From big brands to startups, customization is a trend that has been growing significantly over the past few years and is showing no sign of slowing down. Italy-based company, ALIVESHOES, is taking the whole customization business model one step further, allowing people and brands to not only design their own shoes, but also sell them online in one unique platform.

Users design their own shoe, choosing between 50,000 combinations, then customize labels and packaging before creating their online shop. Once users collect a miniumum of fifteen pre-orders, ALIVESHOES produces the shoes in Italy and ships them directly to their customers within four to six weeks.

The startup was founded in Italy in “the shoe valley”, the oldest region of shoemakers, and has recently moved to Amsterdam to join Startup Bootcamp 2013, an accelerator program based in Europe. The team consists of Luca Botticelli, with more than ten years of shoe industry experience, Michele Torresi, their design guru, and Marco Ferroni, their CTO who has over 8 years of of engineering experience under his belt.

We chatted with Luca and asked him a couple of questions of our own.
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Third Wave Fashion descended upon San Francisco for their second fashion tech meetup in the Bay Area entitled “Founders Tell All” in an intimate setting provided by sponsor Orrick. One-on-one interviews conducted by none other than founder (and gifted orator), Liza Kindred, had fashion tech pros in the hot seat sharing their experiences and dropping knowledge to a diverse crowd comprised of entrepreneurs, brands, media, investors, lawyers and engineers. Speakers for the evening were: Brian Sugar, CEO at PopSugar, Lindsey Guest, CEO and Founder at Beauty Army, Aubrie Pagano, CEO at Bow & Drape, Colin Stuart, Co-Founder and CTO at Betabrand, and Stephanie Palmeri, Principal at SoftTechVC.  read more »

These days we’re seeing that it isn’t enough for big fashion brands to create a collection, cast top models, and have them strut down the runway.  It also isn’t enough for fashion blogs to simply report on trends and street style.  People want more.  Increasingly, we’re noticing a demand for digital, innovative coverage.  To satisfy this need, more and more traditional fashion labels are putting a spin on fashion reporting by emphasizing the digital developments.  This year brands are stepping their tech game up and are coming up with clever, new ways to engage fashion week enthusiasts in and out of the tents. And we like it. Case and point: Kenneth Cole, Burberry, Topshop, Carolina Herrera, Moncler, just to name a few.

Here’s some of the digital highlights we loved during NYFW and what we’ve seen thus far at LFW. read more »

We’ve been craving to do something like this for a while, and it’s finally happening! This month is all about fashion brands (NYFW) and social media (Social Media Week) and we have you covered on both ends. Join us on February 21st to hear what the experts from our favorite fashion brands have to say about their digital and social media strategies. You’ll learn how to use analytics intelligently, which platforms they prefer, what emerging platforms to watch, and the inside scoop on how to increase engagement and drive sales. We’ll really dive in and learn how brands leverage social media in new and meaningful ways. read more »

Billed as “The World’s Largest Fashion Hackathon,” the Hearst Fashion Hack event (organized in partnership with AngelHack) was held this past weekend to much fanfare. Myself and our founder, Liza Kindred, both attended and sponsored the well-run event. The teams had a variety of APIs to work with and be inspired from, pulling in from companies as diverse as Gilt Groupe, Microsoft, HTC, Spotify, and Docusign.

Just about 40 pitches were made, some innovative and some unnecessary. We saw a few trends in the mix, including location based discovery platforms, content curation platforms (Hearst content, of course), and “be the editor” apps. Here’s a summary of  the list of presenters and their ideas, as live tweeted yesterday by us: read more »

There’s nothing more exciting – and exhausting – for a fashionista than fashion week (or month if you’re a sought-after editor, blogger, or buyer that has to attend every show under the sun). As things kick off here in NYC, we thought it’d be a good idea to share some predictions that we believe (and already know) will happen this #NYFW.

Now, as many of you know, we don’t report on fashion trends per se, but we are all about predicting what digital trends — especially the ones we see emerging as the models strut down the runway. Here are just a few that we predict will be happening during NYFW Fall 2013. read more »

Let’s take it back. Back to January 17th to be exact. That evening I had the honor of watching our advisor and friend, Josh Clark, present his famous and sought after talk on the future of mobile at the über fancy Bloomberg building in NYC. For all of you mobile junkies out there, you might already know what Josh is all about. But for the rest of you, let me paint a better picture: Josh Clark is a talented mobile designer, and developer and the author of Tapworthy, a book that can help take your app from concept to a fully-designed reality. His talk on mobile has been heard across the globe, inspiring and educating geeks world wide. The vibe is straightforward: think Star Wars and Epcot– real futuristic awesomeness. Josh takes us on an exploration of technology as a whole and where it’s going. He dives into augmented reality, mirroring, interfaces, and much more; even introducing us to stunning new innovations in technology that we might’ve never even dreamt of having in our lifetime. read more »

Everyone knows that social and shopping go hand in hand, and increasingly we’re finding that there’s so much to learn about. Brands & retailers are looking to explore the online world, while online is increasingly going offline. Things are constantly evolving, and that’s why we attended the Social Retail Summit #4 in Brooklyn, founded and moderated by retail journalist Peter Verkooijen. There were five panels featuring well-known brands as well as fashion tech startups such as Warby Parker and recently featured resale platform, Refashioner.

Here are five things essential to social retail that we took away from the summit: read more »

At Third Wave Fashion, we not only track all things fashion and tech related, we found that the beauty tech space is red hot, too. Not only is it making big waves, it’s increasingly becoming more innovative — even imitating some of the business models we’ve already seen succeed in fashion tech. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and the fashion tech industry should be flattered that their sister industry is following in its footsteps.

Here are 7 beauty startups we’re watching: read more »

It’s a new year, and we can’t wait for all the fabulous things ahead. Before we move on, though, we want to reflect on last year. It’ll help us all put on our 2013 thinking caps. To do so, we decided to compile some of our favorite articles of 2012. They inspired us, educated us, and brought some enlightenment to our fashion tech world. Here’s which, in our opinion, were the 12 best articles of 2012: read more »