Malcolm Bell

Malcolm has always been an entrepreneur, best known for founding the fast growth start up Zaggora.com in 2011, achieving $30ml in sales in the first 18 months with customers in 133 countries buying iconic sportswear from the vertically integrated brand. Malcolm left Zaggora in 2013 to focus on his new social commerce startup, Fantaby.com.

Malcolm won E-Commerce Strategy of the Year in 2012 at the National Business Awards and Zaggora was featured as a Harvard Business School and Facebook case study. He left Zaggora in 2013 and is now working on his next startup Fantaby.com, to ‘pioneer social commerce online’.

After graduating from the London School of Economics in 2005, Malcolm started his career in investment management, becoming the Managing Principal at several family offices in the Middle East and UK with $7bn under management.

In 2011, whilst approaching 30, Malcolm had an early mid-life crisis. So he decided the time was right to start a business of his own, Zaggora.com which was built around an idea his wife Dessi Bell had to produce special sports clothing.

Since then, Zaggora has become one of the fastest growing companies in Europe, selling over 600,000 products. Within the business, Malcolm had responsibility for marketing, commerce, creative and social media. Zaggora now employs over 100 people, 50 people in its London headquarters and another 50 people across logistics, R&D, IT and manufacturing.

Malcolm is best known for his work using social media. Early on, Malcolm saw the potential to grow the brand through social channels as well as the importance of peer-to-peer recommendations and positive word of mouth for consumer products. He launched a strategy to generate ‘social proof’ spearheaded by a Twitter trial, asking 500 women to wear Zaggora for two weeks and then share their results on the brand’s Facebook page. Just 19 months later, the Zaggora community has grown to over 500,000 ‘likes’ on Facebook and 30,000 followers on Twitter, resulting in over 10 million visits to the website.

Malcolm has spoken at events for TED, Barclays, Facebook|Start and Retail Week, and takes an active interest in mentoring young entrepreneurs with the New Entrepreneur Foundation. Malcolm was shortlisted for ‘Entrepreneur of the Year in 2012.

http://www.malcolmbell.net