and sellers. Buyers need to know the products they’re getting are authentic - and sellers need to trust they’ll get paid once their items have been checked and passed on to the buyer.

This dynamic creates some unique challenges to Novelship. It’s crucial to have robust and reliable processes in place for efficiently checking and authenticating products to keep customers happy. But it’s also essential to be able to rapidly pay suppliers and sellers once items have been dispatched. Only by building out strong systems on both sides can Novelship continue to expand and attract repeat business from customers as well as returning sellers and suppliers.

Stepping beyond limits - taking Novelship global

Since its inception, Novelship has had pretty ambitious goals. From launch in Singapore, Novelship is now expanding globally, with products from around the world, and worldwide shipping available. This allows the Novelship team to constantly expand and develop their product range while connecting to more customers.

The global market for collectible sneakers and similar items is huge, and growing fast. Rare or highly sought after items sell for staggering amounts, making this a smart market for collectors and investors alike. And for Novelship founders - who are both passionate about the market themselves - it’s a perfect example of building a business based on a personal interest and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by consumers.

Novelship’s challenge - paying international suppliers

As we’ve seen, Novelship has grown quickly since launch, and part of the business’ success comes down to being able to connect customers and suppliers globally through a trusted marketplace. Trust runs both ways, and Novelship’s role means building customer and supplier relationships at the same time. But dealing with international suppliers comes with its own challenges - particularly when it comes to currency exchange and international payments. Paying suppliers through a bank can be time consuming and expensive - and as SWIFT telegraphic transfers can take several days to arrive, it’s also inefficient.

Novelship started out paying suppliers manually through their bank, but soon discovered the downsides. As well as being a pretty slow and clunky process, the exchange rate available from the bank included a markup or spread - an extra fee. This pushes up the cost of sending a payment overseas, and eats into business profits.

Since 2021, Novelship has chosen Wise Business to make paying invoices and international suppliers easier, cheaper and more efficient. It’s also a speedy process, which means the sellers and suppliers who use Novelship are happy too - there’s no waiting around for a SWIFT payment to be deposited, as supplier payments are quickly processed and received around the world.

How Novelship uses Wise Business to save time and money when paying overseas suppliers

Novelship uses Wise Business to make overseas payments, including using batch payment processing to initiate up to 1,000 transfers with a single upload. Wise uses the mid-market exchange rate to convert currencies, with low and transparent fees which are split out for easy comparison. That means no more guesswork to figure out what your transfer is costing, and no hidden costs eating up profits.

Here’s what Novelship founder Richard Xia has to say:

“We saved around $20,000 and 20 hours per month by using Wise to do the remittance as compared to traditional banks. The fee is low and allows batch upload. It is a reliable remittance tool when working with overseas partners.”

You can send money with Wise Business to 160+ countries globally, in 40+ currencies. Fees start from just 0.43%¹, and 50% of payments are instant². Plus, if you need to receive business payments you’ll be able to manage that with Wise too. Open a Wise Business account for a one time fee, to get local account details for up to 10 currencies so you can get paid by others conveniently. That means you can let your customers pay in their preferred currency, without needing to convert back and forth unnecessarily. Receive payments from abroad, hold your account balance in any of the supported 40+ currencies, and use your account to pay overseas suppliers too.