Business Interview Questions

Interviewee: John Harford-Tyrer

Interviewer: Ryan O’Callaghan

Firstly, start out by telling me what the inspiration was

behind Cudoni and how you feel it solves a problem?
Ultimately, busy people have better things to do with their time rather than sitting on Gumtree,
Amazon, Ebay, etc… These platforms don’t resonate with people that are time poor. We have
identified that there is a correlation between people that are time poor and cash rich. We are not
fashion led like many brands, we look at the market from a user experience standpoint, solving a
genuine problem for the seller, doing things in a way which makes their life as easy and rewarding
as possible, using data and technology as the focal point to actually facilitate that which means
that you can offer a superior user experience and a significantly larger scale operation than a
consignment store that will take in a handful of products to display in their shop window.

Cudoni is obviously a more complex operation than

simply B2C, do you feel as though a purely C2C
business model, with the option of authentication from
us, would work well in a climate where consumers
demand more power and options?
Conceptually, there is a significant need for that type of preposition, for the biggest barriers for
transaction, especially in the luxury space, authentication is a huge point. So I think from that
perspective I think that is something that is massively compelling. I think allowing consumers to
still have control over the process is also incredibly compelling. I think the challenge you will find
is how are you going to successfully authenticate your products? The other challenge I can see is
receiving items that may not be as described, there is a knowledge element where you can either
chose to relay that information to whoever is swapping, the irony of that is the transparency will
maybe cause the transaction to fall through and you may have to bear the shipping costs to
return the products, I think it would be hard to actually enforce charges for that.

Do you feel as though the aspect of authentication is a

USP that is worth shouting about and holding at the
helm of some marketing material? If so, have you
noticed a positive response from clients and consumers
in terms of authentication?
Massively so, what I would say that as the market becomes bigger, there will be a consumer
expectation that luxury sellers, providers or intermediaries have robust authentication, it almost
becomes a requirement. As a USP, authentication is 100% a good one, it increases transaction,
velocity and value. I can think of a few platforms that are purely selling and buying which already
use it, but in the trading sector it’s a great idea to push forward with authentication.

Since founding Cudoni, have you had many problems or

situations involving online safety, scamming and/or
phishing?
Oh yes! Sellers you have 2 big issues, 1 is counterfeit products and the other is stolen goods.
Stolen goods is incredibly difficult to deal with because you have no foundation to suggest
anything is stolen, however under various consumer laws and protection acts, there is recourse
on businesses that are seen to be negligible, which is quite a grey area when it comes to stolen
goods, there are ways such as user profiling and 3rd parties that can help, but I think any platform
like this will have people trying to somehow defraud and abuse the system. We don’t have many
problems when it comes to counterfeit items compared to platforms like eBay who are plagued
with counterfeits, because we are very hard hitting and thorough at Cudoni, the barriers to entry
are a lot lower on eBay because there is no expert layer within their company like us. We have
experts, data and technology which is able to stamp out this kind of practise, and the implications
of being caught doing so are enforceable, so we can hypothetically report users to the relevant
authorities and destroy products, at which point you don’t want to risk trying to sell those sort of
products through us.

On the topic of authentication, what process(es) do you

use and was it difficult finding employees/experts in this
field to ensure all products that pass through Cudoni
are legitimate?
It is a challenging one. The industry’s dirty secret which most people don’t know, is that a lot of
so-called professionals in the space define authentication as having your product in hand and
then going onto a Gucci website for examples and finding the same product, checking if it is
similar, which is absolutely shocking. I can confidently say that off the top 30/40 consignment
stores and platforms in the UK, a sizeable number I could name authenticate in that mannor. We
are a data and technology specialist, so what we do is we break products into risk profiles, based
on data, you could identify items that are often counterfeited and put them into groups of risk.
Each group has its own process, which is a expert-led multistep process, people who have
decades of experience in this sector, using their data and expertise to fully identify the authenticity
of a product. If we are even 1% unsure about a product, we will refuse to process the item in
order to ensure an authentic sale and/or purchase via our platform.

What are your recommendations in making a service of

this mantle consumer-centric and exerting a more
community feel, like you have created, rather than an
environment that feels corporate and somewhat
‘unfriendly’ to the general consumer?
I think consumer centric and community are 2 different ball-games. Vestiare Collective is a good
example of community in this sector, being content lead, prompting communication between
people as well as blogs and reviews of users. Cudoni would be more consumer-centric, we set
out to solve a problem for a consumer, it is our obsession to provide the best solution in order to
make our user’s lives easier and rewarding. We’re community focused in terms of our clients like
to engage with other high net-worths and celebrities via association at events, but there is less of
a traditional, social-media and consumer facing community, you feel like you are part of a
community that are also having their problems solved, plus engaging with our celebrity
ambassadors rather than us directly. Your proposition is more relevant to community, you’re
building more of a community feel for people that want to interact and transact amongst one and
other. I think trust is a big driver, things like positive reviews, feedback scores, ratings, rating
people that are engaging with other users a lot on the platform. Social media and content led
promo will work well for Cloakroom, creating the feeling association and community, making
consumers feel like they are part of an ethos.

What channels have proven most effective for Cudoni in

terms of marketing, whether it is offline (print,
publications, leaflets/flyers, guerilla, billboards, etc…)
or online (social media, email, PPC, influencer, SEO,
etc…)? And which 3 methods would you recommend for
a launch strategy?
We attract all consumer behaviour types because we are solving a problem, if we are high up on
SEO on google of people trying to find solutions to their problem, they will seek us out, rather than
putting our proposition to them via social media or publications. Partnerships always help, with
corporate clients and charities, it increases exposure and adds another layer to the brand ethos.
With something more community focused, there will be a huge emphasis on social media
engagement, because you’re building engagement, I think social media or anything that
encourages engagement like a PR Campaign will resonate perfectly for your target demographic. I
think routes such as SEO and google advertising is way too expensive and competitive to focus a
lot of your efforts on, it wouldn’t make commercial sense to put a lot of budget behind that.

Considering the current pandemic we find ourselves in,

has Cudoni implemented changes in the operations and
processes in order to ensure the safety of both
employees and customers? If so, do you feel as though
some of these changes may be made permanent as the
retail world around us seems to be changing fast?
No one had a pandemic in their business plans. There’s been a huge overhaul inside the business
and operations. We had to enforce social distancing in order to put people at ease. We have
adjusted in terms of getting consumers to send us their products via pre-paid postage systems
rather than going to their home, helping them out with picking and packing, which has actually
saved us a lot of money. Shockingly, it has posed as an opportunity for us, this process proves a
lot cheaper than hiring drivers and home visitors, and customers seem to feel more comfortable
with a more DIY approach where they will just send us their products directly, and not require a
personal visit like before, we are currently looking into implementing this streamlined option as a
longstanding addition to operations.

Finally, who would you view as the main target

demographic for Cudoni?
We target consumer behavioural type rather than a specific demographic, so our consumer
behaviour type is people that are time-poor and cash-rich. The generalisation around wealth
distribution is, naturally, postcode analysis, our clients are more likely to live in big houses in nicer
areas such as London, Edinburgh, outskirts of Manchester, etc… 50% of our consumers have
never sold before, because they are frustrated with current options on the market or they just
have never found a solution that will answer their problems. Women do use us more than men,
even male clothing items are more sold by women than men, so we subtly cater our product and
image to a female consumer, but we ensure that we don’t cut off or alienate males, there needs to
be a succinct balance between the two.