What else was the name a play on, aside from 'Boutique'?
Looks pretty cool, out of sheer curiosity though, what is the female/male ratio in at this startup? Seeing stuff like this makes me wonder what more women in tech/startups would create. This seems like an ingenious use of social+fashion to me.
I totally agree with you though - more women in tech is a good thing!
Maybe if you had some featured pieces with an explanation of how they fit into current trends, e.g. "Color blocking is really hot right now, so check out these shoes and dresses.", you'd more effectively create a fashion-specific brand.
Another thing you could do is, for each designer, show any press they've received right out of the gate. You say your designers have been featured in Elle etc, but I have no idea which designers they are.
Thanks!
The biggest difference between us and them is how we get our products. Each of the designers is hand picked for the site, whereas they partner with major retailers and pull in products from there. In that regard, our catalogue is growing MUCH slower, but we think the careful focus on finding designers our users will love and can connect with makes a huge difference.
Interestingly enough, it's pretty popular in Eatern Europe as well. Women in Poland love discovering fashion.
Did you have programming/web design skills beforehand or did you join up with a technical co-founder? How did you guys meet?
Thanks
Yeah, I was an IB analyst for 2 years. After that switched over to the investing side spending a few years focusing on consumer internet and software companies. Both of these experiences definitely helped me with starting a business. You come across so many different entrepreneurs and business models that you get a good feel for what works and what doesn't work. Granted, every company is completely different and most of the things that work for one company don't work for others, but it just gives you a lot of insight and learnings. You also get an inside look at what investors look for and struggle with in terms of business models and teams which is helpful.
I did not and currently do not have programming or web design skills and it took a really long time to find the right partner to join the business. I started out getting the product outsourced and when I had something presentable, I started getting a lot of interested from the developer community. I spent a lot of time going to meet ups and other events to connect with developers. We met at one of the events, but stayed in touch regularly over a few months. We both had very similar visions for the business and the product and really seemed to work well together. It took a lot of time, but now we have a great team in place that we are both extremely happy with.
I'm especially curious because GS is mentioned in the title of the post, which suggests it must be important to the poster and perhaps relevant to HNers.
The svpply idea is interesting. We hadn't considered that! Thank you for the suggestion.
Actually another question -- my boyfriend (http://www.lastplacefootwear.com) is currently trying to get a feel for what designs of his people are into before he sets out to spend money on production. Right now we're just building a voting-type system into his site, but is there any likelihood that your platform could assist in helping people determine market interest of their wares or will it always purely be for products that are already on shelves?
Outside of that, we don't have plans to expand to offer those tools to third parties.