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.

1. What inspired you to start ALIVESHOES?

I’m from “the shoe valley”, as are my Co-founders. The shoe valley is a place in Italy where 80% of Italian-made shoes are sold. I grew up in the shoe industry and decided to drop out from my family business in luxury shoes 3 years ago to pursue this venture. Democratizing fashion through the internet is very inspiring, especially for someone like me who comes from a more “old school” fashion background. In addition to that, I am personally inspired by impossible tasks. Launching a shoe brand and selling shoes in minutes was once considered impossible, but now we’re making it possible.

As a team, we are inspired every day by all the people that are signing up on our site. They want to use our tools, create their brand and make their dreams come true. It’s really amazing to see their story and realizing that we can really help.

2. What value does ALIVESHOES have compared to other companies in the fashion tech space?

We let our users design shoes and sell them! The model has been done before with basic T-shirts by many competitors (Threadless, Tee Springs, Tee Public) but it hasn’t really been executed with more complex fashion products such as shoes. We give the users solid design tools, a versatile commerce platform, and the industrial platform to create the shoes. Our strengths lie in our understanding of shoe design, manufacturing, and tech: three strengths that are not common in the startup space.

3. What has been the hardest obstacle for you in starting ALIVESHOES? What has been your favorite part?

Gathering the right team is very, very difficult. Luckily now we have an expert in each area of the platform. Raising money has also been challenging since we’re pitching a very unique model. Finding the right investors has not been easy, especially in Europe.

Our favorite  part is seeing that there are tons of people around the world that want to create and launch their own fashion brand and that we can help them turn their vision into reality.//

To keep up with the ALIVESHOES team, you can follow them here.

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Kellie Friedman is the Research & Editorial Intern for TWF. Third Wave Fashion consults for startups, brands, investors, and publishers to help them navigate the wild-and-crazy intersection of fashion and tech. We also have a database with over 10,000 data points about 650+ fashion tech companies, amazing monthly reports, a meetup group, and a blog. Sign up for our newsletter to stay in touch! 

Image via ALIVESHOES

Melissa Sulewski is Assistant to the CEO at TWF. Third Wave Fashion consults for startups, brands, investors, and publishers to help them navigate the wild-and-crazy intersection of fashion and tech. We also have a database with over 10,000 data points about 650+ fashion tech companies, amazing monthly reports, a meetup group, and a blog. Sign up for our newsletter to stay in touch!

Image via Forbes

Founder’s Story

The first guest of the evening was Brian Sugar, CEO at PopSugar, a digital destination for women combining lifestyle content and commerce headquartered in San Francisco with satellite offices in Los Angeles and New York. The company has expanded internationally and currently has 303 employees on staff. Originally positioning to be the next Condé Nast of the publishing world, PopSugar has since evolved into more of a cable company. Think “ESPN for women” where the sport is shopping.

Brian did not graduate from college. Instead, he started his first company during senior year. In 1994, upon first seeing the internet, Brian knew he needed to build a website. Armed with a business plan and college tuition money from his father, Neptune Interactive was born. During this time Sugar sent CD-roms to retailers such as J.Crew, Land’s End and Abercrombie & Fitch of what their websites should be like. Brian proceeded to spend five years at J.Crew and was recruited to start Bluelight– a combination of Kmart, Yahoo and Martha Stewart– which had its sights set to take on Amazon. The company raised and blew through $160M in 18 months. Questioning if the internet was over in 2001, Brian did what any entrepreneur would do and started his next company, 2Wire, which was sold to AT&T. In 2005, Brian’s wife, Lisa, started blogging and the two were encouraged by Om Malick of GigaOM to take on Condé Nast. While the publishing magnate recently launched Condé Nast Entertainment for branded video content, PopSugar began using video in 2009 with a purchase of LA-based company, Shopflick. The company now shoots live shows in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York generating up to 220,000 viewers on a daily basis.

While discussing the generation gap and their children having no concept of dial-up internet and TV channels, the conversation turns towards the importance of family and how being a family man has affected Brian’s entrepreneurship. Startups are like families. Treating people with respect and company culture is of great importance and critical to success.

With the merging of content and commerce, maintaining journalistic integrity is a hot button issue. PopSugar editorial is kept separate from the company’s commerce component, visual search engine ShopStyle. Brian notes it is hard to get people buying contextually while reading the latest about the Met Gala and feels the site ultimately needs to be a destination for commerce. Capital raised in 2006 was to be repaid through advertising and ShopStyle was part of the original strategy to get close to the transaction without taking in inventory.

When asked for advice for budding entrepreneurs, Sugar recommends looking at yourself and understanding what you are and aren’t good at. Equally important is recognizing others’ strengths and creating the best team for attacking what you want.

Customer Acquisition

Lindsey Guest always knew she wanted to be an entrepreneur and was inspired by her mother who was a lawyer. She obtained a masters in Integrated Marketing and proceeded to work with Pepsi where she fell in love with branding. An obsession with the beauty industry led her to the Bobbi Brown School where she became a makeup artist and learned the trade of the business. As CEO and Founder of Beauty Army, Guest sought to revolutionize the beauty industry and didn’t want consumers to have to sift through thousands of products. Beauty Army provides technology that matches consumer attributes to product attributes in seconds.

The company has been live for 16 months and heavily engages in social media for customer acquisition. Hosting contests and integrating share features are a few ways to get started with little to no money. Lindsey recommends not burning through money on your customer acquisition strategy too early as the company might not be ready for all the attention.

Beauty Army is leveraging the power of YouTube and acquiring customers through haul videos. People find the product engaging and are sharing their finds through third party videos and referral links. The company also uses Facebook in their strategy, sharing functions are enabled on each product page and contests are ran using the Wildfire app. Lindsey sees Facebook as a customer service tool since people readily express their views on companies’ walls. While Facebook is used to acquire new customers, Twitter is used to engage existing customers, and their Pinterest account is primarily used for pinning onto beauty boards and running contests. Subsequently, Beauty Army’s Instagram account provides an insider’s view to the company. Lindsey’s advice prior to starting social media: Make sure you have something to say and make your content engaging.

Public Relations

Donning a handpainted “cardimono” (think cardigan/kimono hybrid) available on Bow & Drape, CEO Aubrie Pagano introduced the first platform offering customized fashion for women to design their own clothes. The garments are produced in New York and the company handles all aspects of the production cycle from design to delivery.

The company’s PR strategy begins with Aubrie asking what is the story Bow & Drape wants to tell. For her it is all about storytelling and connections. Much like the slow food movement, consumers want to know where materials are sourced and how their garments are produced. Bow & Drape capitalized on manufacturing in New York and tauted craftsmanship during the company’s launch five months ago while they had people’s attention. When asked about getting PR after the launch, Pagano continued to stress storytelling and suggests thinking about personal stories that are relevant. Additional options include capitalizing on timely news events and pushing articles which apply to your company.

After graduating from Harvard in 2008, Aubrie landed at Fidelity Investments for three years. Not “fitting in” in the financial world led Aubrie to become a fashion apprentice where she traded her Skillshare knowledge to gain insight about the design business. When unable to find an outfit for a wedding, Aubrie made her own dress and received multiple compliments. Women wanted to know how to make affordable one-of-a-kind pieces for themselves and so began Bow & Drape. Liza noted a number of made-to-measure companies exist for men but the same can’t be said for women. Seeing that only 2% of garments are domestically produced, Bow & Drape incorporates being made in the USA into their marketing. The company provides video to show insight into sample rooms and to document the artisanal qualities of their clothing.

Social Media

Betabrand launched in 2004 as “Cordarounds” and was started on a whim. The brand currently offers over a hundred different items for sale with each product having its own unique backstory. No traditional marketing budget exists and the company is run like a blog with new product being conceived daily. Working with a short four month cycle from conception through production, the majority of the company’s manufacturers are housed in SOMA due to tight turnaround schedules and the high frequency of sending goods out to factories. Betabrand pays particularly close attention to the internet and creates clothing which speaks to those communities.

Co-Founder and CTO Colin Stuart noted a recent move into the company’s flagship location on Valencia Street in the Mission District. When asked if he forsees a social media shift with their brick-and-mortar addition, Colin responded the store is an extension of their site. The company already employs user-generated content onsite and now an opportunity exists to create content offline in-store. The Valencia Street flagship is also seen as a think tank to source ideas from the community and collaborate with other creatives. While people are incentivized through profit-sharing, the desire to contribute and create is also rewarding.

Colin’s engineering career includes stints with Microsoft and i-drive. The actor-slash-producer then moved to Los Angeles to work in the entertainment industry. Upon returning to San Francisco, he teamed up with Betabrand CEO, Chris Lindland, and the rest is history.

Betabrand uses Facebook for customer acquisition and interaction. Caption contests aid in gaining new customers. Twitter is mainly used for customer service. Creating interesting content gives people something to talk about and Betabrand has no shortage in this area. The free-spirited vibe at the heart of the company extends throughout their campaigns and company newsletter, which has one of the highest opening rates in the industry at around 50%. With a mix of branded and user-generated content, Betabrand’s stories sell product and bring people to their site and flagship location.

Funding

As Principal at SoftTechVC, Stephanie Palmeri actively invests in seed stage companies. The SoftTechVC portfolio includes companies such as Kaboodle, Poshmark, Fab and True & Co. She had a brief stint as a buyer at Lord & Taylor before landing at Accenture. After four years in marketing at Estee Lauder, Stephanie attended Columbia Business School. Fresh from her move from New York to San Francisco, she met Jeff Clavier of SoftTech but he didn’t initially hire her (check out this letter by Jeff introducing Steph to Soft Tech.) With some additional communication and persistence, Stephanie was in. Her combined point-of-view and experience in the commerce space proved to be an asset in the burgeoning fashion tech scene two years ago.

When looking at the space now, Stephanie see roadblocks for certain companies such as ShoeDazzle and Beachmint which require inventory. Investors recognize these companies take more time and patience to see the desired growth but they must also take into consideration who will continue to fund the startups after the seed round. Asked if “Series A crunch” exists, Stephanie answers yes since so many companies are entering the space and creating a lot of noise resulting in fewer competitors getting funded. Palmeri advises having really strong metrics and differentiating yourself from the crowds which are becoming overly saturated. She cites Poshmark’s mix of mobile, photos, social and commerce as a prime example of bringing something unique to the table. The shopping app isn’t just about commerce, it is also about the community it has created. She recommends having a story that stands out and keeps customers coming back for more. Metrics reviewed during the seed round include (numbers may vary) being in the market for a few months with traction, being live and letting people in gently, showing month over month growth and repeat customer behavior.

Stephanie is currently interested in B2B commerce and the challenges companies face in fulfillment and merchandising. She is not investing in anything that competes with her current portfolio companies. As a consumer, Palmeri would like truly personalized shopping. As an investor, she wants to see merchandising problems solved. Stephanie provided the audience with her two pitching pet peeves: Instead of taking a long-winded approach, summarize the problem you are solving in 1-2 sentences and lead the conversation with the statement. Also, when attending pitch meetings, refrain from bringing advisors, or what Stephanie refers to as the “creepy old dude”, which could make for an awkward situation. Her suggestion for connecting and getting in touch is through warm introductions. Look into who she knows and, more importantly, who she respects.

At the end of the evening, the resounding key messages included know your strengths, respect others, clearly define the brand voice, tell stories through engaging and compelling content, and differentiate yourself from the competitors.

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Avelinda Garcia is principal at Superstylin* specializing in fashion consultation, creative project management and content curation. Her career began at Women’s Wear Daily and W and for over a decade she worked for ready-to-wear designer CHAIKEN. Miss Garcia is currently an adjunct professor at the Art Institute of California in the Fashion Design and Fashion Marketing & Management Departments. You can follow her here. 

Image via TWF.

Affiliate marketing, as mentioned, is essentially a commission paid on a sale. When a visitor to your webite clicks a link (or makes a purchase, depending on the provider), you generate revenue.

Here’s something you probably didn’t know: almost all affiliate marketing that takes place on the web falls under a patent owned and licensed by the Tobin Family Education and Health Foundation. A man named William J. Tobin developed – and patented – the idea of affiliate marketing on the web around his company, PC Flowers and Gifts, on the Prodigy Network, way back in 1998. (Good thinking, Bill.)

The Good

Affiliate marketing is relatively easy to set up. For testing a business concept – and proving that there’s revenue to be generated – it can be fantastic. Very early stage startups can benefit from this greatly, especially when in the fundraising stage. Larger, more established companies can benefit as well; with high traffic, the dollars can start to add up. The ability to build a fashion business without holding inventory is important, and using affiliate marketing is the easiest way to make this happen.

The Bad 

The percentages paid out can be quite low, so the traffic needed to justify affiliate marketing as a business model can be quite high. We always recommend to our clients that they have multiple revenue streams. The (traffic) bar is very high for a business to become profitable on affiliate revenue alone.

Setting up affiliate marketing can be easy – but tweaking it can be complex and time-consuming. You’ll need to know which programs work best for which types of posts / links, and what type of content drives the most clicks or purchases.

The Players 

ShopSense // One of the top choices for affiliate marketing in the fashion industry, ShopSense (owned by POPSugar) uses ad units, widgets, and API’s. Critisized for a lack of analytics, some users have turned to link shorteners when using the platform. The program is one of PPC (Pay Per Click), so it’s best for high-traffic, low sales-generating sites.

Reward Style // Another very popular option is Reward Style. The company has good analytics, and is known for working with Pinterest. They are a pay-per-sale program, paying out when your user makes an actual purchase – so it’s best for sites that really know that their users are in a shopping mood.

Skimlinks // Based in London, Skimlinks is a very popular option as well. Known for it’s ease of use, the company boasts access to 18,000 affiliate programs.

72 Lux // While not a traditional affiliate program, universal shopping cart SaaS platform 72 Lux is offering an interesting platform for publishers (bloggers, magazines, and editorially focused companies) to monetize sales without making users leave their site.

Other affiliate programs include Beso, ShareASale, Affiliate Window, and Rakuten LinkShare. For general products and books, Amazon Affiliate can be a good choice. (And, as we all know, they’re making a fashion play as well.) Google recently shut down it’s own affiliate network.

Fashion Tech Companies

As mentioned before, at the time of this post, we track fashion tech 39 companies in our database that use affiliate marketing in their business models. These include sites like Lyst, Polyvore, Rank & Style, The Cools, and more. Shop It To Me is a perfect example of a company doing affiliate marketing well. So well, in fact, that they are able to support 26 employees with their 3 million users. We love their new-ish feature, Threads.

Affiliate marketing is an important supplement to many business models, and when done right, can be great revenue generator. Focused businesses are even able to build entire companies on it. Subscribers to our fashion tech database can search 700+ companies, including 39 affiliate-using sites.

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Liza Kindred is the founder of Third Wave Fashion. Third Wave Fashion consults for startups, brands, investors, and publishers to help them navigate the wild-and-crazy intersection of fashion and tech. We also have a database with over 10,000 data points about 650+ fashion tech companies, amazing monthly reports, a meetup group, and a blog. Sign up for our newsletter to stay in touch! 

Chrysi is a seasoned marketing and communications professional with years of experience in the tech arena. She was one of the first employees at Espotting, an early search marketing company that began during the dot-com bubble and thrived; Chrysi helped grow the company across eight markets, even helping it get acquired by FindWhat.com (now MIVA.)

At (RED), Chrysi describes an entrepreneurial atmosphere and a roster of just fifteen employees, despite the high publicity work the organization does. A large part of what (RED) aims to do is mobile partnerships, with one of their first being Shazam, the app that lets users discover and share new TV shows, brands, and music. With the partnership, mobile users can download (SHAZAM) ^RED which has the same functionalities as Shazam, except the company donates 20% of the purchase price to help fund AIDS and HIV programs in Africa.

Chrysi spoke on the necessity of providing quality products to help support a cause, as a cause alone is not enough to bring awareness and satisfy customers. She expressed her passion for making a difference at (RED), appreciating the added benefit of providing great products for consumers while achieving their primary goal of helping AIDS sufferers across the African continent and noted, ”We have a fundamental belief that business that does good will also do well.”

We look forward to the next Founder’s Breakfast by Women Innovate Mobile that will be led by WIM Co-founder Veronika Sonsev. On the panel will be our very own, Liza Kindred, John Burbank, President of Nielsen Strategic Initiatives, and Deborah Jackson, CEO of Plum Alley. If you’d like to know more or attend, go here.

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Melissa Sulewski is Assistant to the CEO at TWF. Third Wave Fashion consults for startups, brands, investors, and publishers to help them navigate the wild-and-crazy intersection of fashion and tech. We also have a database with over 10,000 data points about 650+ fashion tech companies, amazing monthly reports, a meetup group, and a blog. Sign up for our newsletter to stay in touch!

Image via Flickr

]]> http://thirdwavefashion.com/2013/05/seeing-red-chrysi-philalithes-partnerships-that-make-a-difference/feed/ 0 http://thirdwavefashion.com/2013/05/report-ny-state-of-mind/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=report-ny-state-of-mind http://thirdwavefashion.com/2013/05/report-ny-state-of-mind/#comments Thu, 16 May 2013 17:56:20 +0000 Liza Kindred http://thirdwavefashion.com/?p=8181 We’re so pleased to announce that the next issue of our in-depth monthly Fashion Tech Reports is out. This time, we explore the world of fashion tech through the lens of New York City. But first, we’ve packed this report full of juicy fashion tech knowledge.

We cover everything that happened in fashion tech last month: all of the industry news (there was a ton), successful partnerships, newly launched fashion tech startups, and we take a comprehensive look at investments in the space.

In this issue, we introduce you to a couple of movers and shakers: Shauna Mei, founder of AhaLife, and Laura Zapata, founder of The Future of Fashion series. We look at the trends of customization, virtual closets (who’s not building one?) and the proliferation of online / offline companies. We think it’s important to know what tools brands are using, so we profile the fantastic b2b SaaS tool Olapic. We define the term “collaborative consumption” and tell you why we don’t use the term e-commerce anymore.

We loaded in extra information in this report about New York City – a list of co-working spaces in the city, places to host events, and even added in some neighborhood profiles as written by the Third Wave Fashion team.

For our blog readers, we’re offering 25% off of annual memberships using code TWF25. Become a fashion tech expert! Subscribe today.

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Third Wave Fashion consults for startups, brands, investors, and publishers to help them navigate the wild-and-crazy intersection of fashion and tech. We also have a database with over 10,000 data points about 650+ fashion tech companies, amazing monthly reports, a meetup group, and a blog. Sign up for our newsletter to stay in touch! 

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.

TWF: What inspired you to start Snapette?

Jinhee: When my family moved to London, my first activity was of course to explore London’s infamous boutiques. To prepare for my shopping weekend, I Google searched for about two hours until I found a list of places I wanted to visit. I then had to write down the store addresses and proceeded to plan my own route. Once I was actually in the maze of London’s streets, I was completely lost and wondered why there wasn’t an app for women shoppers to navigate shops around them in real time. The experience was frustrating from a consumer perspective, but it also dawned on me that a ton of foot traffic into stores is deterred by the difficulty of easily searching and discovering nearby stores.

Sarah: The core vision of Snapette was to create an app that could help shoppers find great products and stores near them. Initially we were crowd sourcing this information from our strong community of passionate female shoppers who were taking photos of their shopping finds and tagging them with location. Boutiques and major brands quickly recognized that Snapette was the perfect platform for them to reach shoppers nearby, and so we quickly evolved from a purely social platform, to working directly with a wide range of retailers from top boutiques like Curve and Otte, to large retailers and brands such as Nordstrom, Theory, Nine West, Rebecca Minkoff and over 200 others.

Jinhee: Social media managers and store owners now manage their own Snapette accounts and we’ve been really excited to work with national brands like Nordstrom and Ann Taylor on campaigns that use Snapette’s geofencing technology and active social community to send foot traffic into stores. Snapette’s ability to send shoppers into stores is a clear conversion that advertising has struggled with for decades and we’re able to solve that problem with the app.

TWF: What value does Snapette have compared to other companies in the fashion tech space?

Sarah: Snapette is the first and largest location-based mobile app focused on shopping. There are many established sites and apps that help you find nearby restaurants and food, but still relatively unchartered in terms of fashion retail. We’re so excited about all the ways that mobile will transform retail and the huge opportunity to leverage mobile and location information to help shoppers both discover and search for great nearby products and stores.

Jinhee: A stat that really grabbed our attention when we first started was that 90% of retail is still bought in the real world versus online. We identified a huge opportunity to help direct shoppers into stores and make the offline search and discovery process easy and simple for shoppers.

Sarah: We now have over 2,000 retail locations tagged to the Snapette app and that number grows on a daily basis. We’re seeing great traction throughout the United States in addition to Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East. It’s so thrilling to have helped create a global community of women who share their shopping finds and love discovering hidden boutiques gems, as well as large stores around them.

Jinhee: With our global user base on Snapette, we realized that we needed to make the shopping experience even easier for them by incorporating the in-app purchase. The novelty of being able to easily click to buy a cute pair of shoes you find in a boutique in Geneva, a shirt in San Francisco, and a necklace from New York, all from your mobile phone, is really astonishing and speaks to the new connectedness of the world. The true innovation here is that mobile is leading the global connectivity over the web.

TWF: What has been the hardest obstacle for you in starting Snapette? What has been your favorite part?

Sarah: Since Snapette is still very much so a startup, work still takes up most all of Jinhee and my waking hours. So when I do have some free moments, I really try to make the most of it. I have become very good at carving out time, however small, during which I unplug completely from work. For example, if I am eating dinner with a friend, I do not check my phone or email. Of course if it’s absolutely necessary and I am awaiting an important message, I’ll make exceptions- but I’m not saving lives here. Work can wait one hour. I try to keep Friday nights and Sunday mornings free from work, no email or phone.

Given that it’s hard to separate work and personal life, I really like how comfortable I am in sharing many aspects of my personal life with my team. I love the fact that we are all not just co-workers, but good friends as well. We know a lot about each other’s lives and frequently talk about our families and significant others. It’s something that I think is very unique and special about being at a small, early stage startup. Given we do spend so much time at work, I’d hate to have to neglect or block out my personal life while I am at work.

Jinhee: We also love being at the forefront of a very exciting space and an interesting time in the evolution of tech and retail. Everyday we’re thinking about how we will bridge online and offline retail through a uniquely mobile platform.

We’re working on creating something that utilizes new technology in the very old brick and mortar retail industry, and we really believe this idea has potential to disrupt the offline shopping experience. I also enjoy the team we get to work with everyday. It’s a grueling demanding pace and having this group of people on the team (who have become like a family) makes each day a very positive experience. //

You can download the free Snapette app for Android and iPhone here: www.snapette.com/app

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Kellie Friedman is the Research & Editorial Intern for TWF. Third Wave Fashion consults for startups, brands, investors, and publishers to help them navigate the wild-and-crazy intersection of fashion and tech. We also have a database with over 10,000 data points about 650+ fashion tech companies, amazing monthly reports, a meetup group, and a blog. Sign up for our newsletter to stay in touch! 

Prior to starting Bow & Drape, Aubrie earned a degree from Harvard University in history and literature, as well as worked as a management consultant for Fidelity Investments. In 2011, Aubrie decided to pursue her dream and become an entrepreneur, launching her first startup, Zoora Fashion. The online marketplace was named one of Teen Vogue’s “Top Ten Websites that Will Change the Way you Shop.”

In September 2012, Aubrie launched her second venture in fashion tech, Bow & Drape. The “Build-A-Bear for womens apparel” includes a vertically integrated manufacturing supply chain and distribution. With six silhouettes, women can choose everything from sleeve length, to hem length, color and embellishment detailing, creating an item all their own. The silhouettes, which range from maxi dresses to scarves, are designed by Sarah Parrott, who was once a contestant on NBC’s reality show “Fashion Star.”

You can follow Aubrie on Twitter: @AubriePagano

There’s still a couple of hours left to purchase your ticket to the “Founders Tell All” meetup in San Francisco. Get yours now! In addition to Aubrie,  panel members include Brian Sugar of Popsugar, Stephanie Palmeri of SoftTech VC, Lindsey Guest of Beauty Army, and Colin Stuart of Betabrand.

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Kellie Friedman is the Research & Editorial Intern for TWF. Third Wave Fashion consults for startups, brands, investors, and publishers to help them navigate the wild-and-crazy intersection of fashion and tech. We also have a database with over 10,000 data points about 650+ fashion tech companies, amazing monthly reports, a meetup group, and a blog. Sign up for our newsletter to stay in touch! 

Prior to founding Sugar Inc. in 2006 with his wife Lisa Sugar, Brian was the VP of Marketing and later the VP and General Manager of 2Wire, Inc. He has also served as Chief Web Officer at KMart’s BlueLight.com, VP of E-commerce at J.Crew, and founder of DC-based Neptune Interactive.

Brian, along with his wife and team of over 270 employees, have grown PopSugar into a multi-million dollar business. Since their launch, Sugar Inc. has acquired countless startups including Circle of Moms, ShopStyle, FreshGuide, Shopflick, and Starbrand Media, as well as raised close to $50 million in funding.

Brian will be on our “Founder Tell All” panel, speaking about his founding story.  You can follow him on Twitter: @BrianSugar.

Get tickets for the “Founders Tell All” meet-up here. In addition to Brian, panel members include Stephanie Palmeri of SoftTech VC, Lindsey Guest of Beauty Army, Colin Stuart of Betabrand and Aubrie Pagano of Bow and Drape.

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Kellie Friedman is the Research & Editorial Intern for TWF. Third Wave Fashion consults for startups, brands, investors, and publishers to help them navigate the wild-and-crazy intersection of fashion and tech. We also have a database with over 10,000 data points about 650+ fashion tech companies, amazing monthly reports, a meetup group, and a blog. Sign up for our newsletter to stay in touch!