Ten years of dresses for weddings and big occasions: how Apoluze handed its logistics to Bigblue when orders outgrew its own packing capacity

Summarize with AI:

Apoluze was founded around ten years ago with one very specific product in mind: the cocktail dress, in a price range where almost nothing was on offer. Timeless, colourful, festive dresses at a fair price, made for life's big occasions: a wedding, a birthday, the festive season or a family celebration.

At Apoluze, a dress isn't treated as an accessory but as a product with a job to do: bought on a set budget, for a one-off occasion on a specific date. That puts the post-purchase experience and delivery at the heart of the promise made to every customer, and it is why co-founder Laure de Langalerie stopped handling shipping in-house and handed it to Bigblue in 2023.

A dress bought for a specific date, sold almost exclusively online

Ten years after the brand was created, neither the products nor the positioning have changed.

“We created Apoluze a good ten years ago. The idea was really to create cocktail dresses with a fairly specific price positioning, because we had noticed that in that price bracket, there wasn't much on offer.”Laure de Langalerie, Co-founder of Apoluze

What sets the brand apart is the work on the cut, reworked until it is as flattering as possible on the silhouette of the woman it is designed for: "extremely refined dresses", as the co-founder puts it. The other differentiator is longevity: hero pieces return year after year, and some have been reissued eight years after they were first created. That level of care feeds the word of mouth that has carried the brand from the start - loyal customers come back for every occasion and remember these dresses for life.

“Apoluze is a brand built around celebration, and those important events that happen on a precise date, with a specific need: a dress for a wedding or for a birthday.”Laure de Langalerie, Co-founder of Apoluze

The dresses sell almost exclusively online, to customers across France and beyond, so everything depends on orders being picked, shipped and delivered on time.

From parcels packed by the founder to logistics run by Bigblue

For the first few years, the brand shipped its own orders from its offices.

“At the beginning, we handled the parcels ourselves: the packing, the trips to the post office. The day we realised that one more order had become bad news, we decided to delegate our logistics.”Laure de Langalerie, Co-founder of Apoluze

That setup worked off-season, but it became unmanageable at the height of the season, when order volumes exceeded the capacity of a small team who also handled design, production and customer service. So in July 2023, the brand handed its logistics to Bigblue: storage, picking, packing and shipping all taken care of, with a platform that connects directly to Apoluze's Shopify store.

“What made the difference with Bigblue was having logistics and technology unified in one place.”Laure de Langalerie, Co-founder of Apoluze

Delivery, presentation, returns: the post-purchase experience is part of the product

When a dress is needed for a fixed date, the brand's promise doesn't end at checkout.

“What I want to guarantee is that the dress arrives on time, folded perfectly, in a beautiful box.”Laure de Langalerie, Co-founder of Apoluze

With dresses, the product and its presentation go hand in hand: the quality of the fabric and the precision of the cut give the piece its value, and the folding and the box carry that same care through to the moment the parcel is opened. Delivery is the other thing customers care about most - when a dress is needed for a specific date, they want reliable tracking and the certainty that it will arrive on time. In practice, parcels often arrive before the stated date, and a customer whose order arrives on time, or early, is a customer who trusts the brand again.

For a dress needed on a specific date, returns and exchanges also have to be flawless. Bigblue receives the parcels, checks the condition of each dress and puts it back on sale quickly, which is decisive at the height of the season, when every size has to stay available for the next order. The co-founder, for her part, triggers refunds directly from the Bigblue app, without going through Shopify.

“A good customer experience, including the way returns are handled, means a customer won over, and grateful for life.”Laure de Langalerie, Co-founder of Apoluze

Outsourcing logistics to lighten the mental load and free up time for creation

When you run your own logistics, there is a new problem to deal with every single day. Once it is delegated, dedicated teams take care of it and there is a process for every situation. The co-founder no longer has to invent a new solution each time, which makes collection launches in particular far less risky. In her own words, it means fewer worries on her mind and more bandwidth.

Moving to outsourcing does, however, take some adjustment.

“At first, when you stop doing it yourself, you feel like you're losing some control. In reality, outsourcing your logistics is a huge time saver and a completely different founder experience, as long as you accept that it won't be done exactly the way you would have done it.”Laure de Langalerie, Co-founder of Apoluze

Three years on, her advice to a founder still hesitating to delegate their logistics fits in one sentence: do it as early as possible. The time reclaimed from day-to-day operations goes back into design, into the cut and into customers, in pursuit of a goal she sums up in a few words: becoming a dress expert.

“Bigblue is the extra team that's on my side to grow my business. It's a partner that defends my interests.”Laure de Langalerie, Co-founder of Apoluze