Dear Friend,
Last week we've had a Balanced Fashion event with the founders of Nineteenth Amendment, Gemma and Amanda. We spoke about their innovative company that focuses on facilitating production for emerging brands, as well as uses its marketplace to promote these young brands' works. The main idea behind Nineteenth Amendment is giving customers freedom of voting with their wallets to support young designers' talent, so that only items that have been purchased are being produced. This business model is intrinsically sustainable and future-looking. Existing stock or cash on hand for production is no longer required for brands who partner with Nineteenth Amendment. A beautiful, quality product, marketing, and development of the relationship with a customer through storytelling is all that is required from the designer. Every week, a fresh emerging brand's presale is launched, each lasts for 19 days. Designers enjoy exposure to passionate customers, receive production consulting and get in-depth analytics for products performance on site. While the consumers have a choice to buy unique, ethical fashion products, fresh from local factories. It's such a genius idea to ignore the rules of contemporary fashion and to create a seasonless, sustainable business! I truly hope that bigger, more established brands will follow this model eventually - not just create see-now-buy-now fashion shows twice a year.
At the event, Amanda and Gemma and I discussed the current state of our broken industry and how they're seeing re-balance with help of hyper-local, just in time production and why Nineteenth Amendment is an essential piece to bring this vision to reality. We also touched upon challenges of being women co-founders in technology business and fundraising, the value of accelerators and mentorships, and the importance of complementary skills partnership. You can view the recorded live stream of the event on 19th Amendment Facebook page.
Important to note for any growth-stage, women-led B2B start up developing innovations at the intersection of fashion, retail, and technology: applications are open until 12/4 for New York Fashion Tech Lab! The 12-week program will take place from March - June 2018. Through a competitive process, the lab’s fashion & retail partners, Springboard Enterprises, and lab team members review submissions, and invite to in-person interviews where ultimately six to ten start ups are selected to enter the program and will receive a number of exclusive mentorship sessions with industry giants, access to special events, and endless membership & alumni benefits within the fashion tech space. Apply here!
As a reminder, next Balanced Fashion event is on Wednesday, December 5th Lona Alia, CEO & Founder of Style Lend will speak about running a peer-to-peer fashion rentals company and share her vision of the future of our wardrobes. Excited to see you there!
News Digest:
- The real story behind those desperate notes that Zara workers left in clothes - Fast Company
- From torching to gifting: How fast-fashion companies are purging excess inventory - Glossy
- Poshmark Raises $87.5 Million, Partners with Amazon on Personal Styling Service - The Business of Fashion
- Clothes Made From a Data-Storing Textile Will Remember Pass Codes for You - Quartz
- The supply chain is becoming part of luxury designers’ branding strategies - Glossy
- Is mass customisation the future of footwear? - WSJ
- Faith Connexion CEO Alexandre Allard: ‘Something is very wrong’ with fashion - Glossy
- The Future of Getting Dressed: AI, VR and Smart Fabrics - CNN Money
- Apple Is Back to Being the World's Top Wearable Maker - TechCrunch
- Alibaba's AI Fashion Consultant Helps Achieve Record-Setting Sales - MIT Technology Review
- For Amazon, the Future of Alexa Is About the End of the Smartphone Era - Fast Company
- Microsoft Thinks It Can Make Holograms the Future of Retail - Wired
- Can Connected Handbags Bring Emotional Relevance And Customer Loyalty? - Forbes
- Alibaba’s Singles’ Day goes global with record $25bn in sales - Bloomberg
Events
Tuesday, November 21st
6:00pm Meet Investors & Present Deals @ The 40/40 Club
Meet w/ 40+ investors & entrepreneurs inside Jay Z's lounge @ The 40/40 Club to raise capital & find deals. We are specifically focused on active deals: matching projects that need funding with investors who have funds & are looking for deals. Price: Free Location: The 40/40 Club, 6 W 25th St
6:30pm Data-Driven - Marketing & The Holidays
The holidays are a special time for marketers - so we've gathered NYC's savviest marketers in one room to talk about how they maximize their holiday efforts, develop effective discount strategies, and convert seasonal buyers into lifelong customers.With Jon Chang (Dir. Mktg, Kickstarter), Briana Severson (Dir. Mktg, TodayTix), Jason Nickel (Head of Digital, Greats), Jared Graf (Head of Mktg, Fluent City). Price: Free Location: WeWork HQ, 115 W 18th St, 4th Wednesday
7:00pm Infinitely Immersive VR w/ Samsung
Discover a new experience each session with the Samsung 360 camera, Gear VR headset, & Galaxy S8+. Each session will cover a different topic, ranging from gaming & education to social media in VR. You'll learn how to capture, share, & relive any experience using the Samsung infinitely immersive ecosystem. Price: Free Location: Samsung 837 Space, 837 Washington St
Wednesday, November 22nd
6:30pm Startup Show & Tell
Come one come all to our StartUp Show & Tell Evening! You bring your startup, business, tech, idea and we will bring the refreshments! Simple: You come, we drink & hang out for a bit, then let the show & tell begin! you have 3 minutes to pitch us. Then we get to ask questions, share ideas and critique your service, product, business idea. Price: Free Location: CoLab-Factory, 14 Dekalb Ave, 3rd Fl, Brooklyn
6:30pm Constraints & Blue Sky Design - Role Of Imagination In Process Design
In the world of process & process improvement, it is important to be realistic about what is actually possible. Constraints often prevent us from designing the process of our dreams. In this meetup we will discuss what a constraint is in the context of business process optimization, how to identify them by using creative design activities, & how these imaginative exercises can be practically applied for realistic process improvement. Price: Free Location: IBM Atrium, 590 Madison Ave
Wednesday, November 29th
6:00am Daybreaker NYC
Yoga, dance party, special surprises + live performances. Bedazzle your sweatband and practice those z snaps —we're throwing an '80s vogue party. Price: $40 Location: TBA
9:00am SheWorx Roundtable w/ Lunacap Ventures *
SheWorx Roundtable: Jules Miller, Partner, Lunacap Ventures. Discussion Topic: Preparing Your Startup For Scale: How To Manage A Growing Team Price: $40 Location: Neuehouse, 110 E 25th St
6:00pm Future Robot/Human Relationships & Conflicts + Automata Film Screening
The goal of this interactive workshop is to explore several implications of creating the next generation of robots that technologists, scientists, ethicists and governments are grappling with today. Using the 2014 scifi movie Automata as a guide for a cross-disciplinary, interactive discussion covering robot ethics, algorithmic biases, robot/human intimacy (physical and emotional), the robot workforce, our expert guest speaker, Dan Chen, will walk us through how he and experts are defining how we will live and work with robots now and in the future. Price: $30 Location: Infinity Gallery NYC, 79 Leonard St
7:00pm – 9:00pm 5to9 LIVE RECORDING featuring Munish Taneja (UX Lead at Google & Founder of MrMiSocki) *
In our next podcast recording, we are interviewing Munish Taneja, a mobile UX lead at Google and founder of MrMiSocki. MrMiSocki is a sock collection that is released in conjunction with a comic book story and mismatch socks that represent characters from each of those volumes. After a very successful Kickstarter launch, they've been featured in GQ, Refinery 29, Men's Health and many other publications. Price: $10 Location: Voyager, 137 W 25th St, 11th Fl
Thursday, November 30th
6:30pm - 9:00pm Waste Not *
We're looking to explore and uncover opportunities for brands to easily adopt sustainable solutions through collaborative efforts and discussions of best practices to ultimately create a movement for change within our fashion community. Timing is critical to lessen our waste production and strain on the environment’s resources. The fashion industry as a whole is the 5th largest pollution producer on the planet. Discovering best practices for eliminating pre-consumer waste from the production stream will prove exponentially beneficial not only to a brand's bottom line, but also on the environment as a whole. Price: $5 Location: Rumpus Room 249 Eldridge Street New York NY
6:30pm First ever #MindfulTech meetup!
For our inaugural meetup, we're bringing you an insightful panel of three pros in the #mindfultech space. We'll discuss what mindful technology actually is (and isn't), how to build + use technology in a way that helps us to be more connected to each other instead of to our devices, and what the burgeoning world of mindful technology looks like now–and what will happen as it explodes. Come connect with fellow #mindfultech enthusiasts and get in on the ground floor as we build this community together! Price: $10 Location: Leesa Dream Gallery. 112 Wooster Street.
Tuesday, December 5th
8:00am - 5:00pm Fashion Digital NY 2017 *
FDNY17 is expected to attract 500+ of the leading minds in fashion and ecommerce technology, including heads of ecommerce and heads of digital marketing making significant technology decisions. Price: Free for retailers Location: 333 West 23rd Street
6:30pm - 8:30pm Future of Peer-to-Peer Fashion Rentals w/Lona Alia of Style Lend *
Style Lend offers peer to peer fashion rentals and helps women monetize their closet by renting out their clothing and accessories. Women are enabled to access to their dream wardrobe by allowing users to borrow any item at 90% off retail. I'm a huge believer that the business models like Style Lend will thrive in our sharing economy and the rise of conscious consumption. Come and learn about the insights of running a peer-to-peer rental business and learn Lona's vision of the future of fashion industry. Price: Free Location: Galvanize, 315 Hudson Street, 2nd Floor
Tuesday, December 12th
This inspiring event series invites key players in NYC’s design community to offer an insider’s look into how they work and create. From branding to user experience to city planning, speakers will discuss how they approach projects from a design point of view, how design thinking methods help with problem-solving, and much more. Plus, they’ll cover opportunities within the field and their vision for the future of the industry. Price: Free Location: General Assembly, 902 Broadway, 4th Floor
* Event with an asterisk means that Nataliya will be attending it :)
Cool Finds:
- Customizable Sweaters by Thursday Finest - sustainably-made by Japanese 3D-knitting robots for the perfect fit. Support Veronika's Indiegogo campaign by purchasing a Fash Tech Insider Perk, a special promo for my newsletter readers! Take part in on-demand production fashion tech revolution!
- MIT's DuoSkin - temporary tattoos that turn your body into an interface.
A Balanced Thought:
"I do think [creativity in fashion] will rebalance. Brands know they have to fix things, but they want it to cope with the model that is pleasing the financial analysts, the bankers, the investors. You don’t have to deliver 20 to 30 percent growth per year. This is the problem. You don’t need to fit yourself in the growth model. Just do your job, be happy and have clients."
- Alexandre Allard, CEO of Faith Connexion
Stay Inspired,
Nataliya