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When Laurent Piffaut was working as the global retail director for a luxury fashion company in 2018, crisis hit when a senior member of staff at the brand’s Madison Avenue store had to leave on short notice.
“Already at capacity, we were scrambling to deal. I started getting frustrated at what seemed like long lead times and complicated recruitment processes to find someone who needed to start immediately,” says Piffaut. He saw an opportunity to create a fashion-specific talent marketplace that would quickly find candidates to fill retail roles, particularly on a freelance or short-term basis.
In 2019, Piffaut — who has worked in the luxury industry for 16 years and held positions at Prada, Alexander McQueen, Dior and Chanel — joined forces with Eli Duane, a recruitment specialist who had worked in financial services, and Andreas Asprou, a software engineer who co-founded successful social marketing startup Flick at 19, to launch fashion recruitment platform Dweet. The platform has since expanded to offer a wider range of roles in fashion and luxury, from marketing to design to HR positions. Over 130 companies are on board, including Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Puig, Valentino and Lanvin.
It’s a critical and dynamic time for fashion recruitment. The pandemic gave rise to new ways of working, with many leaving their jobs when companies did not provide sufficient support for remote working. By 2021, the great resignation was in full swing, lasting through 2022, with the majority of workers citing low pay and few opportunities for advancement. Companies have been scrambling to improve their hiring processes, widen and diversify the talent pool, improve retention and job satisfaction, and offer more opportunities for remote and temporary work.
“Management can sometimes feel a bit traditional and hierarchical, and I’ve seen many talented people have to compensate for a lack of structure and resources,” says Piffaut. “I found myself stuck within an excessively red-tape bureaucracy, making hiring additional resources or trialling a new way of working or different types of profiles difficult. The industry is often tapping into the same pool of talent and struggling to expand its reach to new sources or more diverse talent.”
Dweet’s goal is to streamline the process, allowing brands to hire talent that’s of higher quality than a traditional agency and do it quicker, cheaper and on a more flexible basis. Its founders saw the opportunity to combine the use of tech, which fashion has historically been slow to adapt to, and the human element, which fashion requires to a greater extent than other industries. The company expects revenue to reach around £4 million by the end of this year, up from £1.8 million in 2022 and is aiming to become profitable by the end of 2023.
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