The Gorgeous Mess hopes to turn in a neat profit

(FROM left) The Gorgeous Mess team: Michelle Cho, Stefanie Tan, Tin Coqueiro and Jay Bernabe PHOTOS BY ALEXIS CORPUZ

She is comfortable in her own skin. She knows what she wants. She likes pretty and chic things. She is not one to follow trends just to be part of the crowd.

She and other confident but fun-loving women like her comprise the main target market of Rockwell Land Corp.’s The Gorgeous Mess.

The revamped e-commerce site—www.thegorgeousmess.com —opened its virtual doors early this year to cater to the needs of modern women aged 25-45.

TGM houses 41 brands to fill three counters: closet, vanity and home.

THE GORGEOUS Mess features chic and pretty finds from 41 brands.

Extra service

For closet, you can find chic apparel, accessories, bags and shoes while the vanity counter offers fragrances and cosmetics.

If you are looking for quality linens, kitchen items, threads or books, they are under the home category.

Banking on their experience revamping the e-commerce site of Power Plant mall, the team of Tin Coqueiro, Stefanie Tan, Michelle Cho and Jay Bernabe thought it would be better if they offered something different to the Rockwell market, apart from what the mall already offers.

Coqueiro, assistant vice president and general manager for retail of RLC, adds that Rockwell saw the trend and potential of establishing e-commerce startups, so it thought of doing its own.

“We want to be involved in several e-commerce startup businesses that will eventually become big for Rockwell,” she says, “We provide them with the opportunity to make their business bigger, starting with The Gorgeous Mess, which is really the idea of the employees.

“We would like to develop more e-commerce businesses. In a way, doing so helps develop the talents of our employees because we encourage them to develop more ideas,” she says.

Tan, supervisor for online retail and in charge of merchandising and branding, says the group earlier observed that there were only a few online shops selling home and desk accessories. They decided to bridge that gap and offer unique goods to the market.

“For example, the stapler, it’s very normal, but ours is gold. It’s chic but it’s classic. It’s different. You’re not going to find it everywhere,” Tan says.

To complement the online presence, Rockwell also operates a showroom to give the customers a chance to fully experience what the brands have to offer.

Jay Bernabe, senior associate for online retail, says Rockwell wants customers to feel that they are walking into the house of a TGM girl when they enter the showroom at The Glasshouse in Rockwell Center.

“We welcome them to our house and every customer who walks in is a guest,” he says.

As for the online shop, The Gorgeous Mess team seeks to make it different by carefully choosing the items that it accepts for consignment.

But even if the intricately designed products seem expensive, they are really not, according to the team.

Tan says they choose brands that may be unknown to most people but still provide quality items that offer value for money.

These brands come mainly from up-and-coming merchants looking for a venue to showcase their collection.

Coqueiro adds that the team also chooses those products that are aligned with the personality of The Gorgeous Mess girl.

They also curate items based on the lifestyle of a working girl or a female executive.

THE GORGEOUS Mess showroom at The Glasshouse in Rockwell Center.

Marketing strategy

Bernabe adds that playing up the personality of a TGM girl is also part of the marketing strategy.

“Whoever you are, you can kind of see yourself as The Gorgeous Mess girl. That’s how we’re going to attract [the buyers],” he adds.

“They can imagine [a product] in their home. They can imagine themselves wearing the clothes. Whatever personality you have, you can still see yourself being that girl,” Bernabe explains.

The marketing strategy seems to be paying off as the online shop—with the name based on a line in the song “Be(lie)ve Me by Casey Skye—has been performing better than expected.

“I’d say performance is five times better than when we launched,” Coqueiro says. “For us, it’s just starting. It still can grow by so much more, maybe 20 times more.”

There’s also something more to look forward to.

By the end of July, Coqueiro says the plan is to release their own line of products under the “Hey Gorgeous” brand.

“Our own line will have all home [products] and they’re mostly… quotes from The Gorgeous Mess girl translated into functional items such as notepads, mugs, mouse pads, notebooks, and bags,” she says.

But Tan also admits that online shopping is not for everybody.

Cho, supervisor for online retail and in charge of operations and logistics, adds that about 30-40 percent of the customers still prefer to go to the showroom.

Online shopping

“That’s what they really appreciate because they [can] see the items first before they buy,” she says.

“For the older generation, they are not very comfortable buying things online. That’s why we also have the showroom, because they would rather buy it there. They want to see the products,” Tan adds. “For some, they just don’t feel like online shopping is secure, so we also try to educate them. If they happen to buy from the showroom and then we kind of also gained their trust, then we can also try to convert them into being an online shopper and get them to be our regular customer.”