Fashion Businesses? where are you?

In my last corporate job, I ran Global Innovation and the RFID business at the Retail Group of Avery Dennison, serving large brands and retailers like Adidas, Burberry, Levi's, Macy's, Marks & Spencer, Nike, Uniqlo, etc.

I concluded that the supply chain is badly broken, with extremely long supply chains stretching from East/South Asia and Central America supply for low cost, to EU/North American demand. This means that merchants need to guess about demand months in advance, and ~30% of the time they're too optimistic and need to discount excess inventory to make room for the next container load of product arriving from overseas.

Emerging brands struggle to earn space at established department stores, or pour millions into digital marketing campaigns where CAC (customer acquisition cost) is the new rent.

The situation is unsatisfactory for the demand side as well: shoppers have to guess which brands fit their size and style, and confirm with painful trial and error in stores 80% of the time. Online orders suffer 30-40% return rates, and many shoppers end up settling for barely "good enough."

Rather than chasing the female fashionista marketplace with yet another DNVB (digitally native vertical brand), I decided to take a contrarian approach that's fit for the 21st century.

THE SOLUTION: THE WARDROBE ESSENTIALIST is a 2-sided marketplace * for men who want to look great but hate shopping for clothes * for the apparel brands who need to grow their online business profitably

BEACHHEAD CONSUMER SEGMENT: 20-something men in the US who are transitioning into jobs where they can no longer dress like college students: ~30% who are in offices with Business Casual or Suit & Tie dress codes.

DEMAND-SIDE SOLUTION MVP (http://my.wardrobeessentialist.com/?utm_source=WSO&utm_medium=post&utm_…</a">my.wardrobeessentialist.com) * Automated personalized assortment: “An Online Dress Shirt Shop, Built Just for You,” with no styling fees, subscriptions, or markups. * 30-second profile process drives proprietary algorithm selecting the best-fitting items * Text/image analytics clusters similar-looking items for easy visual browsing * Current production system draws from a selection of 80,000 dress shirts from 17 top brands, with up-to-date pricing & availability * Users find their best value in minutes, 10X faster than a trip to the store.

BUSINESS MODEL * Free to the end-user * Earn commissions from retailers on transactions we route to their sites. * Longer-term: earn marketing fees from brands by connecting them with their best prospects, based on first-party size and style preference data shared by users who have opted-in.

While our initial business plan delivers value by connecting men with the established brands that designed with them in mind, I'm actually most excited about the opportunity to help new brands reach under-served market segments, or bring entirely new styles to market, with much lower Customer Acquisition Costs that either brick & mortar or digital marketing currently allow.

Looking for your feedback