When you think of ‘circular fashion’ you might think of donating your old clothes and items to local charity shops, or online marketplaces. But what about consignment stores that pay you for your most-loved items and offer credit notes that allow you to refresh your wardrobe at the same time? 

That’s exactly what Kirsta Hawkins, owner of sustainable consignment store Mutual Muse, wanted to bring Australian shoppers when she opened her first store in 2014.

We had a conversation with Kirsta and her Chief Operating Officer, Emma Barton, about how they introduced a new kind of fashion sustainability to customers, and took circular fashion to a new level with the help of Xero and connected apps. 

A different kind of second-hand retail 

The beginnings of Mutual Muse came from a simple idea to offer something meaningful. “I decided to start Mutual Muse because I wanted to do something that was fulfilling in life, and I’ve always felt like I needed to have something that was really meaningful to me,” Kirsta says.

Typically, consignment stores offer the person giving their clothes a form of payment instead of just accepting donations. After growing up seeing consignment retail stores throughout America, Kirsta decided to bring her own version to life in Melbourne. 

“Where I grew up, every neighbourhood had their own little consignment shop,” she says. “And so I was living in Melbourne for a couple of years and really aching for that specific type of secondhand retail, and no one else was doing it at the time, so I thought maybe I’ll give it a go.”

And with that, Mutual Muse was born. Kirsta started by buying clothes directly from people and  offered a unique model of immediate cash or store credit for items sold to Mutual Muse. Soon, markets turned into a store. Today, Mutual Muse consists of a team of more than 30 people keeping the wheel of circular fashion turning. 

From shoebox accounting to Xero

It didn’t take long before tax receipts and bookkeeping paperwork piled up. That’s where COO, Emma Barton, came in to help shift Mutual Muse to Xero. 

“Coming into the business, it was clear that Kirsta had a preference for doing things with a pen, and paper receipts, and shoe boxes…  It was a bit of a moment for me and an entry into a conversation where I said, ‘there’s easier ways of doing this. We could digitise this, we could streamline it, we could make life easier’.” 

Emma took on moving Mutual Muse’s accounting from shoeboxes to software, with the help of accounting firm Bramble and Briar. And with the help of connected apps, keeping track of their business’s needs — from seller payments and store credits to payroll — was simple. 

“We’ve been able to pull together a system that completely automates the process and has been totally life-changing and time saving. It’s so much easier for us and our customers to understand, interact with, and more importantly get paid,” Emma says.

Moving online with Shopify

In addition to digitising and streamlining Mutual Muse’s accounting, apps have transformed the way they’re able to do business. When Covid-19 lockdowns required the bricks and mortar store to close, Kirsta and Emma needed a way to sell online.

 “We had been selling clothes via Instagram as a means to keep the business rolling, and realised that wasn’t sustainable,” Emma says. “It was an administrative nightmare.” 

Enter Shopify, which allowed Mutual Muse to move its entire shopfront online, and easily sync its sales and seller payments back to Xero via the Shopify integration by Xero. 

“It was seamless, integrating Shopify and Xero,” Emma says. “Now, we’re about to do a really exciting relaunch of our website on Shopify, and it’s just been so easy to push things back and forth between the two platforms.”

Freeing up time to spend on fashion

Fast forward to today, and Mutual Muse is thriving with three physical stores, a strong online presence and a stack of apps that keep their business and accounting running smoothly.

“Within the app stack that we use, we have payroll, sales data, payments to sellers, all of our reporting, all in one place working together seamlessly.”

Their reporting app, Syft helps create custom-built reports based on financial data in Xero, as well as data pulled from their entire app stack. 

“When we go into our finance meeting each month, we’ve got custom reporting set up that draws from the various apps we use that plug into Xero, and at a glance we can see exactly what’s happened in the business over the last month across multiple locations,” Emma says.

Emma and Kirsta can now spend more time doing what they love, knowing their app stack of software solutions are working together.

“Having apps saves us time and frees us up to be working on the things that we really want to be working on. The fun things like spending more time with our people, and spending more time in the stores,” says Emma.

“Not that I don’t love doing reconciliations, but I would much rather be at a photo shoot, or playing with clothes, or doing something creative,” Kirsta adds.

Fashion your own app stack with the Xero App Store 

Whether you’re selling secondhand items or brand new stock, your stack of software solutions can benefit from talking to each other. Get Mutual Muse’s complete retail app stack or browse retail and ecommerce apps that integrate with Xero directly, in the Xero App Store.

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