LOOKK, a platform that connects young designers with consumers through an open social network, re-launches today with an impressive team of seed investors, including Net-a-Porter founder Carmen Busquets, Eden Ventures and 500 Startups founder Dave McClure (Update – January 2023: The website seems to be out of use, and we therefore deactivated the original link).
LOOKK is the brainchild of Andreas Klinger, Tamas Locher and Gilbert Wedam, who formerly founded Garmz, last year’s winner of Seedcamp. The fashion startup, which just re-branded as LOOKK, has its roots in Vienna and is today headquartered in London. As the original concept evolved to encompass a broader proposition and superior product, the team chose to re-brand with a name and style that better reflected the platform.
The LOOKK-team aims to fundamentally change the way young designers and labels enter the fashion market by providing a platform for them to showcase their designs to a community of fashion-lovers, all of whom have the opportunity to feedback on what they love and directly influence the items that are produced for sale within the LOOKK Webshop.
Andreas Klinger, co-founder and COO of LOOKK, said: “Social media has completely changed how new fashion gets discovered. New trends and names now surface more often and quicker than retail and production cycles can adapt to. This leaves an untapped potential of new designers with proven demand but no ‘first steps’ to market – LOOKK provides a solution for this.”
Designers can upload a single design or showcase an entire collection with each item having the potential to be discovered. By garnering support from the LOOKK community as well as their own social networks, they can increase their level of exposure and in turn, have the opportunity to be identified by an expert fashion panel who, using data to estimate market demand, will ultimately choose which items are put into production. Once selected, LOOKK is responsible for the high-quality manufacturing, distribution and disbursement of the pieces, including all associated costs.
“LOOKK felt to me like the natural evolution for technology in fashion – something I wanted to explore following Net-a-Porter,” commented Carmen Busquets. “The detailed market data available through LOOKK means we can predict demand for pieces much more efficiently than with a traditional model. This, coupled with shorter production cycles, means we can produce smaller, demand-driven, batches – significantly reducing waste, and therefore costs.”
As well as Carmen Busquets, Eden Ventures and Dave McClure, LOOKK has also received seed investment from Kima Ventures and the angel investors Richard Titus, Sherry Coutu and Tom Hulme.
By the way: You can find out about other interesting startups from Austria in this list.
