The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.
Name: Velvet Brigade
Quick Pitch: A contemporary women’s fashion brand featuring clothes designed and voted upon by the community.
Genius Idea: Velvet Brigade is not your average fashion label, staffed by full-time designers, marketers and sellers. Instead, the fledgling label — whose first four dresses are currently on pre-order — is made up of designs submitted by outsiders and voted upon by the community.
Conceptually, Velvet Brigade is similar to a Garmz, a startup we profiled last fall. Like Garmz, Velvet Brigade shares revenue with community-supported designers to produce and sell their clothing. Unlike Garmz, however, all designers are attached to Velvet Brigade’s label and Velvet Brigade — not the designers — sets the price.
It’s a big distinction: Garmz is more like a platform for emerging designers to get their work produced and sold. But Velvet Brigade collaborates with guest designers, just as H&M has done with Vera Wang and Karl Lagerfeld, or as Threadless does with graphic designers.
Garments are priced in the $75 to $150 range and designed for women ages 18 to 30.
The San Francisco-based startup’s ultimate goal is to become a wholesale brand that is sold through a mix of larger offline and online retailers — a goal that, given what we know of their strategy, seems perfectly feasible to us.
Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark
The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.
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