July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

JOOR is using software to make the journey from runway to retail stores as smooth as walking down a catwalk.

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

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

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.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

The Federal Communications Commission and other regulators are prepared to stop wireless broadband startup LightSquared from operating if its network poses any risk to GPS services, the government agencies stated Tuesday during their monthly meeting, reports Reuters.

LightSquared’s business model relies on supplying outside companies with wholesale access to its high-speed wireless network, which operates on a portion of the wireless spectrum that causes interference to GPS. That interference prevents the estimated 500 million GPS-enabled devices and services — like airplane tracking, clock synchronization, weather forecasting, emergency communications and several others that are in use — from working properly.

Communications regulators are currently evaluating LightSquared’s network following months of testing that confirmed it does interfere with GPS.

Yet LightSquared has submitted a new plan that fixes the GPS interference problem while allowing the company to retain its network deployment schedule without delays. The plan states that LightSquared will use a different block of its allocated range of the wireless spectrum that’s farther away from the GPS block.

However, a FCC official said creating such a “guard band” between LightSquared’s airwaves and those used for GPS will leave a large swath of spectrum underutilized, according to the report.

Any underutilized portion of the wireless spectrum is unacceptable. Both the country’s four (soon to be three) major wireless carriers and President Barack Obama have stated several times that additional portions of the wireless spectrum are necessary for fueling faster internet speeds, economic growth and innovation.

The FCC official also said that regulators would like to find a solution that is better for long-term spectrum policy and allows efficient use of the airwaves.

Do you think LightSquared should be allowed to operate given the problems with GPS interference and/or the possibility of hogging valuable portions of the wireless spectrum?

Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Wholesale mobile broadband provider LightSquared issued a new plan today outlining a solution for the GPS interference problems caused by the company’s 4G LTE wireless network.

LightSquared says the solution will “protect the public’s stake in GPS” and won’t delay launching the company’s wireless network in the first half of 2012, which could be an overly positive estimate judging from the assessment of problems associated with correcting the interference problems.

“This is a solution which ensures that tens of millions of GPS users won’t be affected by LightSquared’s launch,” said Sanjiv Ahuja, LightSquared Chairman and CEO.

Last month, a pair of government agencies completed tests showing that LightSquared’s 4G LTE network interferes with GPS signals, affecting aircraft and automobile navigation systems and emergency response services like OnStar. Fixing the problem could be both costly and time-consuming, according to the agencies.

According to LightSquared’s plan, the government agencies’ test results indicated that only a certain portion of the company’s 10MHz block of frequencies caused interference to many GPS receivers, and those happen to be the same set of frequencies the company planned to use for the initial launch of its nationwide wireless broadband network.

However, the company said it determined that a different, lower portion of its 10MHz spectrum block didn’t create the same risk of interference because it’s lower on the spectrum band and located further away from the GPS frequencies.

“Test results show this lower block of frequencies is largely free of interference issues with the exception of a limited number of high- precision GPS receivers that are specifically designed to rely on LightSquared’s spectrum,” the company stated, adding that it planned to use the lower portion of its spectrum to accommodate its customers over the next few years anyway.

To ensure it reaches its wireless network launch deadlines, LightSquared has struck a deal with Inmarsat, the satellite company that controls the alternative block of spectrum in the L Band. LightSquared will also modify its FCC license to reduce the maximum authorized power of its base-station transmitters by over 50 percent — limiting LightSquared to the power authorized for use in 2005, which will provide additional protection to GPS, according to the company.

The Virginia-based company recently reached a 15-year deal with Sprint to provide high-speed wireless service for the carrier’s 4G LTE network. Yet, there was no mention of the deal in LightSquared’s release.

We’ll be exploring the most disruptive mobile trends at our fourth annual MobileBeat 2011 conference, on July 12-13 at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. It will focus on the rise of 4G and how it delivers the promise of true mobile computing. We’re also accepting entries for our mobile startup competition at the show. MobileBeat is co-located with our GamesBeat 2011 conference this year. To register, click on this link. Sponsors can message us at sponsors@venturebeat.com.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Best Buy, the electronics retailers, will begin offering mobile broadband to their customers in a service called Best Buy Connect. The service will use part of the spectrum from LightSquared’s LTE network, LightSquared CEO Sanjiv Ahuja announced during his keynote speech at CTIA Wireless 2011.

Ahuja did not reveal many details of the Best Buy Connect partnership, but did outline similar agreements with other companies, including providing 4G connectivity to Leap Wireless’s Cricket service and a joint partnership with Open Range to provide wireless access to rural areas.

Open Range will also provide access to LightSquared’s satellite-broadband services to the same rural areas, Ahuja said.

LightSquared provides wholesale access to its wireless broadband network — for now, it doesn’t appear interested in providing direct service to individual customers the way Sprint and AT&T do.

It also means all revenue generated by LightSquared can go directly into improving the network instead of subsidizing expensive smartphones, conducting expensive marketing campaigns, or running customer service.

Ahuja used many examples of industries who could purchase access to its network, but by far the most interesting of these was the potential for wired broadband providers, like cable operators, to extend their offerings to wireless. Cable companies like Cox, Comcast, and Time Warner Cable have long been interested in offering wireless service, but they’ve struggled to turn partnerships into marketable offerings.

Were wireless offerings cable providers to finally gain traction, it could definitely eat into the profits of AT&T, Verizon Wireless, and Sprint, at least for customers who only require local wireless access on their mobile devices. Combine a wireless phone service from a cable provider using LightSquared’s spectrum with Google Voice, the search giant’s Internet-calling service, you could easily see road warriors dropping expensive voice-and-data plans in favor of something more cost-effective.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Appbackr has launched its beta version today in the hope of creating the world’s first wholesale marketplace for iPhone and iPad apps. The service would let developers submit their apps to be sold in bulk at wholesale prices.

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company’s wholesale catalog of apps is now available to buyers. Appbackr showed off the marketplace at the DiscoveryBeat 2010 conference today. Appbackr’s wholesale buyers pay the developers immediately, and the developers can start work on new apps. Meanwhile, the developers retain control of their own intellectual property.

Appbackr is offering hundreds of dollars in incentives to early participants who offer their apps for sale during Appbackr’s first month. About 1,500 people signed up during an earlier test version of the launch. Trevor Cornwell, chief executive of Appbackr, said the company hopes to prove to this group exactly how Appbackr works and why it can be a critical part of the developer ecosystem.

Apple developers agree to sell a certain number of units to wholesale buyers at a discount. Those buyers buy the units in bulk and pay their money upfront to developers. When someone actually buys the app on iTunes, the Appbackr buyer profits, pocketing the difference between the retail price and the wholesale price. The wholesale buyer becomes an advocate of the app — Appbackr refers to these people as “backrs” — and promotes it heavily. The developer thus gets a built-in fan with a vested interest in promotion. The return of the wholesale buyer is 27 percent to 54 percent once an app sells at the retail level.

Josh Michaels, founder of iPhone developer Jetson Creative, said that Appbackr will change the way small developers think about funding and distributing their products. The wholesale business is a necessary part of any business ecosystem. It results in better funding and support for manufacturers in any industry — in this case, the equivalent of the manufacturer is an app developer. The wholesale mechanism also leads to more efficient distribution of the products and better discovery by consumers. Appbackr’s payment solution is built on top of PayPal’s applications programming interface.

Appbackr’s own financial backers are Cambridge West Ventures, Zenith Group, Silicon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs, and the Hall Financial Group. Appbackr was founded in March and has 10 employees. There are no direct wholesale rivals. The company received a seed investment of $725,000 and won $50,000 from PayPal in a developer challenge contest. Cornwell previously started Embarkons, a peer financing site, and Skyjet, an online reservation system for the private airline industry. Sam Zappas and Robert Clegg are also co-founders.

[Disclosure: Appbackr is a sponsor of VentureBeat's DiscoveryBeat 2010]