Your Style Unzipped

A shoppable search engine for fashion and style

3
Funded!
$300,000
Fundraise Status
Closed
Goal Amount
$300,000
Amount Raised
$300,000

The perfect style is out there for everyone - and it's time to search it, buy it and wear it with Your Style Unzipped.  

We're making the art of self-expression through fashion, easier than ever with a shoppable search engine that allows you to instantly purchase whatever you see.  

And, with our proprietary search methods, we're bringing the newest and most unknown brands onto a level playing field with the big boys. It's time to unzip those boring old clothes and join us for a style revolution!

Picture this.  It's your company's huge annual industry conference, and they've tabbed you to take the cross country flight and represent the brand.  You hop in an Uber, take your first sip of coffee, and bam - the driver hits a bump and disaster strikes. Half your cup of java spills all over the front of your black pencil skirt. After remembering that you didn't pack a replacement, you begin to panic. You're in an unfamiliar city, and realize that finding something else to wear within the hour will be a near impossible task. I hope your colleagues and potential customers like the smell of Starbucks!

Situations like these occur all day long and reveal a much larger issue, as well as opportunity within the fashion industry. First, users want and need the convenience that streetside retailers offer, in addition to that of e-commerce sites. Secondly, whether you're browsing for style or performing a basic web search, the process often becomes  frustrating and unfulfilling - largely due to the lack of standardized keywords or language in fashion.  

With such poor search solutions, how is our coffee-soaked business traveler - or anyone, for that matter - supposed to find what they're looking for online?

These consumer difficulties spill over into the business end of the industry as well. From an outdated system that still sees the fashion calendar functioning six months in advance, to the challenges of manufacturing supply and demand, to tracking consumer buying trends that bobble because of the current buy and return pattern. The business of retail needs a backend overhaul!

Although we serve consumers, Your Style Unzipped is dedicated to solving our stakeholder partner’s problems in a number of ways. In today’s instant-gratification mentality, we will help retailers standardize a process that works unilaterally beginning at the point of SKU, and continues from the brand, through the supply chain. Next, retailers of all sizes struggle with inventory control, and our mobile app – virtual fitting room will help users more clearly assess the correct fit online.  Also, without a paid for placement model, we level the playing field for every size retailer, brand and style voice.

Shoppable content sites are emerging everywhere, and will continue to be the way consumers fill their carts in the future.  For Search engine technology, the opportunity for a user friendly, fully customizable shoppable search system is here. The future has arrived!

No more tiresome searching and waiting around on fashion.  When you see something you like, buy it right away with Your Style Unzipped.

Your Style Unzipped (YSU) is the first ever shoppable search engine and style content aggregator dedicated exclusively to fashion.  We're solving the problem of poor search solutions, and bringing a see it - buy it - wear it mentality to search engine technology.  YSU features both online and street-side brick & mortar retailers that can be yours within minutes. Using personalized filters, global shoppers can explore all the latest apparel and immediately have their fashion needs served, regardless of location.

Had our business traveler been aware of YSU, she could've been looking fresh and clean again in no time. After visiting  the Location section of our website, entering in her zip code and “black pencil skirt, size 6” into the filter, she'd immediately find 4 retailers in her area with exactly what she needs.  The purchase is made, the skirt is delivered to her hotel (or picked up), and the stress is gone!

YSU is offered in the form of a web platform, with a mobile app on the way soon. The site's content is presently focused on women; however, once we fully develop the other categories (Men’s, Children’s, Bridal, and Maternity), they'll be added to the platform and designated.  As of now, it's broken down into the 6 sections below which allow fashion-hungry consumers to do it all - from shopping, to browsing elite brands, to reading stylist blogs.  Regardless if consumers are searching by retailer, brand, or style content, they can buy everything they see now!

Customization and versatility are the key ingredients that make our technology superior to the tedious traditional options. Our fully customized backend dives into the analytics behind keywording and language to standardize long-accepted industry language and processes.  This ultimately helps consumers find what they’re searching for, helps retailers secure more sales, and moves the fashion industry forward as a whole. We search both online and street-side retailers, then outputting results based on alphabetical and geographic directories rather than taking payment for placement. There are plenty of amazing new and lesser-known fashion products out there - and the time has come for YSU to level the playing field.

Clearly, consumers stand to benefit a great deal from YSU's infusion into the world of fashion - but that's far from the end of it.  Stakeholders in the retail, designer brand, and style content industries will also reap the benefits of more standardized processes on the frontend - and more transparency on the backend.  Here's how we're helping three primary groups:

Your Style Unzipped vision was first put into motion in January of 2015 - after a year of beta testing and revision. The women's site launched in April of 2015 that same year and have continued to make improvements and additions.  Here are a few more significant milestones we've reached along the way:

Industry players are on board.  Since launching our Women’s category, we've amassed over 300 retailers, brands, and content providers and currently feature all of them on our site.

Hitting some impressive metrics.  The big one: in June of 2016, we reached 3,000,000 weekly views on our site.  Other stats look good too, including a click-through rate of 150,000 per week and an 85% repeat visitor rate.

Building our IP portfolio.  In December 2015, we filed provisional patents which give us valuable defense against competitive attacks.  Full patents will be filed by December 2016.

Key partnerships are being secured.  Some important business relationships we're in the process of building include ZMags (a shoppable content company) Online retailers like Shopstyle and Refinery 29 (online retailers) and retailers like Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom and Tootsies along with House Account and t which cover Global Boutiques. Possible tech partners like Curalate, 3D-A-Porter, Barcode.me and Corra, and many more, are great sources of innovative technologies that we’re looking into partnering with.

The majority of our present focus is pointed towards closing out this key funding round.  Your Style Unzipped has already been pitched to four different angel groups around the country, accruing positive feedback and a high level of interest. We’re in contact with four of the largest Mall Developers in the world to partner with both strategically and financially for our Location Streetside Section. As a Founder for The Circular Board Accelerator, exhibiting at TechCrunch Disrupt’s "Startup Alley", and attending SXSW, Create & Cultivate, Decoded Fashion and ShopTalk to name a few industry conferences, Your Style Unzipped is building our name in both technology circles as well the investment community. Once funding is received, we will immediately move forward with converting the 300 plus current non-paying stakeholders into paying customers.

As development is completed with the initial phase of funding, the site will add the Men’s, Children’s, Bridal, and Maternity Categories as the initial filter of information. But the central element has to be our mobile app.  It will be comprised of groundbreaking body scanning/barcoding technology that fulfills our ultimate vision of integrating the “virtual Fitting Room” into the shopping process.  Users can scan their body using their phones and then scan a bar code, connect the image to a SKU either in-store or online, and see how that garment will actually look on their frame.  Bar code technology exists in-store; but our innovation will represent the first time it's been done online and mobile  Ultimately, the goal is to partner with Apple to create an “iFit” or “iSize” type technology that's suited for all smartphones - and for all fashion brands to incorporate it into their operations to greatly cut down on endless pains within the fashion industry.

The coffee disaster described earlier is a story all too familiar to our Founder, who encountered the exact situation earlier in her impressive career.  The frustration of that fated day stayed with her for some time - and would eventually boil over into additional services within the Your Style Unzipped capability.  It's time to meet her, and the executives tasked with bringing our vision to fruition:

As the third generation of a retail family, The YSU visionary learned what it takes to run a successful startup as former Founder of KapsMark, Inc a sports marketing company. Beginning her 20 + year career in sports with World Championship Tennis and then The NBA’s Denver Nuggets, KapsMark facilitated marketing and promotional campaigns for dozens of corporate sponsors like Coke and American Express to major global sporting events.  As the industry imploded due to ticket deregulation and internet intervention, Susan learned the importance of a long term landscape, pivoting, and never resting on current laurels.  Susan is the true "doer of everything" for YSU - including daily operations.



Mark's a seasoned e-commerce site developer in a variety of industries - including healthcare, entertainment, and Thom Browne for apparel.  He does the same thing for us here at YSU.

Jenna Gulick, Marketing - Since graduating with a Social Media Marketing degree, Jenna, our marketing maven, went to work with content providers and brands like Refinery29, and Hammitt Handbags.  She's got full reign over our SMM function.

Rick is a CFA who serves as the Chief Investment Officer for YSU.  He's responsible for investment and portfolio management services, while also advising on financial management matters.



Carolyn is the Founder of The Circular Board, a collaborative accelerator for growth-oriented female entrepreneurs looking to build multi-million dollar businesses.  She's our go to Advisor for all non-financial business matters and contacts.

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