SOSANDAR

20th Feb '18 by Zoiberg

22 comments 8904 reads

I see Paul thinks this might be a very early stage growth company but I am very puzzled by the founders approach.
Firstly SOSANDAR? The first reaction of my friend who is a PR specialist is that the name is wrong. Is it SOSANDER SOSENDAR SOSANDAR - compare with QUIZ ASOS BOOHOO.!
Secondly No figures. Come on - that is just not on.
Thirdly As a fat old man I wouldn't buy clothes from a company that modeled fat old men! My body image is much younger and fitter. So I think the founders (although much slimmer and fitter than me) got it entirely wrong when they personally model some of the larger sizes. People want to see aspirational not actual..

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About the Author

Zoiberg

Premium Member

22 comments

Lloyd Garvey

23rd Feb '18

I also have a small position (very small). the name is slightly odd but hey ho, even google was just a misspelling of googol.
I am also not sure of their strategy, Their Facebook page has a really really low number of likes and followers ( A friend of mine runs a local business and has more than them!)
And using some basic web analysis tools their website visitors are currently also low.
Their daily visitors is approx 621, and monthly is approx 18,000
(Boohoo has 110,000 daily and 3.2 mil monthly)
These are all using free website traffic tools, so of course may not be entirely accurate)

But isn't this exactly what an early stage growth company looks like?

I will keep an eye on traffic and views and maybe think again later.

MiserableJacktPotato

23rd Feb '18

Lol, comparing this to Boo.... A £2.4B business to a £20M one...
They've only been open for business 18 months.
They've currently got 34k FB likes and are growing around 1% per week. Plus their core market isn't exactly the Social Media generation....
They've gone from zero revenue in Sep 2016 to a forecast £1M p.a by 31st March this year. We'll get the interims to 31st Dec 2017 at some point in the next 5 weeks, at which point we can get an assessment of actual growth.
I'm not sure about those estimated statistics - Alexa.com says 1/3rd of visitors are male.....

JohnEustace

23rd Feb '18

I wonder how many of the male visitors to the website are small company investors checking it out?

beatingmrindex

23rd Feb '18

I am lost about the point of this post on a share forum.

This Paul fella thinks "this might be a very early stage growth company" well its been 18 months and reversed out of a shell so that Paul is right.

I am sure when ASOS started people would have been confused by the name - it doesn't sound like clothing...

Anyways pass on the investment and good luck with your other investments

Zoiberg

23rd Feb '18

I would be interested to know what tools you use. I didn't even know that this was possible.

Andrew L

23rd Feb '18

Zoiberg - you make an interesting point. The name is a bit silly. There was a pay TV group that bought some football rights that had a similar name. However, the name is probably easy to remember. Probably not as good as Quiz, ASOS, or BooHoo but I don't think it is a disaster. Probably women in their 30's/40's want a name that doesn't sound silly. Sosandar is ok. It sounds foreign and stylish. I don't have any trouble remembering it.

Aspirational models - not sure on this. I think Sosandar aims for women in their 30's and 40's who wouldn't use ASOS or Boohoo. Would those women want to see skinny models? I thought there was a whole movement away from that. Dove has done very well with its "real women" campaign. Fashion is aspirational but having unhealthy models isn't good in my view. I can't see any photos of the founders modelling the clothes. It looks like an approachable website for "real people" as far as I can see.

Lloyd Garvey

23rd Feb '18

There are loads of free ones.. Just search Website traffic monitors free..

I used :- http://www.statshow.com/www/sosandar.com

Also Alexa which is Amazons is good. https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo

Hope this helps

Lloyd

mojomogoz

24th Feb '18

Love this post. There's got to be room for curmudgeonly so I gave it a thumbs up to counteract cyberbullying :)

I don't see the problem with the name in any way. Plus they're so young they can change with no brand problem. There's probably a marketing angle to SOS too...in a save our(my) soul I need a dress for a party camaraderie and sisterhood sort of vibe, etc. (a naff comment trying to summarise marketing angles rather be disrespectful to women!)

I've bought a bit of this. Its a bit of an experiment for me. I'm a contrarian and sometime knife catcher at heart.

My professional investment background comes from a macro and allocation perspective so for last few years I've been getting into stocks in more detail and bottom up...I knew the theory (CFA holder etc) but needed to get into the practice. Its been interesting....

...so Sosandar (LON:SOS) is part of the experiment. I'm a bit uncomfortable this is a story and hype stock. However, I do see that it has a decent chance at being more than that and does have a niche it can fulfil. I actually think it may become a sort of hybrid media-fashion business with time. Big maybe of course.

I reckon it will go down in price from here even as its shows some executing capability. That will be opportune for me as it will give me more chance to build in if I want to. However, if the story flies and keeps flying I know from my past experience I will struggle to find a way in until it shows some growth pains that wig out some of the pure growth-momentum-story holders. So buy a little piece early and give myself skin in the game.

I've looked at other situations that are same blue sky ish story sorts of things in recent months and not participated in them but I see value in SOS. For example, Innovaderma (LON:IDP) looks all story and no substance that is investable to me.

Less than 10% risked compared to what I'd put into a committed position. Standing on the shoulders of giants...hopefully.

I enjoy the Stocko chat stuff...even the grumpy ones

Ciao

Zoiberg

25th Feb '18

The point of my post which I didn't make clear, is that my three points together make me feel uneasy about the judgement of the management. They come from a (successful) journalistic fashion background - does this necessarily prepare them for the rag trade itself?

MiserableJacktPotato

25th Feb '18

There was a point to this post?
I couldn't see it and the post read like it was posted at 2 in the morning after a night on the scotch....

Zoiberg

27th Feb '18

Thanks for the info. I found it quite interesting to apply this to quizclothing.co.uk which is another new company trying to do something similar to BooHoo (although not exclusively focused on the online market).

Zoiberg

27th Feb '18

Yep there was a point to this post and although saddened, I'm not very surprised that you couldn't see it. Also, the references to BooHoo were because it was once a very small company which grew and may still be growing - a bit like the universe - oh; forget it ....

lexington

22nd May '18

These days the spelling doesn't matter so much because Google will direct you there anyway. Put in any of these -
SOSANDER SOSENDAR SOSANDAR - and you'll either get the site or a "did you mean Sosandar"? The friction is negligible. If I'm looking for a dress and want the site, I'll get there. Also having a distinctive name helps with Google Search because so many other names are taken.

Trident

22nd May '18

The Hot Rockets picks of Shareprophets was confidently projecting increased y-on-y turnover for this company. Its the sorts of thing investors want to hear, so beware false prophets. They heavily back the management, and the founding investor group (Nigel Wray etc), in terms of favourable commentary, and who in one case now actually own the Investor show format they founded, and continue to promote. That's Ok but should be subject to the usual caveats to mark out independent commentary.

As someone has mentioned, interim figures and year end need to show increasing turnover to justify its growth potential. Comparisons now are all against a low prior year base, so it looks promising at this stage. Penetration of the market place will get harder, but its all there to go for.

I am small holder, but principally got into it as a result of some coverage by Paul Scott, whose general coverage is always interesting and worth reading

carmensfella

22nd Jun '18

Our next Mello event is this Monday evening from 5.30pm at SeaSalt in Beckenham with SOS...Sosandar coming along to present to about 40 investors at 6.45pm. Also TB Seen an affiliate shopping platform with celeb Kate Thornton the X Factor presenter will be doing a presentation. Just email me via Http://www.freesharedata.com/mello or reply to this post if you want to join us

Laughton

26th Jun '18

Unfortunately I wasn't able to go to yesterday's event - is 5.30pm the best time to hold these things? Might be OK for train travellers but the M23/M25 at approaching that time is a total no go area.

Anyway, did anyone go and if so would you care to share your impressions on what you heard from Sosandar Sosandar (LON:SOS) (where I have a reasonable sized holding)?

In the past I've been disappointed by their seeming reluctance to give any actual figures on Trading Updates. etc.

MiserableJacktPotato

19th Jul '18

Choo choo. Chugging along nicely here.

Happy days

Lloyd Garvey

2nd Mar '19

12 Months on........

Well the share price was around the 18p mark last Feb. Now 28p ..ish. Admittedly well down from its giddy peak of 44p in September (though isn't everything)

Last year I looked at their facebook presence and website traffic, I have just done the same a year on .. (only rough figures. I am only using free tools)

Feb 18
Facebook likes approx 31,000
Website monthly visits 18,000

Feb 19
Facebook likes 61,000
Website monthly visits 60,000 (though did peak last October at 80,000! (Not sure Why October) (Been rising since November)
(It has risen more than 387,000 places in global ranking)

I will leave the financial stuff for those more qualified than me :-)

They did a very interesting presentation late last year (Thanks to Paul Scott for highlighting this)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mW9sLP9GiOs&t=2s&list=PLrxCBUmPgBgO2qapVCN0dWJSwRhywc9lS&index=15

(I hold)

Lloyd

Dave_17

3rd Mar '19

Thanks for the link. Very useful and filled in a few questions I had about the business.

carmensfella

3rd Mar '19

If all your questions have not yet been answered and any of you would like to meet the management team I am pleased to say that they have accepted my invitation and will be exhibiting and presenting at Mello2019 on Friday 17th May along with 65 other companies and of course our excellent keynote speakers to look forward to...

http://melloevents.com/event/

All very welcome

David

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SOSANDAR

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Zoiberg

22 comments

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