That’s a lot of lipstick and high heels.

Zalora focuses on 10 countries in Asia: Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. The year-old startup says it has already achieved “annualized double-digit million USD revenues.”

“Our company is one of the fastest growing e-commerce companies in Southeast Asia and has bright prospects,” said managing director Michele Ferrario. “It is an honor for us that investors of such great repute have invested into an e-commerce company as young as Zalora”

It is indeed an honor when a year-old startup with two or three million dollars in annualized revenue scores a $100 million investment. And it’s an unusual honor as well. But there’s method behind the madness.

The investment was secured by the German holding company that owns Zalora, Rocket Internet, which claims to be “the largest, fastest and most successful international online venture builder.” Founded by the infamous Samwer brothers — who Jason Calacanis has called “despicable thieves” —  its modus operandi has been to take successful models from American startups and apply them globally.

Genius, perhaps, if not very original. And very, very successful.

Rocket Internet sold Groupon clone CityDeal to Groupon for $126 million in 2010 and eBay clone Alando to eBay for $50 million, among many other lucrative deals. That history is undoubtedly part of what led the investment group, led by Summit Partners, Investment AB Kinnevik, and the Verlinvest and Tengelmann Group, to participate in this $100 million round.

Source: Rocket Internet

Rocket Internet’s impressive portfolio of companies

A big chunk, 25 percent, of Zalora’s revenue comes from mobile commerce, and the company says its app is the top lifestyle app in all the countries it serves, and the top app overall for Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam.

In other words, Rocket Ventures saw an opportunity to take a big slice of an emerging market, and is moving rapidly — and with massive investment — to own the space.

The capital will be used, Zalora said, to scale up operations and grow the number of local and international brands it carries.

The company has just delivered its millionth order.

photo credit: AehoHikaruki via photopin cc

Abbey Post is a plus-size fashion marketplace and community. The company just released a totally rebuilt version of the site, which now features an internal social network and expanded inventory. It takes an Etsy-style approach where anyone, from independent designers to established brands, can sell their wares.

“I chose this model of peer-to-peer commerce specifically because I want to build community,” Schames said in an interview. “Plus-size women feel really disenfranchised, neglected, and left out of conversations about fashion. There are many people who think fat ladies aren’t sexy and don’t care what they look like, even though there are over 100 million plus-size women in the US. If you give them a platform to connect over fashion and buy clothes that make them feel good, that math adds up real fast.”

After leaving her sales job, Schames gained e-commerce experience by founding an online consignment store for luxury accessories. She is a plus-size women herself and was drawn to handbags and jewelry because they are size agnostic. As a professional in New York City, she said it was consistently difficult to find plus-size clothing because a lot of brands are pulling their plus-size clothes out of stores and moving sales entirely online. However, none of the online retailers provided particularly appealing options and none incorporated the social element that makes shopping enjoyable for many women. Schames repeatedly had conversations with women who felt marginalized in the same way and realized there was a bigger opportunity out there.

“I’m not sure who told people that size 14 and up love polyester, but it’s not true,” she said. “Plus-size women are tired of going to the mall and looking through two abandoned racks in the back. Fashion is aspirational and today’s runway model averages a size zero. That does not reflect a majority of women. The fashion industry wants to fetishize thinness and sell us this fantasy, but it’s not real life and it pisses me off. I have a daughter and I don’t want her growing up feeling bad because she isn’t like the magazine. Part of our mission is telling women it is OK to love who you are. I am working hard to bring a positive and accepting and inclusive environment to normal women.”

Social e-commerce and peer-to-peer commerce are trendy right now and changing the experience of shopping online. The e-commerce sector didn’t see too much innovation for many years — brands and retailers put their inventory online and shoppers searched for what they were looking for. Recently, a wave of fashion startups such as Wanelo, Luvocracy, Etsy, Poshmark, and Polyvore have taken various approaches to transforming this experience and finding new ways to browse and buy products online. At a recent media dinner about social e-commerce, Angel List founder Naval Ravikant (who is an investor in Wanelo) said this is the future of shopping.

Abbey Post is using these new models to target an underserved and highly valuable market. It is a passion project that addresses a widespread and unique set of needs. There are other plus-size online retailers out there like Avenue.com, Fashion to Figure, SimpleBe, Jessica London, and OneStopPlus, but Schames said her focus on high-end clothing and her social approach sets AbbeyPost apart. She also said there are products and features in the pipeline that will make Abbey Post an innovative tech company, rather than just a tech-enabled one.

AbbeyPost is bootstrapped and based in New York.

JOOR is an online marketplace for wholesale fashion buying. The company is on track to do more than $350 million in transactions in 2013, which is more than three times the amount from 2012. More than 580 brands and designers and 30,000 buyers use the platform including many of the biggest names in fashion. JOOR recently opened up an office in Milan and is opening one soon in Sydney.

This is a prime example of a company applying technology to an industry that is predominantly offline, and succeeding. Founder Mona Bijoor said that most transactions in fashion wholesale happen at trade shows, market appointments, and with handwritten orders. JOOR’s business platform puts the sales process online so retailers and brands can connect in a more efficient way.

“This is a highly fragmented market where retailers can only source products from places they actually go and there is limited data available about the inventory,” she said in an interview. “If online sales of clothing makes sense for the consumer world, why shouldn’t it make sense for wholesale? Our job is to make retailers and brands better, smarter, and faster.”

Bijoor spent most of her career working in fashion with brands like Chanel, Elie Tahari, Cynthia Rowley, and in the buying departments of global retailers. She experienced the pain points on both sides and saw an opportunity to “pioneer wholesale evolution.”

The platform’s core technology connects brands and retailers. Brands create a profile page with marketing materials and retailers put up pages with information about their clients and inventory. Search capabilities are available on both sides using filters like price, trend, region, product etc… and the system finds relevant matches.

Buyers have access to real-time analytics about orders, notes, fulfillment, shipping and billing, as well as lead generation tools. Retailers can look at best selling items, discover new brands, and build and place orders on the platform.

The global fashion industry generates over a $1.5 trillion dollars a year and is growing. Most of the discussion surrounding about fashion tech focuses on consumers, but consumers are at one end of a very long and complicated supply chain that JOOR is  trying to make “less archaic.” This is more important than ever as “fast-fashion” has caused consumers to expect rapid turnover.

Joor’s clients include fashion heavyweights Diane Von Furstenberg, Phillip Lim, Alexander McQueen, Rag & Bone, and Thakoon. Right now the platform is only available for women’s apparel and menswear but Bijoor said she is exploring opportunities in footwear and accessories. Competitors include NuOrder, Balluun, Brandboom, but none have the high profile clientele that JOOR does (although NuOrder raised money from Rachel Zoe).

JOOR is based in New York with offices in LA and Milan and has raised $5.5 million to date from Battery Ventures, Lerer Ventures, Great Oaks VC, Landis Capital, and Forerunner Ventures.

Photo Credit: electric stove/Flickr

Namshi features clothing, accessories, and footwear for women, men, and kids from over 550 international and local brands. Like Zappos, the sites offers free shipping and a flexible return policy. The site serves the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, and Bahrain.

According to a statement issued this morning, Namshi has experienced significant growth in the region and this financing will ramp up operations and support the move to a new, state-of-the-art warehouse and distribution center.

The Internet and e-commerce are exploding in emerging markets around the world. Rocket Internet capitalizes on this momentum by incubating and accelerating clone companies based on popular models, like Amazon, Zappos, and Groupon. Its portfolio includes Asian e-commerce portal Lazada, African online retailers Zando and Jumia, Europe-focused Zalando, and Brazil’s Dafiti.

Summit Partners is an active investor in these of companies and participated in the financing of Lazada, Zando, Jumia, and Dafiti as well as Colombian seller of consumer electronics Linio. Before this round, Namshi raised money from Investment AB Kinnevik, JP Morgan Chase, Blakeney Managament, and Holtzbrink Ventures. JP Morgan also likes startups like these and is an investor in Lazada, Dafiti and Zalando.

These deep pockets combined with Rocket Internet’s vision are a major force bringing e-commerce to the whole world. Next up, perhaps, is an e-commerce portal for Antarctica featuring the latest in extreme cold weather fashion.

Photo credit: Eugene Kaspersky/Flickr

The RealReal has raised $14 million to grow its luxury online resale marketplace, which it claims is “second only to eBay.” The startup’s team of professional stylists and fashion experts hand-select and authenticate pre-owned designer goods from brands like Chanel, Dior, Gucci, Hermes, Louis Vuitton, and Cartier. The goods are sold in 72 hour flash sales for prices at up to 90% off the original cost.

For style mavens who can’t afford to shell out thousands of dollars for a Dior dress or Gucci blazer, The RealReal makes high fashion more accessible. Women also have the opportunity to sell their own stockpile of luxury items, to then (of course) buy different ones.

“We’re changing the way people view their designer wardrobe and luxury items,” said The RealReal founder and CEO Julie Wainwright. “We offer consignors a way to get a return on what they originally paid for their designer items, effortlessly and lucratively.”

When trying to build a marketplace for luxury goods, trustworthiness is key. No one want to pay $400 for a Hermès scarf. The RealReal tackles the uncertainty of buying luxury goods online with its team of “tastemakers” who are responsible for hunting items that “embody timeless luxury” and carefully examining each for authenticity. The stylists also work directly with people who want to resell their designer clothing, shoes, handbags, accessories, and jewelry to assess whether their goods are eligible for sale. Shipping is free and consignors receive between 60 and 70 percent of all sales.

In two years, The RealReal has grown its member base to 750,000 and attracted 1.5 million unique visits in January alone. The startup ships over 15,000 luxury items a month and claims to have a 75 percent sell-through rate for its flash sales. Its revenue has grown tenfold in the past year. The company will use this second round of funding to expand its infrastructure to support this impressive growth.

InterWest Partners led this round, with participation from existing investors Canaan Partners, e.ventures, and Greycroft Partners. Novel TMT Ventures, Panarea Capital, author Suzy Welch, and Sukhinder Singh Cassidy also made strategic investments.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons 

Indian home shopping business Homeshop18 has closed a $30 million funding round as it edges closer to an IPO.

Reuters reported in April of 2012 that the Mumbai, India-based online retailer is eying a $100 million public offering. And this infusion of growth capital is a sure sign that the company is moving in that direction.

Homeshop18 claims to be the largest home shopping and e-commerce business in India. It launched the first home shopping channel in 2008, and sells everything from mobile phones to apparel.

“We are now on the throes of our next phase of growth, and we believe OCP Asia’s investment will help put us on an accelerated path of growth,” said CEO Sundeep Malhotra, in a statement.

The company is poised to take advantage of the rapid growth of India’s online commerce market. The country’s rising middle class and urban population is spending big on products at discounted rates, and is increasingly active on the Internet.

India has 52 million active Internet users and 40 percent of them have shopped online, according to the Internet and Mobile Association of India.

Hedge fund manager OCP Asia has invested $15 Million into the company, matched by an equal contribution from mass media company Network18. The terms of the deal stipulate that Network18 will remain the majority stakeholder in HomeShop18.

Top image via Shutterstock

Attune is a provider of technology solutions for the fashion and lifestyle industry. Today, the company announced a $20 million round of investment to expand its offerings “across all areas of the fashion and lifestyle value chain” to help brands to streamline and manage their operations and optimize their performance.

“At a high level, our services and solutions enable the fashion and lifestyle supply chain to operate much more efficiently,” said CEO Vajira De Silva in an email. “This is a massive industry where competitive advantage is determined by the ability to deliver high-quality products that people want, at a price they want to pay, while turning a good profit. And, since fashion trends constantly shift, achieving these basic goals is far more difficult than it is in other less dynamic industries. We make it possible for organizations across the fashion and lifestyle supply chain (designers, material suppliers, manufacturers, retailers, etc.) to work much more efficiently with each other so they can drive out waste and improve overall responsiveness to market opportunities.”

Customers include Lacoste, Hanes, K Swiss, Reebok, Tommy Hilfiger, G-Star, Levis, and other well-known, international brands. De Silva said that there is an enormous need for greater supply chain and industry-specific IT solutions. Attune specializes in the fashion and lifestyle industry and has offerings for brands, manufacturers, textile manufactures and retail that help them implement SAP to run their businesses.

De Silva founded Attune in 2006 after serving as the CEO of Rapier Consulting where worked extensively with MAS Holdings, a large clothing manufacturer in South Asia, to implement SAP. He founded Attune to bring this expertise to other brands, and the company is now active on five continents with 200 employees. MAS Holdings invested the entirety of this round, and along with the deal, Attune will merge with Sabre Technologies, a software services provider.

Photo credit: Shutterstock/Attune

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Not everybody has a designer on call to craft their wardrobe staples, but a startup called Gustin is redefining the way menswear is designed, created, and sold. Today, the company launched a fully crowdsourced, crowdfunded premium menswear brand and accompanying platform, which sets up a new model for the fashion world.

“We are turning the fashion industry on its head and breaking all the rules,” said founder Josh Gustin during an interview. “We are offering the highest-quality product, crowdsourced, and delivered at wholesale prices. Our goal is to create the perfect pair of jeans and create a super efficient collection that responds directly to what people want. The value proposition is huge, but the community is even bigger. No brand has ever tried this before on this level, and thus no other brand has the flexibility we do. When industry people started getting scared and defensive, we knew we were on to something.”

I met with Gustin and his cofounder Stephen Powell for a tour of the San Francisco production facility, which is tucked down a side road in the heart of downtown. The room was filled with stacks of denim, pockets, zippers, and thread, and the constant din of sewing machines. Unlike many clothing brands, which outsource their production overseas, Gustin and Powell’s office space is across the street and they regularly stop by to ensure that the work is up to their high standards. During the interview, they told me about the company’s background, vision, and how it came to be the largest fashion Kickstarter of all time.

Gustin entered the fashion world while attending graduate school at University of California Berkeley. He realized he’d rather pursue his fashion dreams than work in a bank. He spent a summer learning everything he could about denim and built a premium line of men’s jeans that sold in high-end boutiques. He grew frustrated with the traditional process of designing, manufacturing, convincing boutiques to sell his clothing, and then hoping consumers bought it.

Together, Gustin and Powell launched a Kickstarter campaign to back the production of the next line. They posted one style of jeans, which sold out and surpassed its $20,000 goal in less than 24 hours. To keep up with demand, the duo took a whirlwind, overnight road trip to LA, where they scooped up all the denim that caught their eye. They added more and more fabrics to the selection on their Kickstarter page, and the campaign ultimately closed at $450,000, with orders for 19 different styles.

“Clearly, we have struck a chord with people who want boutique-quality clothing at a reasonable price point, said Powell during the interview. “But Kickstarter is not a platform for sales, so we realized if this model was going to work, we would need our own platform. A lot of guys say that once they get these jeans, they never want to order anything else again. Denim is just the beginning.”

Fashion production requires a lot of guesswork. Designers and retailers have to guess what consumers will like and how many pieces of each item they are likely to buy. It is not cost-effective for brands to produce limited edition lines, and garments often sell out, or worse, don’t sell at all and gather dust on retail shelves. Gustin’s approach eliminates all the guesswork by only producing items that consumers have already backed.

“We can move so much quicker than other brands,” Powell said. We never sell out of any size or any cut because everything is custom-made. If 200 people say they want belts, we can turn that around in a day. We just ask ‘how can we make the best belt possible?’ and however much that comes out to be is how much it costs. It is still 60 percent less than other brands, and we don’t have to cut corners. It also means we can run just five pairs of a certain style if we want, without worrying about hitting a minimum.”

This platform not only cuts inefficiencies out of the manufacturing process, but it is built on a direct pipeline to consumer desires and an active level of customer engagement that other brands lust over and spend significant amounts of money to tap into. Programmer Paul Graham is known for saying “make something people want,” and Gustin’s model does exactly that. Transparency, authenticity, and quality are central to the fabric of the company.

“This is part of the same transition a lot of other industries have already been through with technology,” Gustin said. “It is a shift from power of the brand to the power of the consumer. We are laying bare the brand and saying ‘these are our beliefs, but it will be nothing unless people directly support us.’ Something about the creative element of fashion keeps brands on a pedestal and lets them keep distance from consumers. This model lets us still do the thing we love, which is never cut a corner and design everything we like, and if only a few get into production, that’s fine. Why design stuff if no one wants to wear it?

Gustin is building more than a great line of jeans. It is a company leveraging the Internet’s power of communication, the momentum of crowdsourcing, and a growing national interest in products that are high-quality and have a story behind them. The jeans themselves are an example of old-fashioned craftsmanship. Sewing machines are the most advanced piece of technology in the factory and every step of the process is human-powered. The real innovation lays in Gustin’s fresh approach to building a consumer goods company and redefining the production process in a leaner, more direct, more responsive way.

If Steve Jobs was still around, he could order 100 pairs of Gustins just for himself. Although he was dedicated to another little San Francisco denim company called Levis.

Photo Credit: Gustin

Professional women still want to rock the trends — but don’t want to add to an already overflowing closet.

E-commerce entrepreneurs like Mary Wu (pictured) are experimenting with a new model, a “Netflix for clothing.” Rather than buying a new dress, why not rent one and return it when it’s no longer in style?

For $25 a month, Wu will send you a monthly “box” filled with clothing from stores like Zara and H&M. Boxes can be ordered on the website CoutureSQD by theme, such as professional or date night. Each box contains three outfits, which you can keep for as long as you want. 

“I follow trends and see what’s popular,” said Wu, who developed the website on her own. “A lot of women are like me in that they wear 20 percent of their clothing, 80 percent of the time.”

Wu’s customers will get the satisfaction of wearing a new outfit, but won’t slide into debt. The website just launched, so only about 100 women have signed up, but Wu is confident about her chances with the twenty and thirtysomething professional set.

Websites like RentTheRunway.com are already well-established among young professionals who can’t afford to buy a designer dress, but are willing to fork over about $100 for a one-off rental. CoutureSQD works differently as it’s a subscription service, and specializes in lower-end trendy apparel for everyday use.

This subscription model is tried and tested when it comes to other areas of fashion; Rocksbox focuses on high-end jewelry, Shoedazzle focuses on designer shoes, and TieTry lets people rent fancy ties by mail.

Similarly to these sites, when you want to return the items, CoutureSQD will send a prepaid shipping label by email. The company covers the cost of dry-cleaning, so you won’t need to run the clothes through the wash. If you happen to like an item of clothing and want to keep it, Wu will sell it to you at a discounted price.

The site is still in the early-stages of development, but Wu has identified a strong pain-point. In the coming months, she hopes to recruit additional team-members, and procure a round of angel funding.

“The whole purpose of this is to help women mix and match, and try fashion at a lower-risk,” said Wu.

Would you use a subscription clothing service like this one? Let us know in the comment section below. 

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Big Data and Predictive/Real-time Analytics startups: Are you looking to jumpstart development & accelerate market traction? Sign up for the SAP Startup Focus program to receive technology, support, resources and community to help you develop new applications on SAP HANA, a cutting edge database platform. Get started here, and enter promo code “VB2013″ on the form.

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Indochino is an online menswear store that makes shopping for stylish clothing as painless as possible. Men pick from a selection of suits, shirts, outerwear and accessories to choose their style, customize their choices with details like monograms and linings, and go through a quick step-by-step guide to create their measurement profile. The clothes are then made and delivered within 35 days of ordering.

“Most men need all the help they can get when shopping for their own wardrobe,” said Tom Stemberg, Managing General Partner of Highland Consumer Fund, in a statement. “By providing higher quality custom menswear at a lower cost, Indochino has revolutionized the direct-to-consumer business and become a global presence in custom menswear.”

Highland led this round and Stemberg will join the company’s board. Madrona Venture Group and Acton Capital Partners also participated in this round. Vertically-integrated e-commerce startups are taking off, as well as fashion startups geared towards men who appreciate the convenience of online shopping. Last April, online mens clothing retailer Bonobos raised $16.4 million and other startups like Frank & Oak and Trunk Club have garnered attention for making good style easy and accessible to the average Joe. By cutting out the middlemen, companies like these can offer higher quality goods at a lower cost and prove a greater layer of personalization.

This financing will be used to investment in marketing and product development. Indochina is also opening up a pop up ‘Traveling Tailor’ store in Boston, where men can be measured and styled in person. Indochino is headquartered in Vancouver, BC. It was founded in 2007 and has raised $17.25 million to date.

Photo Credit: Indochino

Today, the firm announced it’s led a $6 million round of funding for the startup. The deal also saw participation from DN Capital, Piton Capital, and Generis Capital. In addition to fueling the site’s expansion in its original marketplace in France, the Videdressing team is hoping to use the cash to push into new, English-speaking markets.

Videdressing aims to offer great prices and discounts on a broad but expertly curated range of apparel and accessories. You can get alerts when your favorite items receive a price reduction that brings them into your budget. Around 70 percent of the site’s inventory is used, and it carries men’s, women’s, and children’s fashion.

The site also has magazine-like editorial content such as photo spreads, interviews, and hand-picked items from guest fashion curators. Videdressing tells us via email that the site’s full inventory includes around 400,000 items from more than 1,700 brands, and that catalog is growing by around 2,500 products per day.

Videdressing was founded in December 2009 by American Meryl Job and and Frenchman Renaud Guillerm. Before launching this site, Job previously worked as a product manager at Chanel.

Image credit: Videdressing

While some may still balk at entering credit card information to buy something on a smartphone, it seems the fashion community has taken to it like a pair of peep-toes and a good pedi.

Poshmark, the used-fashion mobile marketplace, says people are uploading $1 million in inventory each day, and launched an iPad app to take advantage of the growth.

“Since the listings will be viewed in a larger format and browsing becomes more seamless, we do expect to see Poshmarkers making faster purchases and more of them,” said Manish Chandra, founder and chief executive of Poshmark, in an email to VentureBeat.

Poshmark allows anyone to upload listing of various fashion items for sale. This includes worn items to items that are still new with tags. The app focuses on photos and curates the listings into “Posh parties,” or themed mobile “events” where people can contribute their items in hopes of striking a deal with a more targeted buyer.

Chandra explained that in the last 100 days alone, the app has grown ten times in terms of its run rate in the last three months and is looking toward having $350 million in inventory uploaded this year alone. At the end of last year, the company was only projecting a $100 million run rate.

Because of how photo-focused the app is, I am surprised that it took Poshmark this long to come out with an iPad app. The Menlo Park-based company was launched in 2011 and was originally only available on the iPhone. Now, the company has expanded to the Web, though you cannot attend posh parties on the website.

“We spent a lot of time carefully redesigning some of the most-popular sections of the Poshmark iPhone app in order to maximize the iPad’s screen, including the main news feed, our Posh Party feed, and user profiles,” said Chandra.

With the iPad app also comes the new ability to search for items by size — a desperately needed feature in an app that truly does have thousands of submissions to weed through.

Poshmark recently received a $12 million round of funding from Menlo Park Ventures, and will likely put more fund and energy into updating the app after receiving user feedback. We can also expect to see Poshmark come to Android soon, which will likely create the infrastructure that could make it an international business.

Images via Poshmark

This hot e-commerce startup is known for turning geek into chic with its line of fashionable eyewear. In September, Warby Parker filed an SEC form for a $36.8 million round. The investment was led by General Catalyst Partners, with room to add additional, strategic money to the pool. Last night, the New York Times reported that Millard S. Drexler of J. Crew and American Express bring this round’s total to $41.5 million.

“We’ve tried to be very deliberate in getting people with specific expertise,” said founder Blumenthal in the Times report. “Nobody knows retail like Mickey. And within financial services, nobody knows a brand more prominent than American Express.”

Warby Parker takes an innovative approach to e-commerce by offering a home try-on service for people that want to test out a few different styles before they buy. Shoppers can sample five pairs of glasses for five days and then send back the frames they do not want when the time is up. It also has a “no questions asked” 30-day return policy. The glasses are well-made and cost just $95, which is cheaper than many brands of comparable quality.

The success of the brand not only stems from its stylish, reasonably priced product but also from its savvy use of the Internet to “disrupt eyewear.” Before Warby Parker, most people avoided by glasses online because physically trying on frames was a key step toward buying. The try-home service, along with a virtual “try-on” feature on its website and placing Warby glasses in “pop up” stores, gives consumers the real-world experience they need but keeps their transactions online.

Warby’s strategy is clearly a hit, and it’s looking to expand its reach. These new investors will provide fashion retail and financial expertise as well as opportunities for partnerships. Just last week, rumors circulated that Warby Parker was in talks with Google to make Google Glasses less geeky. While at first glance an online eyewear retailer hardly seems innovative, Warby has enmeshed itself equally in the worlds of technology and fashion and is demonstrating that high-quality products at a low-cost with seamless customer service are a good investment.

Founded in February 2010, Warby Parker previously raised $13 million from First Round Capital, Lerer Ventures, Tiger Global Management, SV Angel, Thrive Capital, and Menlo Ventures.

Google Glass got one step closer to reality yesterday with Google expanding its preorders. Now it also looks like the connected glasses are going to get more fashionable, with spectacles startup Warby Parker reportedly in talks to help style the device.

The New York Times reports that Google is currently negotiating with Warby Parker to make frames that will be a bit less geeky than what the device is currently peddling. Warby Parker is a hot e-commerce startup known for its stylish frames, so it could help make the product more palatable to people who aren’t tech enthusiasts.

Ideally, a Warby Parker line of Google Glass specs could be a popular device for the right price. Google Glass is sort of like having a smartphone on your face, with the ability to record and share what you are seeing and potentially display information over your eyes that you might want or need. Google showed off how versatile Glass can be last June, jumping out of an airplane and streaming the experience to a live audience.

Google reportedly plans to start selling Glass to the public some time later in 2013.

Check out the latest Google Glass video below to get a better feel for the experience it could provide.

Google Glass photo via Google

Don’t have time to obsess over the latest fashion trends? Launching today, a new service called Ajent is bringing curated style options to busy professionals.

Most e-commerce sites focus on breadth and offer a massive database of fashion items, typically imported by the community or a developer scraping the web. Polyvore, for instance, is updated with over two million new items each month. 

But San Francisco-based Ajent feeds its users just one “look” per day. Sign up for free, and receive a daily email with trendy style suggestions, home decor options, and more.

Today’s look is “Emerald”; users can peruse a shortlist of affordable deep green shirts, a kimono, pants and shoes, and even plan a trip to the Emerald Isle.

Ajent’s founder Meghan Higney (pictured above) hit on the idea for the site when she was bedridden for several months after breaking her back. The former private equity professional said she felt “overwhelmed” by the clutter on the Web and yearned to have a personal style hunter to source the best deals, delivered straight to her inbox.

So Higney quit her day job to develop the site and daily newsletter. She tested the beta on 200 users — men and women — and brought on a team of five staff members, including a front-end designer and several fashion editors. Each day, Ajent’s human editors pore through magazines, street style blogs, arts and culture, and more for inspiration. 

Ajent is a bootstrapped effort, and the next step is to hire engineers to build an algorithm (inspired by Netflix or Pandora) to offer personalized style recommendations. This will differentiate it from sites like Stylefeed that help users curate fashion by searching for deals from their favorite designers.

“The really interesting piece will be when Ajent brings you items on a day-to-day basis that you have told us specifically to look for,” said Higney over coffee. Ajent will also be aware of users’ size, budget, and style preferences.

To make money, the team is also considering rolling out a concierge-style service. If you’re looking for a leather skirt for spring, an Ajent style hunter will source the best deal and style from the Web and offer suggestions for items that will complement the look. It’s a similar business model to Zirtual, a virtual assistant service that is growing quickly and recently raised funds from Zappos’ CEO Tony Hsieh, among others.

In the future, Ajent will also benefit from building its own buying and selling platform, so users won’t be redirected to an external site if they choose to make a purchase.

In a recent interview, Forerunner Ventures‘ founder and managing partner said the key for the next wave of e-commerce sites is to “focus on augmenting the traditional shopping experience.”

ShoeDazzle is reverting back to what it knows best: helping women find trendy, discounted shoes.

Just three months after the L.A.-based e-commerce company reinstated its cofounder Brian Lee as CEO, it has announced some big changes. Among these is a new “VIP” membership service that enables users to receive special discounts on shoes. This harks back to the site’s early days when women paid $40 each month to receive a pair of shoes.

Over coffee, Lee said the plan is to bring back “innovation and creativity” to the site. Recently departed CEO Bill Strauss had planned to turn ShoeDazzle into a Zappos clone and bolster its marketplace with apparel, lingerie, and swimwear. Strauss also did away with the membership model to enable the site to appeal to a broader audience.

“Bill Strauss helped us build a foundation,” said Lee over coffee. “But I didn’t feel that the site was headed in the right direction.” Shoes account for 80 percent of the overall business — although the site will continue to sell handbags and accessories.

The new VIP membership service costs $9.95 a month. Unless users make a purchase, the monthly fee accumulates in an account known as a “shoe fund.” Women that sign up to the program receive special discounts, advice from personal stylists through a concierge service, and extended return policies.

Lee hopes to increase return visits to the site and gather data about consumer purchases. ShoeDazzle uses an algorithm, not dissimilar to Netflix, to target its members with shoes they’ll love. The curatorial piece is central to the company’s vision — Lee explained that customer service reps receive “fashion training” so customers can call and ask for a pair of shoes that will match their red dress.

Lee said the program is showing early signs of success. ShoeDazzle is adding 500 women a day to the VIP program from the wait list. Likewise, results from the beta have been encouraging (about 12,000 women are currently signed up). The VIP program will be launching to the public in mid-February.

The site is already known by over 45 percent of women aged 18 to 32, but to increase awareness, ShoeDazzle surveyed its members for their ideal celebrity spokesperson. The winner? Rachel Zoe, who was recently named the company’s chief stylist. Lee is no stranger to the benefits of celebrity endorsements — he cofounded the Honest Company with actress Jessica Alba.

At Paris Fashion Week, technology and fashion collided when a model walked down the runway in a striking 3D printed dress.

The simple black dress (pictured above) is not particularly avant-garde, but fashion critics are fascinated by the way it was made.

The dress, as well as a structured skirt and cape (pictured below), were designed as part of Iris van Herpen’s Haute Couture show “Voltage.” According to a news release, the collection came about in collaboration with Austrian architect Julia Koerne, and Materialize, a Belgian-based company that provides additive manufacturing software and solutions.

The piece’s intricate lace-like texture was created in a process known as “laser sintering.”

The second ensemble, a cape and skirt, was created in collaboration with artist, architect, designer, and professor Neri Oxman from MIT’s Media Lab. After the show, the 3D printed fashion collection will be exhibited at MIT.

A Stratasys Objet Connex 3-D printer manufactured the pieces, which is why a variety of material properties could work into single build. This allows both hard and soft materials to be incorporated within the design.

“The ability to vary softness and elasticity inspired us to design a second skin for the body acting as armor-in-motion; in this way we were able to design not only the garment’s form but also its motion,” said Oxman in a statement.

He added that these new technologies enabled the reinterpretation of couture as “tech-couture,” where “delicate hand-made embroidery and needlework” is replaced by code.

Check out a video teaser of the collection:

Top image: Adafruit blog

This is the time of year when we all look toward the future rather than the past and decide how we want to grow and change in the year to come. Whether you have a formal list of resolutions or just a general taking-stock moment, you probably do have a couple of big goals for 2013.

Me, I’ve decided that in 2013, I want to dress more professionally, write more in-depth long-form pieces, crochet blankets for Project Linus instead of playing Pocket Frogs during my winding-down-before-bed-time, and pray the rosary every day. And I’m counting on a couple of different apps, sites, and services to help me make it happen.

For your own goal-fulfillment needs and wants, here’s a great list of apps, websites, and cool services to help you become healthier, wealthier, and wiser in the new year.

Eating better

Farmigo for better food ingredients

Farmigo is a cool new service that will get local, farm-fresh produce and dairy products to you and a group of your friends and neighbors. Your group has to be at least 30 people strong, so think about pooling together with co-workers, PTA members, or any faith-based community members in your life.

Urban Remedy for juice cleanses

Urban Remedy won’t just cure your New Year’s Day hangover. This juice-as-a-service subscription will keep you healthy, energized, and fit throughout the year, no shopping or chopping required.

Fresh Dish and Hello Fresh for home cooking

Fresh Dish and Hello Fresh both meet the same need: our desire to cook at home and eat with our loved ones. These startups will help you by delivering fresh ingredients and recipes to your door. Each meal takes 30 minutes or less to prepare, plus you don’t have to do all the shopping and prep work.

Better relationships

Pair for your current relationship

Pair is your go-to app for building a stronger, sweeter bond with someone you already love (or double-plus-like). It will help you stay connected by sharing intimate moments and just-between-us messages throughout the day.

Seekly to find new romance

Seekly is a video speed dating app perfect for helping you find someone to spend your time — or even your life — with. Created by two professional, busy women, the site focuses on taking the creepy, time-wasting elements out of online dating.

At the Pool to make new friends

At the Pool isn’t about dating; rather, this startup wants to help the terminally shy among us to get out into the world and make new friends who share some of our interests.

Improving health and fitness

Noom for weight loss coaching

Noom is your personal fitness coach. This app will help you set goals, identify tasks, and track your progress.

Lumoback for better posture

Lumoback‘s premise is simple: We’re happier and healthier when we sit up straight. Its teensy, Band-Aid-like hardware and mobile app will keep your spine straight and better aligned. You mom would’ve loved this about 20 years ago.

Yog for jogging with buddies

Yog connects joggers and runners around the world in real time. Schedule the time and place for your jaunt, and get others to join you virtually. Yog provides audio and visual cues to connect you to your workout partners.

Striiv for step-by-step fitness

Striiv is an iPhone app that gives your fitness plans a big dose of metrics. This social pedometer tracks the steps you take and the calories you burn, then it can sync that data with your Facebook friends and other Striiv users to keep you competitive.

Learning new skills

Treehouse and Codecademy for coding

If you want to learn more about the web in 2013, look no further than Codecademy and Treehouse. Each of these services will teach you how to code. Codecademy does it for free from an interactive text entry box in the browser. Treehouse charges you and gives you a full library of video instruction from top-shelf teachers.

MindSnacks for languages

For learning other kinds of languages, there’s MindSnacks, a startup making iPad games for educational purposes. The bite-sized lessons come in cute packages with real educational value; it’s more than just a brush-up or crash course.

Coursera for college-level learning

Coursera isn’t some skeevy online degree mill. This startup offers “massive open online courses” in partnership with some of the top U.S. universities. You can study genetics with a Duke scientist, data computation from a Johns Hopkins data scientist, or world history from a Princeton professor.

Udemy for your downtime

Got a few minutes to kill? Want to do something more productive than Angry Birds? Try Udemy. Its iPad app will help you turn those few idle moments into learning opportunities.

Fixing your style

Fourth & Grand for gentlemen’s fashion & styling

One of my husband’s resolutions is to dress better in the new year. As a SOMA-dwelling tech founder, he’s surrounded by hoodies and jeans. So how to up the professionalism a notch, especially when styling outfits is a foreign language? Try L.A.-based subscription startup Fourth & Grand. They’ll send outfits and accessories and give you detailed advice on how to wear them.

Le Tote for ladies’ clothes

For the ladies, Le Tote helps you mix it up, sartorially speaking, without adding more clutter to your closet. This “Netflix for clothes” will outfit your new, infinite closet with outfits and accessories. It’s like living with a stylish roommate who has no personal budget and is exactly your size.

Birchbox for shine & polish

If personal grooming is high on your to-do list for 2013, try Birchbox, the startup that sends you sample-size beauty and lifestyle products and tips on how to use them. Gents, they’ve got manly boxes for you, too. You can try everything and buy what really works for you.

Dollar Shave Club for ‘f*cking great’ razors

We San Francisco women know why shaving is a New Year’s resolution-level goal: Between the pervasive chill and the pervasive leggings, we’d never do it if we didn’t force ourselves to. And a shiny, new box of razors from Dollar Shave Club just might be the motivation you need to get the job done.

Productive and professional

Asana and 24me to get things done

If you’re looking forward to a 2013 in which you get things done like a mofo, look to these two apps: Asana, a task-management godsend, and 24me, which will automate your entire life. Both of these apps eliminate work-about-work: meetings to plan meetings, hours spent making to-do lists and checklists. Instead, they help you focus on actually completing tasks and getting on with the fun parts of your life.

LinkedIn to stay connected & informed

LinkedIn had itself a big old redesign orgy this year. The result: An iPad app that’s both beautiful and useful, a suite of mobile apps that will help you stay in-the-know, and a new look and feel for its website that focuses on news in your industry. Spend a few minutes a day with LinkedIn, and you’ll probably look smarter, more connected, and more confident in the workplace.

Nutmeg to spice up your finances

Nutmeg is a simple solution for getting your financial life on track. This app will help you build and manage your personal investment portfolio, all while keeping your personal and financial goals in focus.

Pathbrite to kickstart your new career

Is 2013 the year you finally land your dream job? If a change would do you good, check out Pathbrite, which switches out your boring old resume for an interactive portfolio of your accomplishments. Show off a lifetime of education, special projects, promotions, and advances in a gorgeous micro-website you can show your potential employers.

Image credits: All via Flickr, creepyed, Edsel L, Shutter Daddy, kharied, besighyawn, evocateur, kristaguenin

Additional reporting by Christina Farr.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Fashion startup Polyvore is in an enviable position: it has an army of dedicated users importing 2 million items to the site each month, a new iPhone app, and the site pulled in 20 million unique visitors in 2012.

It’s about time they started generating some serious revenue. To help with this goal, the company has brought on a chief revenue officer,  Arnie Gullov-Singh (pictured, above). Prior to joining Polyvore, Singh was the CEO of Adly, an influencer marketing platform for Twitter, and an EVP of Product, Technology and Operations at Fox Audience Network.

“Polyvore’s traffic has grown tremendously over the last year. It’s been all organic growth, fueled mainly by our users sharing their content to social networks like Facebook and Pinterest,” said Jess Lee, the company’s cofounder. Polyvore is an addictive shopping experience that lets budding fashionistas mix and match outfit ideas, browse items by theme or clothing type, and directly purchase items from mainstream brands like H&M or Tory Burch.

Related: Read about the company’s recent launch of its iOS opp

Cofounders Lee and Pasha Sadri would not disclose their monetization plans, but told me recently they see strong opportunities to mine their data. Since I met with them two weeks ago, the site has attracted an additional million users. Needless to say, they have a wealth of knowledge at their fingertips about how we shop, and the reasons why we choose to spend money. This would be extremely valuable to both advertisers and brands.

Polyvore is one of the fastest growing e-commerce startups, and unlike Pinterest, its users are buying as well as browsing. The average basket size is $220. For this reason, the startup has more in common with flash sale retailer Fab.com, which is experiencing skyrocketing growth and expects to surpass $100 million in revenues this year.

What stands out about Polyvore is that seven of its top 10 retailers are in the luxury space, and it’s most popular with the wealthiest segment of online shoppers. 33 percent of visitors make over $100,000, and the average household income of users is $77,000. In future, the company plans to take advantage of this fact by expanding to home-ware, kids and men’s clothing.

Zindigo announced today that it raised $4 million in angel funding.

Zindigo enables entrepreneurial fashionistas to open boutiques on Facebook and earn 40% of every sale. Users can either open a shop dedicated to an individual designer or a virtual store that carries multiple brands. Zindigo has over 80 apparel and accessories designers on the platform, and it is a compelling option for brands looking for greater exposure and distribution, users that would love to indulge their style obsession in a lucrative way, and consumers that prefer a more curated, intimate shopping experience.

It is also a compelling model for investors drawn to the innovative approach to social commerce. It is not uncommon for online retailers to offer commission to users or affiliate site for referral links, and there are other startups like StyleOwner where people can establish their own digital boutiques. Zindigo, in addition to offering a far greater portion of the sales, also has tracking and analytics tools, as well as perks like free-shipping, to optimize sales efforts.

No time are the desires for unique articles of clothing and extra cash more pronounced than the holiday season. Kareen Mallet, a former executive at luxury department store Neiman Marcus, has joined Zindigo as Fashion Director. In a statement, she emphasized the role Zindigo could play in helping small designers get their work seen.

“I have spent my career watching talented designers struggle through the challenges of building a business and developing their distribution,” said Mallet.  “Brands are looking for new customers and consumers are looking for unique brands, but distribution barriers limit the connection.”

The designers also get a cut of the sales, as does Zindigo. Partcipating brands include Be&D, Cluny, Dallin Chase, Geren Ford, Isabella Fiore, Jay Godfrey, Kara Ross, M.C.L., Nicole Romano, NoNoo, Phoebe Couture, Raoul, Orlando Santana, and Ruffian.

Zindigo is based in New York.

The technology market in Latin America, and particularly Brazil, is heating up. In the past six months alone, Redpoint e.ventures dedicated a $130 million fund to the region, Pepsi launched an incubator program for Brazilian entrepreneurs, Intel Capital made its third investment in a Brazilian fashion startup, and Realtime secured a whopping $100 million.

Dafiti is the largest online fashion retailer in Brazil. Similar to Zappos, it sells clothing, shoes, accessories, cosmetics, and and home wares, and offers perks like free shipping and returns. The platform has grown fast, responding to Latin America’s fierce appetite for e-commerce options. Available in Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Chile, and Argentina, Dafiti offers more than 80,000 products spanning 700 brands. Its workforce is 1,200 strong.

Dafiti was built with backing from Berlin incubator Rocket Internet. JP Morgan invested $45 million in August, shortly after putting its money into the European retail empire Zalando. This fourth round of funding for Dafiti was led by Quadrant Capital Advisors, which committed $32 million. AB Kennevik, Summit Partners, and other investors scooped up the remainder.

With this investment, Dafiti will continue its expansion around Latin America and enter new markets.

Fashion app Poshmark can afford diamonds and pearls now. The company just got a $12 million second round of funding led by Menlo Park Ventures.

“We turned down many, many partner meeting with other firms,” said Manish Chandra, founder and chief executive of Poshmark, in an interview with VentureBeat. “What attracted us to Menlo is that they’re working in this marketplace.”

Menlo is also an investor in Fab.com, a social shopping website with a focus on funky, cool, curated inventory. Though the company is very different from Poshmark, it shows Menlo’s interest in curated, social fashion. Existing investors Mayfield Fund, Invetus Capital, and SoftTech VC also participated in the round.

Poshmark is an iPhone application that lets users sell and buy fashion. It handles the payment transaction and provides a shipping label the seller can print out to send purchased items to their new homes. Clothing and accessories are sold through “Posh parties,” or themed feeds where people can submit their items for a certain amount of time.

The parties see upwards of 30,000 items, which drove Poshmark to release “showrooms” or feeds curated by the party host. These include “Host Picks,” “Designer,” “First Look,” and now “New With Tags.” Chandra says a 100,000-item Posh Party is just around the corner and that some of the funding will be dedicated to creating discovery tools.

“We need to be able to scale the entire platform,” said Chandra, “I think, for us, it’s really constant innovating. It’s figuring out what are the edges with this issue.”

Indeed, over the course of a year, Poshmark sees $100 million worth of inventory go through its channels.

With this funding, we can also expect to see Poshmark on new devices including the iPad, Android, and the broader web. You can expect to see the iPad version come out first, which will include some of the same experiences we currently see on the iPhone, but it will likely take advantage of the space afforded by the iPad and iPad mini screens.

Chandra said the funding will also be used to build out the company’s servers and its infrastructure and to streamline the shipping process.

Currently, Poshmark is only available in the U.S., but after a trip to Spain where Chandra said there was a lot of desire for Poshmark, that might be changing.

“Oh yeah, definitely. I think international is definitely something we want to do.”

Woman with diamond image via Shutterstock

Rent the Runway is dressing up with $20 million in investment for its unique approach to making fashion affordable.

Rent the Runway is a marketplace where women can rent luxury, high-end clothing at a fraction of the retail price. Many women (present company included) wish for a closet filled with designer clothing, but do not have the budget to support it. This desire is particularly pronounced during the holiday season’s parade of parties.

As a young woman with a busy social calendar, I want to wear something special without emptying my bank account. However, I do not want to wear the same outfit to every event, nor do I want to spend money on multiple, cheap outfits. Rent the Runway helps me access quality, style, and diversity within my price range.

“Given the economy and the prevalence of social media, women are savvy about investing in things like fashion,” said President Jennifer Fleiss in an interview. “Everyone wants to post photos of themselves wearing designer outfits to feel like their own celebrity, but don’t want to wear those dresses again. We offer democratic luxury, so every woman can have Cinderella moments and feel beautiful and self-confident.”

The company was founded by Jennifer Hyman and Jennifer Fleiss who met at Harvard Business School. Since launching in 2009, the platform has grown to over 3 million members who have access to a revolving selection of 170 designer brands, 35,000 dresses, and 7,000 accessories.

This is Rent the Runway’s third round of financing. It raised $15 million in 2010 and $15 again in 2011 to support its growth.

Fleiss said at first it was a challenge to make older, male venture capitalists understand the product, but clearly that has changed. All the previous investors contributed to this round, including Conde Nast parent company Advance, Bain Capital Ventures, Highland Capital Partners, and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Rent the Runway is based in New York.

Read the press release. 

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Today, Polyvore has launched its first ever iPhone app, with an Android and tablet offering on the way.

On the website and the new iOs app, taste-makers and budding fashionistas can mix and match outfit ideas, browse items by theme or clothing type (for instance, “yellow sweaters” or “winter hues”) and purchase items from mainstream brands like H&M or Tory Burch. The site doesn’t scrape the Internet for content — users are in control. They import over 2 million items per month.

The most prolific users are creating “sets” of up to 50 items, and sharing them with the site’s community. For these super users, there are meetup events all over the country (Jess Lee, Polyvore’s cofounder, told me that they frequently form fast friendships) and cool contests to win prizes like a trip to New York for Fashion’s Night Out.

“This is our opportunity to democratize fashion,” said Lee, a fashionista and former Google employee who joined Polyvore after playing around with the beta, and getting totally hooked.

The secret sauce is the back-end where algorithms can quickly determine the sets and individual products that are trending, and will push them to the top of the search rankings. Dedicated users will find that the experience is tailored to them — over time, the algorithm gets smarter about users’ taste.

On the new iPhone app, users can create and publish fashion-sets on the go, and search for specific items. Pasha Sadri said that in the long-term, they may even include image recognition — theoretically, a user could snap a photo of a stranger’s boots on the subway, and the site would scan its database to pull up the exact item or its closest match.

The company makes money through advertising and by taking a cut of the sale when a user purchases an item they discovered on the site. The average basket-size is high at $220. In future, they plan to explore ways to mine their backlog of user-generated data to offer advanced analytics, and highly-targeted advertising.

Polyvore is sticking with ladies’ apparel for now, but will cater to men and kids, and expand its database to include home-ware.

Wholesale fashion buying and crude oil refinement don’t have much in common — except both are run by a pair of Koch brothers. Peter and Karl Koch, not to be confused with titans of industry and conservative sugar daddies David and Charles Koch, are the men behind Balluun.

Balluun is a business-to-business startup that connects fashion designers with retailers. It incorporates social, management, and transactional platforms to simplify the entire process of wholesale buying. While other companies like NuOrder, Brandboom, and Joor are out there, Balluun is notable for putting the social networking aspect of the business at the forefront. And for raising $3.8 million.

Peter and Karl’s family owned a fashion retail business. They grew up traveling all over Europe with their parents to attend trade shows and felt first hand how expensive, tedious, tiring, and inefficient this process is. Now from their headquarters in Foster City, Calif., these German brothers have gathered 10,000 users on the platform, which they say is increasing by 700 each month.

“We knew that companies connect and transact at trade shows, yet they are prohibited by cost and time,” said CEO Peter Koch. “We developed our technology to exactly replicate the trade show experience by allowing fashion brands and retailers to discover, connect, collaborate, and transact in real time, as if they were meeting face-to-face.”

Companies and brands place their collections online, and buyers browse to look for potential business. They can reach out to people already in their network, or use the platform to discover and engage with new brands. Balluun describes the communication feature as “multilevel, thread-based microblogging” that companies can use for initial interactions, purchase orders, and payment processing. For designers, Balluun helps with exposure and distribution. Buyers benefit from an easier channel for discovery and less paperwork.

Finoris AG and a group of Swiss private investors participated in this first round of funding.

Because, of course, I am a hardboiled technology reporter, and I don’t do frivolous crap like fashion.

Tyra Banks has released a new iPhone app to help other women — and men — learn the secret that she teaches America’s Next Top Models: how to take sizzling hot self-portraits by “smizing.” Smizing, as I learned today, is the art of smiling with your eyes.

You may think that’s a little feminine, and not for the hairier, rougher half of our species. As Tyra tells me, however, you’d be wrong:

The app is Smize Yourself, and it goes live later today. In it, Tyra teaches fans and users how to smize. Listen to Tyra’s instructions, pose, take the picture … and then get specific instructions on how to position your mouth, how wide to open your eyes, and more to become a smizing expert. Or you can simply use the Smize Yourself image enhancement features to automatically adjust your photo and create the ultimate smize.

If you’re like me and never heard the term “smize” before, join the club. But it has been around for a while.

“Ever since I introduced the term ‘smize’ in the early days of America’s Next Top Model, we’ve had an amazing response from audiences and fans all over the world,” Tyra said in a statement. “Now, everyone will not only get their fiercest photos with this lesson in smizing, but they can also have fun by showing off their most exaggerated smizing photos.”

The app is available tonight for iOS, and $1.99 will have you smizing your way to dating heaven.

You know you’ve been waiting for this and have to have it.

Of course, that may just be the stupid in me coming out. I did, after all, just video-chat with a supermodel.

Image credit: Tyra Banks

Hey bro. We’ve noticed you’re looking a tad gauche lately. And since half of being smart is being sexy, apparently, we’ve got a solution for ya: Fourth and Grand.

Fourth and Grand is a men’s online boutique that combines the taste of a high-end department store personal shopper with the ease of a subscription service. In the end, the folks who run it want to make sure you have picture-perfect, Beau Brummel-approved work clothes without ever having to go shopping — or even think about what you wear.

“The mall is one of the worst places on earth,” the site reads, presumably speaking for the silent masses of guys who don’t live and die for the next Bloomingdale’s men’s sale. “Impossible parking. Awkward sales reps. Tiny dressing rooms. Terrible pop music.”

Fourth and Grand takes a quick style survey, then sets you up with an in-house stylist. Then, once a month, the company delivers a case of dress shirts, slacks, ties, sweaters, polos, and all manner of accessories to your door. Each piece is $100 or less, and as with most subscription commerce services, you can send back what you don’t love.

But here’s the really fun part (and if you’ve ever had to dress a non-stylish man, you’ll appreciate this): They also include a style guide showing you how to wear the pieces and in what combinations they’d look best.

After that, as the F&G team would say, it’s all “promotions, dates, and happiness.”

Fourth and Grand is just the first such boutique from TripleThread, a “push-based commerce platform” for subscription clothing. If Fourth and Grand is a shop, TripleThread is the mall it lives in. And TripleThread is getting ready to open its platform to all kinds of other boutiques, as well, all with the formula of stylist-delivery-returns-profit that’s working so well for other subscription commerce outlets.

“We are giving brick and mortar retailers an entirely new revenue channel that is 100 percent additive,” said TripleThread CEO Allan Jones in a statement on today’s news.

“Retailers make no sacrifices to existing business, nor are they forced to offer discounts to move items. Traditional stores find tremendous value in the fact that we acquire qualified traffic for them, leveraging our technology to point shoppers in the right direction. They are unlocking a revenue stream that wasn’t available until now.”

Both TripleThread and Fourth & Grand have emerged today from the vast bowels of Science, the L.A.-based incubator that’s churning out money-making web companies at a rather alarming rate. Subscription commerce isn’t a new thing for Science; some of its most successful launches to date have followed that model (check out Dollar Shave Club for a shining, unlikely, and hilarious example).

Stay tuned for more coming soon from Science.

Top image courtesy of Sidarta, Shutterstock

South African company Zando is soaking up an investment of €20 million for its fashion e-commerce site.

Zando launched in January of 2012 as a footwear merchant, much along the lines of Zappos. It offers free shipping and free returns, and has now expanded the inventory to include clothing, accessories, beauty projects, and sporting goods. There are over 400 brands and 10,000 products available on the site, and Zando has quickly risen to the top of the list of online retailers sites in South Africa.

This round was led by Summit Partners in response to Zando’s quick growth, as well as high forecasts for internet penetration in South Africa in 2013. J.P. Morgan has also invested.

“We are excited to be joined by an investor that shares our vision and belief in the huge potential for the South African market,” said Manuel Koser, co-founder of Zando. “With the ubiquitous convergence of technologies, feature phones, smartphones, tablets and desktops with dedicated connectivity, internet accessibility is maturing.”

Zando is based in Cape Town and has 200 employees.

Pinterest competitor The Fancy become a little fancier today when it took on $26 million in a new round of funding, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Fancy, which mostly focuses on fashion, did not name new investors in this round, though it did add a new director to its board: Ed Gilligan, the vice chairman of American Express. Gilligan joins existing directors Jack Dorsey, the cofounder of Twitter, and Chris Hughes, who helped found Facebook.

The Fancy took the idea of Pinterest and asked, “How can I make money off of this?” It makes sure that for each photo that is shared on the site, visitors have a way to purchase the product in it. Pinterest, on the other hand, is often criticized for not having a way to make money. The photos shared there usually link back to a Tumblr page or another blog. For those pins that link back to an Etsy listing or a retailer, Pinterest does not take a commission.

That said, Pinterest is nearly a household name, and it’s much more recognizable than The Fancy. In order to combat this, The Fancy partnered with San Francisco-based Zaarly in June to attract people through local products and also instituted a cash incentive program in July. It’s like an affiliate program. When you share a product on The Fancy, you get an affiliate link for you to share around your social networks. If a friend buys the product from your link, you’ll get 2 percent of the purchase.

The company has thus far raised $18 million, not counting this round.

hat tip Fortune; Fancy woman image via Shutterstock

Fashion Week may be over, but designers, editors, retailers, and entrepreneurs work year round to keep the style cycle going. This Thursday, Decoded Fashion London is throwing The Fashion Pitch, a fashion and retail pitch competition in which 10 startups will compete for first place.

Decoded Fashion puts on events that promote innovation and discussion in the fashion-tech space. It strives to connect leaders in the fashion industry with new technology and entrepreneurs. The startups will present to a panel of judges comprised of Facebook’s Director of Retail, Luxury & Fashion Partnerships, Tracy Yaverbaun;  Index Ventures’ Venture Partner Robin Klein; Westfield Shoppingtowns’ Senior Vice President of Digital Innovation, Angel Gambino; Topshop’s Chief Marketing Officer, Justin Cooke; and Marks & Spencer’s Digital Innovation Development Manager, John Pillar. The grand prize is $65,000 from Index Ventures and UK retailer Marks and Spencer.

Today, Index Ventures announced the 10 finalists that will pitch live at the event. They are:

• 1.     Birdback -  Allows developers to link online apps to offline payments (UK)
• 2.     Fiverun - Helps brick-and-mortar retailers enhance in-store purchase experience (USA)
• 3.     Nuji -  Helps you discover new stores and products using social analytics (UK)
• 4.     Perch Interactive - Interactive, in-store retail display (USA)
• 5.     Publishzer -  Wants to be the future of online publishing (Finland)
• 6.     Say Duck – App to display merchandise via augmented reality (Finland, UK)
• 7.     ShopOfMe -  Web app uses social analytics to suggest products (UK)
• 8.     Snap Fashion - Visual search product using image recognition (UK)
• 9.     triMirror - Combines 3D technology, real-time simulations, and virtual fitting (Canada)
• 10.  WearPanda -  Floating bamboo eyewear (USA)