Boutiika
A fashion GPS powered by location data and inventory feeds, Boutiika lets shoppers discover nearby boutiques and browse and search aggregated store inventory. Boasting over 300 retailer partners, users can browse by brand or product, then reserve for in-store try on or purchase with same day delivery. Now that’s what we call service.
www.boutiika.com

CakeStyle
Meet your new personal stylist! CakeStyle is an online personal styling service for busy women. Your very own personal stylist sends you a box of 4-6 fully-accessorized outfits each season or on request. Try it on at home, keep what you love, and send the rest back. Stylist services and shipping both ways are complimentary. Brilliant.
www.Cakestyle.com

Erogear
Erogear offers wearable LED displays to literally make your body a canvas for visual media. With a unique integration method, the LED display can be integrated into several garment types. Working with performing artists, athletes, and sports enthusiasts, Erogear is pushing us to wear what we say and say what we wear, even if that means getting us in trouble…queue up the fun Yahoo Sports video:http://ow.ly/kR3TN
www.erogear.com

Minna
When we heard about Minna Life’s latest product, Ola, we had to get them to STUDIO64. Minna creates smart and intuitive pleasure products to fundamentally change the way we experience intimacy. Ola was designed with a focus on intuitive cues, making it easy for women and couples to play, explore and discover pleasure of their own design. Featured in publications including Glamour, Time, Women’s Health, and Marie Claire.
www.minnalife.com

Modify Watches
We are big on customization and good looks, so it’s fitting that Modify Watches will be part of the evening. Modify Watches are “super-dope, interchangeable watches”. You can mix-and-match faces and straps to create the “Mod” that allows you to make your statement. With a customization feature built into their commerce site, there is much more flexibility (and fun) than initially imagined. Add in a thriving Facebook community, aka the ModiFamily, and they’ve got THE recipe for success.
www.modifywatches.com

Otherfab
Made up of a team of engineers, designers, community developers, and physical makers, Otherfab is blending desktop hardware, simple software, and inclusive community to make design and manufacturing more accessible. Their first product, the Othermill, is the most affordable mill on the market. They are empowering the individual. Empower them and support their Kickstarter!http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/otherfab/the-othermill-custom-circuits-at-your-fingertips
www.otherfab.com

Perfect Sunday
Perfect Sunday brings Asian-based designers and products to the US. By capturing the instant connection made with something new and foreign, their aim is to create a distribution source for new markets. We can’t wait to see the designs from their first batch of products!
perfectsunday.com

SENSOREE
Stemming from MFA design research to create wearable technology to augment Sensory Processing Disorder, a condition which ranges from ADHD to autism, SENSOREE crafts wearable technology and interactive installations that promote extimacy – externalized intimacy. Their whimsical designs monitor the body (bio-metric signals) and respond with visual or tactile feedback. If  you haven’t seen this live, you’re missing out.
www.Sensoree.com

Stylend
It’s like Airbnb for your closet. Styend lets users monetize their clothes. Using a proprietary and specially curated platform, community members lease their dresses to others.
www.facebook.com/pages/Stylend/310711245718114

Stylsavvy
StylSavvy is the ultimate fashion shopping and closet organizing iPad app that uniquely combines products from leading retailers and brands in a way that captures how we naturally shop and organize our clothes. The design is based on the phases we naturally go through when organizing our wardrobes: shopping, styling,  organizing, and buying. Shop or browse, this is pretty slick. Here’s to creating a new experience in shopping entertainment.
www.stylsavvy.com

Sylvia Heisel
Sylvia Heisel’s designs embody simplicity, creativity, technology, sustainability and quality. Sylvia eponymous collection of women’s designer clothing has been sold in America’s best specialty stores since the early 90s. Obsessed with new technologies, Sylvia has brought her knowledge about new materials, manufacturing processes and physical computing to her recent collections of LED-lit skirts, reflective accessories and 3D printed trims. Her vest is so darn cool.
sylviaheisel.com

Threadflip
Threadflip is a social marketplace for buying, selling, and discovering new, unique, and pre-loved fashion. With a few clicks, users can upload images of pieces from their closet, and sell items they no longer wear, creating a treasure trove of thousands of new pieces every day. Threadflip recently launched a special white glove concierge service, which allows women to receive a box to send in their unused and pre-loved items. Threadflip takes care of it all.
www.threadflip.com

Type A Machines
Born from Techshop and Noisebridge in SF, Type A Machines has focused on designing and building the easiest to use and most reliable desktop 3D printers. With higher resolution, performance, speed than regular printers, the Series 1 is best in class. Seriously, they are. The Series 1 was voted by Make Magazine as “Best in Class – Midsize”. Maker types, get excited.
www.typeamachines.com

Join us and the entire fashtech community @STUDIO64

Pardon the cliché, but you’d have to be living under a rock not to have noticed the overwhelming buzz buzz buzz surrounding e-commerce, and how it’s the future of retail. The result of this tidal wave of e-commerce-related media coverage has been hundreds, if not thousands, of technology companies being born to enhance the online shopping experience from virtual fitting rooms to subscription services. It’s no doubt that online shopping plays an increasingly important role in our society. But I challenge you to consider one fact: “95 percent of retail transactions still occur in-store.” TechCrunch, Local Commerce

Surprised?  You shouldn’t be.  There are a number of reasons that the in-store shopping experience not only continues to exist, but continues to dominate the overall retail landscape.  Here are 5 of them:

1. Online, “fit” remains a challenge.  Think about the pair of jeans you feel most confident in.  Did you buy them online?  It’s unlikely.  And if you did, you had either tried on a pair in person before, or you got really lucky.  Style loses its worth if an article doesn’t fit.
2. Touch and feel still matters to people.  By and large, consumers appreciate having the opportunity to interact, so to speak, with an item.  Though some women would beg to differ, fashion is a non-commodity.  It’s not like toothpaste or Tide.  Because we don’t actually need every item in our wardrobe, we often feel that we deserve to have a pleasant tactile and emotional experience with an item before we buy it.
3. Shopping in store is fun.  Let’s consider all the people out there who shop as a hobby or a pastime.  Further, let’s consider those who actually get pleasure from shopping, or use it as an escape.  Boutiques and malls are safe havens for millions of consumers across the globe.
4. Instant gratification.  Picture this: you find a pair of sandals perfect for your upcoming vacation for sale online.  You plug in your credit card info, and then wait anxiously for 3-7 days for the sandals to arrive. Even if you pay upwards of $20 to expedite shipping, you still can’t have the sandals that day.  You have to wait.  Got a last-minute invite to a super-exclusive white party you’ve been dying to attend? Forget about shopping online for a white dress. Traditional e-commerce isn’t even an option when you need something today.
5. Personal attention and expertise.  Sometimes, nothing beats a sales associate who knows her stuff.  We rely on in-store associates to tell us which color looks best on us in a particular shirt. We listen carefully when a store associate suggests “that would look better with a belt.” And, let’s face it, we’re grateful when a friendly employee takes our items out of our hands and prepares a dressing room for us, especially when they ask for our name, and then use it.  By nature, many of us really like the personal attention we can only find in-store, and sometimes, we need a fashion authority to help us execute a look.

So there you have it.  Just a few of the reasons local commerce isn’t going anywhere.  With the recent explosion of fashion-tech companies, it’s surprising that all of the technology to date has served to help people transact online. Isn’t there an opportunity for technology to enhance the in-store shopping experience, rather than detract from it?

There is, and it’s all about insight.  If shoppers are able to see what cool items are in stores near them at any given time, they’re more likely to be inspired to visit those stores in person.  Further, their visits to stores involve less guesswork and, thus, can be planned according to which neighborhood has the best items.  Efficient in-store shopping facilitated by technology in an online to offline fashion?  Sounds chic to me.

Author Bio

Ruchika Kumar is the Founder and CEO of Boutiika, a fashion GPS platform that helps shoppers discover and access cool items in stores near them. Originally from the UK, she studied Business at The University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, and founded Boutiika with 7+ years in Enterprise strategy at Accenture. She is both experienced in and admittedly obsessed with fashion retail.

The root of the Empowered Individual is in the affordable technology movement and the mainstreaming of DIY. Startups are focusing on new approaches to bring technology and access to the people. One of the important goals of these companies is to empower individuals. The Empowered Individual is built on the concept that if you think of it, you should be able to create it. Empowerment comes from having immediate access to tools to develop one’s ideas, and leveraging one’s creativity to directly impact the world around them. Processes and tools that were once left to (and accessible by) large brands, organizations, and manufacturers, are now being developed for you and me, at the individual level, giving us new opportunities to realize our ideas and express our creativity.

The lens of the Empowered Individual is already evident across multiple verticals, including fashion, wellness, and lifestyle. We have seen fashion evolve to include trends fueled by the influence of fashion bloggers, as well as the standardization of crowd-sourced design and production. The quantified self movement draws upon personal data to drive an empowered individual around fitness and health through various feedback loops for self-improvement. Lifestyle companies are also using technology to create unique experiences to a user’s specific interests, needs, and even movements. The world of tomorrow is one where we create our surroundings and the world around us.

STUDIO64 showcases the creativity behind the empowered individual evolution. From 3D printers and mobile apps to wearable design and intimate technology, the individual’s creativity, desires, and movements are at the heart of the companies being featured, and at the forefront of the future of innovation.

Stay tuned for a list of featured companies. In the meantime, if you’re in the San Francisco area on May 15th, join us at STUDIO64 and support the movement by registering at our event page. SFFT readers get 20% off general admission. Use the event link or enter code SFFTREADERS64  at checkout.

ABOUT STUDIO64

Brands and Retailers

“I honestly think that brands have been struggling with using the Instagram social, predominantly mobile, app for commercial exercises. And I do think we have found an answer for the industry to really taking their Instagram activity to a next level as we are bridging it to commerce” states founder Roeland de Jong.

Swarovski hosted a street style contest via the mobile app for Fashion’s Night Out at their Madison Avenue store in New York. Photos snapped at the event incorporated the hashtag #SwarovskiFNO creating a user-made lookbook. Images containing the crystal maker’s merchandise were then subsequently tagged by 52Grams with a link to the item on the Swarovski e-commerce site. “The Style Elite of FNO” campaign succeeded in taking an offline event and creating an online destination as it was named one of the Top 10 luxury mobile campaigns of 2012.

Style Influencers

“We honestly believe that Instagram is a powerful tool for style influencers to broadcast their fashion in a highly visual way to a large community of followers. With a strong demand from followers asking ‘where to buy?’ and ‘what label?’, we believe 52Grams can be the extension that bridges the fantasy of Instagram photography to a point of purchase online” continues de Jong.

To aid in monetization of lookbooks created by style influencers, 52Grams incorporates rewardStyle affiliate links for product information. In doing so, de Jong feels “we could truly simplify the lives of bloggers using our platform to give new purpose to their Instagram content.”

Exploration and Discovery

With so much inspiration for fashion fans on Instagram, the discovery of new looks and trends lends itself to curation. In addition to the blogger-produced content, categories to explore include boutiques, brands, street style and magazines. “Curation is key to a powerful platform and I think quality of content, especially in fashion, is making a difference between being a cool trending platform for a while and a platform that is here to stay” states de Jong.

52Grams has been busy revamping their mobile experience in anticipation of an exciting new campaign launching soon. To experience the convergence of content, community and commerce, download the app or visit the website.

Images courtesy of 52Grams

You might say that fashion and technology go together like oil and water, or, say, hoodies and Hermès. They aren’t known to run in the same circles.

“Two ships passing in the night” is how SF FashTech co-founder Charles Belle described it when he and partner Mika Uehara were working on their fashion startup Lookaroo. They realized that the two groups were not only not coming together but that they were almost afraid of each other.

“The fashion side might not know how to code, so that’s a black box for them,” he says. “And the tech side might look at fashion and say, ‘I don’t understand this industry at all.’ ”

Two years later, Belle and Uehara are bridging the gap with SF FashTech, which paired with Startup Weekend for its first fashion-themed hackathon. Eight teams of roughly five people each, mixed among developers, designers and the business-minded, convened at Westfield Labs to create and pitch their ideas Feb. 15.

Startup Weekend is a Seattle nonprofit that has hosted more than 1,000 events in 110 countries. That they chose San Francisco, known more for high tech than high fashion, to be the so-called “fashtech” guinea pig might come as a surprise. But to the sponsors, it made perfect sense.

Co-sponsor Westfield Labs, which is part of Australia’s Westfield Group, came to the city in October. It focuses on innovation in retail and connecting digital shoppers with the physical world, and the location was no accident.

“We believe that San Francisco is the heart of innovation,” says Lindsey Thomas, vice president of marketing and communications at Westfield Labs. ”We’re an Australian-based company, and there’s a reason that it made sense to have the teams be here.”

John Beadle, the regional operations manager for Startup Weekend, and this event’s facilitator, was excited to try a fashion theme. He and Belle intentionally left the definition a little vague to see what ideas were produced. His role was to make sure the program runs according to Startup Weekend’s prescribed layout. It’s the organizers – namely, Belle and Uehara – who brought in the right judges, mentors and attendees.

Thankfully, they had a pretty well-developed Rolodex.

In January 2012, after SF FashTech’s work on its fashion app revealed a lack of communication between the two industries, they put together a panel discussion called FashTech Insight. With panelists including Vineet Buch of Google Shopping, Susan Gregg Koger of ModCloth and Jess Lee of Polyvore, the event sold out.

Most importantly, Belle says, both fashion and tech folks showed up and said, “We want more.” So they shelved the mobile app and focused on a multimedia company, SF FashTech, to provide online content and opportunities for the groups to connect in person.

Which brings us to Feb. 15. Startup Weekend participants had one minute to persuade the 100 attendees not only to vote to develop their idea during the weekend but also to join their team. Some teams worked through the night. (Beadle recommends against it.) Some had worked together before, but many were strangers.

In just 54 hours, teams had two minutes to present their work. Besides Belle and Thomas, judges were Brian Sugar, CEO of PopSugar; William Young, director of Zappos Labs and general partner with the VegasTechFund; and Nick Sheth, senior director of global business development at Gap Inc.

Ideas ranged from a peer-to-peer dress-sharing service to a site dedicated to connecting emerging designers with consumers. Prizes included mentoring sessions with judges like Sugar, whose opening speech on Friday encouraged teams to use PopSugar Shopping’s (formerly ShopStyle) application programming interface.

Zappos’ Young was also looking for ideas.

“I’m biased in a couple things. Like, could Zappos use that? And could I, as a consumer, use that?” He said that although the company is in Las Vegas, one of the big reasons it opened an office in San Francisco two years ago was to work with startups.

Top honors went to Splendid.ly (splendidly.launchrock.com), designed to create “a simple list of things you want to buy later that you can take anywhere,” according to the team. It works like this: Save URLs of items you want to a “smart” shopping list that is accessible online or on your phone, then click to buy from that list any time.

Judges liked that it was fully operational and “had legs,” according to Young. But the Splendid.ly team was most excited about the opportunity to collaborate. “We just wanted to hack together something interesting, cool and simple,” said member George Revutsky. And Janet Hu said she got five other business ideas in the process.

Westfield’s Thomas says events like these are great for the industry. “I love that the lens is on fashion and tech – that’s showing that this is really a space to innovate and a space that has a lot of attention, so the more you can put a spotlight on it, the better it is for all of us.”

San Francisco’s event comes on the heels of two other fashion and technology-themed hackathons in New York. The Council of Fashion Designers of America, IMG and Condé Nast, then Hearst (which owns The Chronicle) – both brought teams together this month to develop ideas that merge fashion and technology.

And here’s a fashion forecast: In his closing remarks, Belle promised the audience that SF FashTech is already looking forward to planning the next one.

Maghan McDowell is a Burlingame freelance writer. E-mail: style@sfchronicle.com

Like many young startups, a single seed of inspiration brings together a talented group of entrepreneurs to harvest the seed of an idea and nurture it to maturity. Similarly, the goal of this Startup Weekend was to bring together enthusiastic individuals to fuse technology and fashion together in innovative ways with coaches alongside to help teams maximize their entrepreneurial education. At the end, teams submitted their ideas to elite judges from POPSUGAR, Gap Inc., Zappos, and Westfield Labs to see which developments had the potential worth pursuing.

Organized by SF Fashtech, Startup Weekend Fashtech brought people from all over the world to participate, like Ugur from Finland. He’s been living in San Francisco the last few weeks to help facilitate an emerging startup group and he thought this event would be interesting. Another event goer, Marlene, is on her fourth career change in 30 years. Teaching and engineering may be in her past, but still relevant for her as she is now in fashion school. She has big plans for fashtech; and Startup Weekend was a great space to share her ideas and connect with other inspiring people.

But not everyone at Startup Weekend has experience with fashion, much like Deepak, an engineer. His admitted his fiancée was the fashion enthusiast – a topic very foreign for him. In an effort to understand her culture, he found himself at Startup Weekend. He sees fashion and technology as unlikely mixes, but understands the need to incorporate the two. He reflected on how his group came together: five total strangers all from different countries (India, China, Germany, and the United States) with various backgrounds together for the same goal. Each person a piece to the puzzle.

Like many others at this event, Deepak says Startup Weekend is unique.  It’s an interesting time in the fashion and technology world and participating in this type of event renews passion and nurtures creativity. Brian Sugar of POPSUGAR Inc. commented that he lives for these workshops. He enjoys partnering with young inspired individuals and helping them in their beginning steps. It was evident many participants admired his leadership because Brian was constantly swarmed.

These are the characters behind the scenes making the seeds grow. When put together, each person’s individual specialty is utilized in effective ways, and something truly wonderful happens.

Editors Note: stay tuned as we release more photos, videos, and insights from Startup Weekend Fashtech!

Why Startup Weekend and Who It’s For

Since SFFT’s inaugural event in Fall 2011, we’ve spoken to and interacted with nearly one hundred startups. We listened to their pitches, advised them on business models, brokered partnerships, and promoted their products. For every startup, we’ve also met many individuals who aspired to build their own companies, partner with a developer or designer, or find a way to dip their toe in the fashtech waters.

What we’ve witnessed and cultivated is an evolution of entrepreneurialism and a passionate eco-system. We’ve seen co-founders find each other and part-time projects turn into full-time jobs, but we’ve also witnessed great teams part ways and applications shelved without markets or problems. So we’ve teamed up with Startup Weekend to expand this passion and to create a new wave of entrepreneurs.

Startup Weekend offers entrepreneurial education in the form of a 54-hour workshop. Throughout this workshop, Startup Weekend provides opportunities for active networking, mentorship, feedback, and creativity and innovation, and the opportunity to develop strengths, skills, ideas, and partnerships. Specific to Startup Weekend Fashion Tech, we’ve also brought on a team of industry powerhouses to help provide vertical-specific expertise. Judges and coaches include:

Judges

Brian Sugar -Co-founder & CEO, Sugar, Inc.

Kevin McKenzie – Chief Digital Officer, Westfield Group

Nick Sheth -Senior Director, Global Business Development, Gap Inc.

Will Young – Zappos Labs & Vegas Tech Fund

Charles Belle – co-founder, SF Fashtech

Coaches

Arthur Cinader – EVP of Engineering, Media & Commerce, POPSUGAR Inc.

Mike Denunzio – Founder, Pebble Ventures

Tracy Sun – Co-founder and VP of Marketing, Poshmark

Mika Uehara – Co-founder, SF Fashtech

JINS was founded in 1988 as a lifestyle & fashion producer and retailer, but shifted its core business focus towards eyeglasses around 2001. Like other successful manufacturing brands in Japan, JINS shifted its core manufacturing facilities overseas (think China) to compete in the

casual retail space. The company is somewhat known in Japan as “the Uniqlo of eyewear”, breaking the old regime of eye glasses that had been previously sold at $400-$600 to a much affordable $100-$200. The company went public in 2006 on Japan’s NASDA
Q-equivalent market, opened its 1st overseas boutique shop in China in 2010, and in recent years been very successful in producing a series of best selling original eyewear including the ultra-light titan-based eye-frame brand (“AIRFRAME”) series etc. The company sold over $220 million in revenues during fiscal year 2012 and is still growing through its disruptive business strategy despite declining overall market size in the country.

Here is how “Salon de MEGANE!” works; you upload a picture either from your digital camera or the ones from your existing social networking accounts like Facebook or Mixi. Next, you select the frames you would like to “try on”, then fit them onto your picture. Since there is an automatic face recognition technology embedded, the service can identify your facial structure to either “round, rectangular, triangle or long-shaped” facial structure. It will then come up with a series of suggestions for your specific facial structure (you can ignore them if you want). The system also has a 3D technology so that you can witness your facial expression (happy/angry/sad etc.) and from slightly different angles (* most of its technology is reportedly developed by a Japanese tech startup called KAYAC). One of the keys here is that this technology will help users to virtually try the frames even in online shopping which was viewed as one major pitfall for online retailers comparing to in-shop experience.

In regards to the “Megani-muite HOI!” game, we won’t go deep here (it is a derivative of a traditional Japanese scissors-rock-paper related game), but in a nutshell, users will play a simple game, and if one get away with consecutive victories in the game, he/she can receive up to $25 in coupon. Users can use those coupons when they shop online. Not a bad thing if you are considering of buying a $125 glasses.

As mentioned earlier, the eyeglass industry is a mature, but declining market. with lack of growth potential in Japan. However, JINS identified a new theory through changing the market sentiment thus the entire rule of the game. Eyewear was thought to be something consumers purchased one or two of because they are relatively pricy and with less emphasis on style. JINS thought more on eyeglasses as “fashion” “something you can own more than one=cheap and affordable” “playful/fun”, which led them to capture a totally new audience. With this new online experience, it has successfully tapped into a whole new audience that also is the core demographics in mobile/social commerce/game. These demographics can also be viewed as core element for e-commerce players nowadays.

So what are we looking forward to this year? Who will be the movers and shakers of the industry? What will everyone be talking about? We’ve got ideas, so place your bets.

2013 Predictions

1. International Ba-by!

The fashtech space in 2012 saw great stories of funding by international conglomerates and brands. This year will be no different. As a matter of fact, we’ll see huge growth from companies based in foreign markets. The funding environment is ripe and there is proven success in tapping into niche markets. There’s also a lot more cloning of US companies to be had (sorry, had to say it). Be on the lookout for new models especially from China’s developing fashion and cultural openness, but we also think we’ll see a lot more from our neighbors in South America.

2. The Battle of the Bulge

2012 was a huge year for wearable devices. Not just  heads-up displays and fashionable Glasses, but wearable technology, specifically in the health & fitness vertical, made a remarkable splash. From Fitbit and it’s suite of healthy lifestyle products to Misfit’s Shine, the trend towards wearable tech in various forms is growing. We like seeing what the big boys like Apple, Nike, and Google are up to, but what we’re really excited about are the niche and crowdfund-driven products built with unique experiences in mind. It’s more than just displays and augmented reality, it’s accessories for the future lifestyle.

3. Slow-Fashioned is Now

Greenpeace protests at Zara and an Hermes “meet the makers” exhibition, 2012 showed us that there are consequences and alternatives to fast fashion. Sustainability and stories behind makers and their craft are now the mainstream. So how will brands and retailers respond? What new companies will push greener and sustainable production and selling of goods? The slow life is a good life, and we’re happy to see it come about.

4. The Return of Retail

With all this talk of digital, mobile, and the in-between, there’s an awakening going on with a big sleepy-eyed yet alert bear: retail. Brick & mortar stores continue to focus efforts on maximizing foot traffic, and online-only retailers increase their brand equity with pop-up shops. But this year, we’ll be intrigued by the steps made by a couple juggernauts in the retail space. Hint, they are setting up shop here in the world’s capital of innovation. Their goals will be to Identify and create the best in-store experiences. Retail-driven technologies will be the focus, and scale guaranteed across their many malls and stores.

If these excite you, check out our 2012 predictions and tell us what you think.

Elizabeth & Clarke

I first wrote about Elizabeth & Clarke nine months ago when I chose it for a story about subscription fashion startups. Four times a year, it sends customers a box of versatile tops designed to save them the trouble of shopping for work-friendly basics. Unlike other startups in the space, Elizabeth & Clarke designs and oversees production of its own merchandise, lending what I viewed as a substantial edge.

The first time I reviewed Elizabeth&Clarke, I was impressed by the concept, as well as what they were able to deliver for an accessible price level (price per shirt is between $20 and $30, making Elizabeth & Clarke considerably more affordable than work-wear staples such as Theory, Zara and J.Crew). Since then, kinks have been ironed out in the production process and the website has been given a sterling makeover.

At Moore’s request, I recently took Elizabeth & Clarke for a second test run. My mother, whom I asked to play fit model and clotheshorse, loved the resulting box, particularly a long-sleeved flannel blouse, very Katharine Hepburn, which she donned with panache. Another upgrade was the new sizing tool on the website, which goes a step beyond the sizing guides online retailers normally provide to make finding your correct size feel precise and effortless.

Moore and her technical co-founder, Sara Chipps, have built Elizabeth & Clarke into a quickly growing business without taking a cent of venture capital. On her blog, Moore enumerates some of her reasons for avoiding the venture capital route, as much for the personal burdens it imposes on founders as for the vast ambitions it forces them to pursue. It’s worth a read – the way Moore describes it, running a self-sufficient small company starts to sound a lot more palatable than chasing the infamous $100 million exit.

In a fortunate coincidence for SF FashTech readers, Elizabeth & Clarke is offering new subscribers a great deal through The New York Times. If you didn’t get to sample enough subscription services last year, 2013 could be a great time to give Elizabeth & Clarke a try.