Shipping the Perfect Handbag

And why word of mouth marketing is still essential

If you leave home every day with a tote over one shoulder and a laptop bag over the other, you’re doing what Dagne Dover co-founder Melissa Mash calls the two-bag schlep.

Mash knows the routine well. You’ve got your workout shoes and your water bottle in the tote, along with that report you’re taking to your 10 a.m. presentation. The report’s binder has to hang out next to your gym socks because it’s too big to fit into the laptop bag, and the granola bar you brought for a snack is getting smushed under your aluminum water bottle, and your keys—where are your keys again?

Mash, along with Dagne Dover co-founders Jessy Dover and Deepa Gandhi, want you to put down that second bag. In fact, put down both bags and pick up a Dagne Dover handbag. It’s designed to give you a place for your shoes, your water bottle, your report, your laptop, your granola bar, and your keys—a professional and fashion-forward way to get your stuff where it needs to go.

Creating the Perfect Bag

Melissa Mash started investigating the problem with handbags while working at a name-brand luxury handbag brand. “I got to speak with customers every day and hear what their biggest handbag frustrations were.” Water bottles tipped over, laptops weren’t protected, keys inevitably disappeared into the bottom of the bag next to the used tissues.

So she asked herself if she could create a better bag. “People wanted to carry something that was of course fashionable, but also really practical and really functional.” She saw a space in the market for a fashionable handbag with an organized interior at an affordable price point—and decided to go to business school.

Back in the classroom, Mash watched classmates do the two-bag schlep at networking events—“they were putting so much time into their hair, their makeup, the clothes, the shoes, and their bags were a complete disaster”— and knew she could come up with a better solution.

Over the next 18 months, Mash brought together the team that would eventually launch Dagne Dover. They talked to over 1,000 women and men about their biggest handbag frustrations, conducting surveys and leading focus groups until they reverse-engineered what Mash called “the Perfect Bag.”

In 2013, Mash and her team announced that Dagne Dover’s Perfect Bag was available for pre-sale. They sent the announcement to everyone they had surveyed and focus grouped, as well as people who had signed up to learn more on the Dagne Dover website, trusting them to spread the word. “Within three months, we had over $40,000 worth of sales.”

Trusting the Perfect Fulfillment Service

“When we launched, Melissa, Jessy and I were doing everything.” Deepa Gandhi knew that the Dagne Dover team couldn’t grow their business if they were spending their time putting bags into boxes. They were already exceeding their expected volume, and bags were on backorder due to customer demand.

So Dagne Dover began expanding the business and looking for additional production support, including a company that could handle the packing and shipping logistics. The first third-party logistics facility they used helped them increase their shipping capacity, but also came with unexpected challenges, including product shipping delays.

Then Dagne Dover had the opportunity to be the pilot client for FedEx Fulfillment, a new service that provides warehousing, fulfillment, pick pack shipping, reverse logistics, and custom packaging solutions. With FedEx Fulfillment, Gandhi explains, “we are able to deliver the Dagne Dover brand experience to our customers in a really effective way.”

How effective? “This past holiday, our volume more than doubled, and we were able to fulfill it in 60 percent less time than we did last year.”

A good third-party logistics relationship isn’t just about time. It’s also about trust. “It’s really great for me as a COO to have that kind of confidence in our partner, because trust is everything. They treat our products with the care that we want them to be treated with.”

Dagne Dover ships 1,000 to 2,000 orders every week, and FedEx Fulfillment gives each order an extra round of quality checking before putting it into the box. When the customer receives their perfect bag, whether they’ve chosen the Classic Tote, the Elle Clutch, or the Dakota Backpack, they get a package that represents the Dagne Dover brand experience—as well as the values that Dagne Dover and FedEx Fulfillment share.

Or, as Deepa Gandhi puts it: “It’s something we can be proud of and they can be proud of as well.”