Graduating from business school is an accomplishment, but launching and running a startup while in business school? Well, that is something to be proud of. Especially when the startup is as well received as Snapette.
Founded by two Harvard Business School graduates, Jinhee Ahn Kim and Sarah Paiji, Snapette is a mobile shopping app that helps users find and share fashions available in nearby stores. Partnering with over 200 brands and retailers in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Tokyo and London, Snapette aims to give shoppers the inside scoop on products, sales, and in-store events. For brands, Snapette acts as a real-time and targeted marketing platform that helps drive foot traffic to stores and grow a customer base.
Having just recently relaunched, we were excited to sit down with Jinhee and Sarah to ask the pair a few questions of our own.
Customization is a huge trend in fashion tech and one company is doing it in a smart and innovative way. Meet Bow & Drape, the company that is allowing women to design their own made-to-order dresses. We are thrilled to have Bow & Drape founder and CEO, Aubrie Pagano, speak on our “Founders Tell All” panel about public relations in the fashion tech space. read more »
To say we are honored to have Brian Sugar, the CEO and Publisher of Sugar Inc., on our “Founders Tell All” panel tomorrow in San Francisco, is an understatement. Not only is Brian a successful and well known entrepreneur— particularly in the world of fashion tech– he also has an adorable family and is the proud father to a newborn baby. read more »
Thanks to Kate Middleton, legwear is chicer than ever – and is definitely a staple in the modern woman’s wardrobe. Yet, they can be notoriously difficult to shop for. They can also be difficult to wear; they snag, run, and are either too cheaply made or too much of a splurge.
It doesn’t have to be that way. Riding the wave of subscription boxes to hit the fashion world, HauteLegs sends stylist-curated packages of exclusively designed tights, leggings, hosiery, and socks every month directly to their subscribers.
Third Wave Fashion spoke with Monica Pratap, CEO and Founder of HauteLegs, to learn about the story behind the company.
We hear about new fashion tech startups popping up left and right every day. But what we don’t hear about is how the industry is like right now. Everything is a haze. Numbers are tossed around, but there’s no clear way to keep track of them, or even to keep tabs on trends. With all the information available on the web, it’s easy to get lost in the sea of data.
Liza Kindred, our founder, took this bull by the horns at this past Tuesday night’s “The State of Fashion Tech” keynote event, sponsored by Condé Nast, LIM College, and Cayrum – and put our questions to rest. Here is her presentation broken down to a pseudo Q&A format. (You can follow along on Liza’s slides here if you like.) read more »
Picture this: You have a great idea for a new fashion tech company–something that will revolutionize the shopping experience– but you have no idea how to develop a website. Who and where do you turn to? Craigslist? Your friend from business school? Your old boss? Thanks to Sahadeva Hammari, there is one simple answer: CollabFinder.
Based in New York, CollabFinder is taking the struggle out of networking and making the process of finding collaborators easier than ever. Users join via Facebook and include their interests, skills and background. You can pitch your idea to other members, or let them pitch their project to you; find collaborators according to interest, skill or location.
Launched with seed investment from Betaworks in early 2013, CollabFinder already has a few success stories under its belt, including the recently buzzed about Art.sy and NYC-founded fashion startup, Maker’s Row. With over 1900 collaborators, and recent partnerships with School of Visual Arts’s Interactive design department and NYC.gov, CollabFounder is making a name for itself in the startup world.
TWF sat down with Sahadeva to get the inside scoop on how CollabFinder works and what the future holds for the company.
The fashion industry is growing at an exponential rate, but it’s not just the big brands that are reaping the benefits; small fashion businesses are popping up everywhere and changing all preconceived notions of how the market’s served. Recently, we produced a piece on the ways crowdsourcing is changing the way fashion startups gain insight and grow in their space. The newest venture that we can’t get enough of, and has seamlessly integrated crowdsourcing in their funding plans, is Manufacture New York. This NYC incubator and factory hybrid is empowering designers through collaborative spaces and access to production.
Check out how the founder, Bob Bland, thought up the idea for Manufacture New York and all the different ways you can get involved. read more »
There’s a buzzword we’ve been reading about more and more in the fashion community: crowdsourcing. By this point we know that crowdsourcing is “the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, and especially from an online community, rather than from traditional employees or suppliers.” (Wikipedia) It’s so popular in the startup community because it’s about the sharing of ideas and partaking in the collaborative process. Let us tell you, this is not a fad. read more »
Money. Every startup needs it, and it’s usually at the most vulnerable, early-stage, high risk point when it needs the most. Tech startups, for instance, are notorious for seeking out a number of different ways of receiving funding including: venture capital, angel investing, and other seed funding opportunities. This is because, typically, these types of startups are too small to raise capital in the public market, so they go to venture capital firms or independent venture capitalists and ask for funds in exchange for equity in their company.
But because venture capital has been less available in recent times, startups have to find the best ways to turn a profit and satisfy stakeholders, and even more more critical, they must be particularly creative and sharp before spending any money at all. Here are 3 things to consider before spending your company’s hard-earned cash. read more »
Continuing on their mission to introduce the latest cutting-edge technology and industry game-changers, TechSeri.es hosted their first Fashion Panel, “Fashion Disrupted: How Tech is Changing the Way Consumers Shop.” The two-hour long networking and panel event, moderated and led by industry veterans, discussed the developments of e-commerce in line with mobile and tablet technologies, the intersection of online and offline in fashion retail, and resulting changes in consumer shopping behavior.
While bite-sized highlights can be found in 140-character portions on Twitter by searching #FashionPanel, what we really wanted to know was: what did our panelists, moderator, and sponsor actually think? read more »
