Elise Whang on Dingman Bootstrapped: Making Customer Acquisition an Easy Sell

The Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship produces Bootstrapped, a podcast featuring founders, investors and serial entrepreneurs. The podcast is hosted by Elana Fine, Managing Director of the Dingman Center, and Joe Bailey, Associate Research Professor at the Smith School. Each episode brings a different startup story to life with special guests offering advice and lessons learned on topics that range from fundraising and marketing to team formation and customer acquisition.

This episode of Bootstrapped features Elise Whang, CEO and Co-Founder of SnobSwap. SnobSwap is a website that provides a vetted collection of pre-owned designer fashion from the best consignment boutiques and professional luxury resellers in the United States. As an avid consignment shopper, Whang got the idea for SnobSwap while working late hours as an attorney unable to access second-hand finds online. With brick and mortar only consignment stores losing approximately 30% of their potential revenue, Whang found an 'in' to this traditionally winner-take-all market. Supply-side customer acquisition was as straightforward as googling "best consignment stores in LA", then pitching their idea to a select target list. Now five years after their launch, SnobSwap is turning down about 50% of the stores that apply to be on their site. 

As the CEO and co-founder of SnobSwap, Whang has been recognized as one of DC's 40 Power Women and 40 under 40 in Tech by Bisnow. She leads SnobSwap’s overall company vision, operations, business and product strategy. Whang received a B.S. from the University of Michigan and a J.D. from Catholic University.

To listen to this episode and gain further insights into the startup world, subscribe to Dingman Bootstrapped on iTunes or download the episodes on the Dingman Center website.