SSENSE (

pronounced Pronunciation is the way in which a word or a language is spoken. To This may refer to generally agreed-upon sequences of sounds used in speaking a given word or all language in a specific dialect—"correct" or "standard" pronunciation—or si ...

: "essence") is a Canadian multi-brand retailer headquartered in

Montreal Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

specializing in the sale of

designer fashion Designer clothing refers to apparel created by a specific fashion designer or licensed by a person or brand. It is often considered luxury clothing, known for its high quality and haute couture appeal, made for the general public and bearing the ...

and high end

streetwear Streetwear is a style of casual clothing which became global in the 1990s. It grew from New York hip hop fashion and Californian surf culture to encompass elements of sportswear, punk fashion, punk, Skateboarding#Culture, skateboarding, 1980s no ...

. It was founded as an

e-commerce E-commerce (electronic commerce) refers to commercial activities including the electronic buying or selling products and services which are conducted on online platforms or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile co ...

platform in 2003 by three brothers: Rami, Bassel and Firas Atallah. The company delivers to 114 countries around the world and operates websites in Chinese, French, English, Japanese and Korean.

History

SSENSE was found in 2003 by brothers Firas, Rami and Bassel Atallah. The company opened a physical store in Montreal in 2004 and a warehouse and corporate headquarters in 2005. The online store followed in 2006. By the early 2020s, Ssense was discussed as an important online fashion store, which made decisions by analysing large volumes of data rather than relying on professional buyers anticipating trends. On April 5, 2018, SSENSE acquired community-based fashion and art website

Polyvore Polyvore was a community-powered social commerce website headquartered in Mountain View, California. The company's virtual mood board function allowed community members to add products into a shared product index, and use them to create image c ...

from

Yahoo! Yahoo (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web portal that provides the search engine Yahoo Search and related services including My Yahoo, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, y!entertainment, yahoo!life, and its a ...

, immediately shutting it down. In May 2018, SSENSE opened a flagship retail store in a historic 19th century building in Montreal turned into an experiential retail space by architecture firm

David Chipperfield Sir David Alan Chipperfield, , (born 18 December 1953) is a British architect. He established David Chipperfield Architects in 1985, which grew into a global architectural practice with offices in London, Berlin, Milan, Shanghai, and Santiago d ...

. The 5-story building within a building includes a cafe, art space and a floor dedicated to a personal-shopper-guided online-offline hybrid, which is accessible by appointment only. In June 2021 SSENSE received minority investment from

Sequoia Capital Sequoia Capital Operations, LLC is an American venture capital firm headquartered in Menlo Park, California, specializing in seed stage, early stage, and growth stage investments in private companies across technology sectors. the firm had appro ...

that valued the company at over $4 billion USD. In January 2023, SSENSE laid off approximately 7% of its workforce, impacting 138 employees.

Controversies

In 2018, SSENSE acquired the social-commerce platform

from

, immediately shutting it down. SSENSE failed to alert its users about the acquisition following its liquidation, which resulted in users to irreversibly lose data on the platform. SSENSE has issued an apology about the matter. In December 2022, SSENSE was the target of a

cyberattack A cyberattack (or cyber attack) occurs when there is an unauthorized action against computer infrastructure that compromises the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of its content. The rising dependence on increasingly complex and inte ...

where confidential employee data was compromised. SSENSE failed to notify past employees of the data breach as well as government officials.

References

External links

* {{official, https://www.ssense.com/ Online retailers of Canada Retail companies established in 2003 Internet properties established in 2003 Clothing retailers of Canada

History

Controversies

See also

References

External links