Fashion line saves $500+ in productivity costs with Uber

The fashion industry moves quickly. When entrepreneur Kelly Nishimoto, owner of fashion line Cute Booty Lounge, needed on-demand delivery services at a reasonable rate, she turned to Uber for Business.

An avid Uber user, Nishimoto’s experience with the app’s convenience and ease of use made Uber for Business a natural next step for her growing company. Using Uber for Business, her organization saves between $500 and $800 a month in employee productivity costs alone.

Nishimoto created Cute Booty Lounge to encourage women to embrace their curves. The company prides itself on designing clothing patterns for people who “love themselves, love their curves, and love to be a little different,” she says.

To help her business run smoothly, Nishimoto and her team use Uber to:

Cute Booty Lounge has offices in Downtown Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley. Before using Uber for Business, an employee would transport clothes or production equipment between locations. For a small team, this wasn’t ideal—the drive was easily 2 or 3 hours round-trip, depending on LA traffic, and the effort would cost time, delivery rental fees, and employee productivity. 

Hiring a delivery van didn’t make sense either. The price was a flat fee of a couple hundred dollars for one delivery, regardless of whether Cute Booty Lounge was transporting 1-2 bags of clothes or loading a full van. 

“When you’re a growing small business and figuring out your finances, it’s a lot of money to have things delivered,” says Nishimoto. “Even private courier services can be super-expensive, too, and they usually don’t deliver larger loads of things—it’s more paper or small packages.”

Being an LA-based entrepreneur gave Nishimoto several delivery options to choose from, but she didn’t have to think about it: “My first thought was Uber, because we were using Uber for Business all the time anyway” for rides and meal delivery.

According to owner Kelly Nishimoto, with Uber for Business, Cute Booty Lounge saves between $500 and $800 a month in employee productivity costs alone, not including delivery costs like van rentals. 

Uber for Business also saves Nishimoto’s team administrative hassle: they can easily add staff to the corporate account to automatically expense rides from events. The team can also use Uber’s real-time vehicle tracking to schedule employees to come into the office to put items away based on the delivery person’s estimated time of arrival. And with reporting showing the exact route during business rides, any employee paperwork is easier.

“It’s all a one-stop shop. You don’t have to dig for the information,” adds Nishimoto. 

To help keep photo shoots efficient, Cute Booty Lounge leans on Uber for Business as well. When the team is in an important shoot and needs last-minute samples in different sizes, for example, they know the Uber app can facilitate a stress-free delivery. In addition, seeing the driver’s route through the Uber app lets the Cute Booty team make every minute count by completing other tasks until the delivery arrives. 

“Fashion is already stressful enough,” says Nishimoto, “so to be able to have tools to make your life easier—and to be able to see where the ride is—it’s great.” 

Nishimoto is especially impressed with drivers and delivery people on the Uber platform: “Everyone has been so top-notch through Uber as opposed to other services. It’s super-consistent across the board, so you always know what you’re going to get. You’re rarely going to get any surprises, and to me as a business owner, that’s super-important.”

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