Third Wave Fashion // OCTOBER 2013 // THE PRIVACY ISSUE | Page 25
We reached out to Co-Founder & CEO Daina
Burnes Linton to learn more.
What inspired you to start Fashion Metric?
I come from a family of three generations of menswear tailors and was always
fascinated by both men and women’s fashion. e story of how Fashion
Metric came about goes back to when I competed in Lean Startup Machine, a
weekend competition all about learning the “lean startup” principles. It was
during that competition that we discovered that men had an overall problem
finding clothes that fit their body type. is is why many men feel the need to
shop in physical stores or get custom-made clothing. We came up with the
idea of developing a personalized discovery platform for men to find clothes
that fit to better enable their online shopping experience. Aer that we
competed in AngelHack where we built an initial prototype and secured an
angel investment from Mark Cuban. We decided to go full time and haven’t
looked back since! We want to change the way men shop for clothes online.
Today we like to think of Fashion Metric as the Pandora of Menswear.
Customers provide very basic info about their favorite brand and our Fit
Technology extrapolates their full complement of measurements to match
them with a selection of brands that carry sizes that fit their body and match
their personal style.
How do you differentiate your company from other discovery
engine platforms?
e Fashion Metric platform is all about helping men discover brands that fit
their body and match their style. Other discovery platforms focus their
recommendations on similar aesthetic attributes or social features and oen
focus on a broad audience. For us it’s all about algorithmically gathering a
selection of clothes for the customer that is personalized just for them. Unlike
many discovery engines that are broken down into a multitude of categories,
Fashion Metric is laser-focused on menswear starting with button-downs/
dress shirts and expanding from there.
While women are still seen as the major fashion consumer
in many ways, why did you decide to focus on menswear
instead?
Men care about how they look but exhibit different shopping behavior
compared to women, and these differences can be particularly advantageous
for e-commerce. Women enjoy the thrill of the hunt, while men want a fast
and efficient experience. 67% of the 19 million affluent men in the US are
already making online purchases multiple times per month. More men are
shopping online than ever before, accounting for a faster growing e-commerce
market than women’s, at a 13% annual growth rate compared to 10% for
women’s. e big reason why we focused on menswear was in recognition of
their general problem in finding clothes that fit, which can hinder their
comfort in buying unfamiliar brands online. rough our independent
research we found that 90% of men expressed difficulty in finding clothes that
fit. We want to redesign the shopping experience that has traditionally
emphasized women’s shopping habits and tailor it to how men prefer to shop:
fast, efficient and effortless.
What was the most challenging aspect of getting Fashion
Metric started? How did you overcome it and what did you
learn?
In the beginning ݔ