This Is What the New Era of Personal Shopping Looks Like

Sold out—a phrase we all hate reading, no matter how many times it confronts us. But what if there was a way to track down that elusive “item that got away” with something as simple as a quick slide into a DM chain? Better yet, what if all your shopping could be done via DM? Well, luckily, it can.

Personal shopping, the fashion industry’s clandestine secret weapon, is the service that allows what seems like everyone on your Instagram feed to get their hands on those “sold-out” pieces—CHANEL dad sandals, Bottega Veneta handbags, even Phoebe Philo–era Celine. The sartorial mavens behind these services popping up everywhere have an extensive network of connections and treat every request like a treasure hunt, searching high and low so you, too, can call yourself the proud owner of Prada Combat boots.

What Does It Actually Entail?

That answer depends. There is a spectrum, with the traditional sense of personal shopping at one end and a newer realm of product sourcing at the other. Gabriel Waller, an Australian-based stylist-turned-personal-shopper, operates within the product-sourcing space and counts fashion heavyweights like Rosie Huntington-Whitely, Chiara Ferragni, and Hailey Bieber as her clients. Every day her phone pings with requests for specific items ranging from today’s hot-ticket unavailable item to rare archival pieces that appear sold out—or so you thought. “Clients come to me knowing they want that exact shoe, they want that exact bag, and it’s my job to hunt it down,” explains Waller. Her background in styling built her connections base so that, unlike the average shopper, she knows exactly who to call when something is “sold out.”

“Clients come to me knowing they want that exact shoe, they want that exact bag, and it’s my job to hunt it down.”

Jennifer Nisan, the face behind Front Row Live, is posting a roster of new launches, drops, and collections to her Instagram page every weekday morning. The transaction is as simple as responding to an image of a new handbag, typing three simple words: “I want it.” “I posted the new Dior B27 sneaker on my story, and within two hours there were like, 40 orders coming in at once,” she says, a tinge of exasperation in her eyes—Nisan’s business is growing so fast, she almost can’t keep up.

It’s About Ease—for the Client, at Least

Personal shopping is one of those unicorn services that has actually been bolstered by the pandemic. Nisan recounts that the current odd circumstances offered an opportunity ripe for business—stores were closing, stagnated production led to scarcity in the market, and people had a lot of free time. “They would rather just pay me to do all the work and they don’t have to leave their house,” simple as that. At the beginning of the pandemic, Nisan had roughly 2,000 followers on Instagram. Now she has 10 times that.

On an even larger scale, Farfetch, which already acted as an e-commerce platform for boutiques across the world, launched their Fashion Concierge service nearly four years ago after acquiring a tech start-up which specialized in sourcing luxury goods. Once a Farfetch Private Client stylist takes a request from a client, the Fashion Concierge team then puts out a blast via an app to every boutique and store in their network—which is vast, to say the least. They deal in everything from sourcing hard-to-find products à la Waller to handling all of a client’s shopping needs for them. Betty Huang, vice president of Fashion Concierge, US & Asia-Pacific, describes the service as “fashion luxury on demand. It’s all about saving time.”

No Request Is Too Big

For Nisan and Waller, who don’t yet have the same technology-driven functionality, the process is comparable to quite the treasure hunt: ultra rewarding at the end, but often tough along the way. “It’s fun, but it’s also very stressful,” admits Waller, though she says the excitement balances that out. “The thrill is the best part,” reiterates Nisan. “My favorite thing in life is getting asked to find something and I’m looking through 500 different outlets and it finally comes through.” And these requests can be quite remarkable.

Farfetch launched their Fashion Concierge platform as just that, a luxury-fashion-based platform, but has since expanded into homeware, art, and it doesn’t stop there. “You know the Legend of Zelda, that game from the ’90s?” Huang asks me tentatively. A client put in a request for an unopened and sealed version that they were actually able to track down. “It was around $26,000,” she adds. They’ve also hunted down playhouses for clients’ children in international locations—the kind that cost more to ship than they do to buy.

“The thrill is the best part.”

Nisan and Waller also deal in crazy asks, but their’s are often more relegated to the fashion industry. Nisan recounts sourcing a pair of $50,000+ earrings from an overjoyed e-commerce platform and tracking down what some might call jewelry: a Louis Vuitton collar for a client’s dog. Waller has been asked for a few hard-to-find children’s toys but finds her most challenging asks are retired fashion items—and we’re back to #OldCeline.

A System Beneficial to All

Each was quick to point out that this is not resale, it’s more of an intermediary service. They connect people to brands and stores without buying the product themselves. “Ninety-nine percent of the time, you’re not paying me, your experience is with the store,” says Nisan. From there, a client is free to return it themselves if they aren’t satisfied. Both women charge flat-rate fees—no commission. Waller explains that unless she finds something as hot as those CHANEL sandals we keep referencing, she won’t buy anything without a specific request, which not only mitigates risk on their end, but can help move excess inventory from stores.

“I don’t feel it’s a saturated industry in any way, but it’s having a huge moment and I’m just excited to see.”

The beauty of the Fashion Concierge service is that it was able to connect Farfetch’s global consumer base with their global network of boutiques, who can rarely sell through 100 percent of their stock. Waller, whose business is propped up by multi-brand boutiques, states, “They’re not returning their stock, so if they have an Isabel Marant that was from SS19, it’s going to sit there and it’s going to sit there on sale,” offering a solution to excess inventory, yet another issue propagated by this pandemic.

With a successful (and mutually beneficial) framework in place, this realm of personal shopping and product sourcing is growing exponentially. Nisan had to hire an assistant this summer because she couldn’t keep up with her over 100 requests a day. Waller works with a team of six, located in all different time zones to work round the clock. The Farfetch concierge team has gone from 11 to 50 in a span of less than four years. Despite its explosion, “I don’t feel it’s a saturated industry in any way,” says Waller, “but it’s having a huge moment and I’m just excited to see.”

Top photo: Courtesy of Jennifer Nisan

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