

Garmz.com - Fashion Incubator Brings Young Designers to Market (My Startup) - andreasklinger
http://on.mash.to/dfoiZc

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heyrhett
"Designers retain full rights to their work"

In fashion school, they told us that it's nearly impossible to receive
intellectual property protection on fashion design, since the courts have
decided that people have been making clothing for a long time, so it's hard to
prove that you've done something sufficiently complex and novel.

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jamesbritt
Wow. That's amazing. I knew that IP protection on fashion was weak/difficult,
but was unaware of the reasoning.

What's bizarre is that people have been making music for a long time, too, yet
courts have no trouble locking it down with copyright.

I wonder if this is a notational thing. There's an established and (somewhat)
robust notation for music allows it to be "fixed in any tangible medium of
expression", as required by US copyright law. Is there even such a thing for
fashion?

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andreasklinger
There is this great TED talk about IP in fashion.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL2FOrx41N0>

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andreasklinger
I am really proud that our startup has been featured on Mashable.com

We really try to do a game-change for upcoming fashion talent.

If you have any questions - please AMA

First answer upfront: i have no idea why the have chosen that picture. It's
completely unrelated to our media photos ;)

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shawndrost
"First answer upfront: i have no idea why the have chosen that picture. It's
completely unrelated to our media photos ;)"

Your media photos don't have any beautiful women in them. (Any people at all,
actually.) Since you're a fashion startup, it makes perfect sense for your
marketing materials to sell that aspect of your story -- it will get you more
coverage.

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andreasklinger
Agreed. We sent material like you mentioned. But we need to focus more on it.

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amac
Nice concept. Where is your production and distribution based? London?

I remember reading about made.com, also based in London, who are doing
something similar in home furnishings. I think they outsource production to
China, the drawback being a fairly lengthy lead-time.

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andreasklinger
We produce prototypes in Vienna and are now setting up a prototyping studio in
Bulgaria. We do the serial production in Bulgaria.

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ThomPete
I once learned that there are two types of entrepreneurs.

Gold diggers and people who sell equipment to gold diggers.

I want to congratulate you on being the ladder with garmz.com

I think this is crowd-sourcing done right.

Not only is the execution beautiful, it has the potential of being a really
great service and I think it has potential far beyond selling clothes.

1\. Trend watching 2\. Annual reports on fashion 3\. Alternative fashion tv
channel 4\. Talent hunting 5\. Educational videos 6\. Textile and other
equipment shopping

just to name a few.

I wish you the best of luck.

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andreasklinger
Thanks.

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jamesteow
This is a great idea. I do think there is large barrier to entry in the
industry since it is seemingly who you know versus necessarily purely vision
of the designer or the aesthetic and build quality.

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andreasklinger
The main problems most designers have are

* missing connection to their potential customerbase

* missing exposure

* and a downward spiral of low volumes

The problem in the fashion industry is that it is enormously hard to get from
one level in your career to the next.

You don't have enough customers therefore you won't be able to sell and
produce enough pieces. Therefore industry manufacturers are not interested in
working with you. Therefore you work with by far more expensive tailorshops
next door. You cannot get materials and even if you can get them you don't get
the needed prices. This sums up to bad production prices, which lead to
horrible endcustomer prices. Which leads to low customer conversion and
therefore to the fact that no botique is really interested in working with
you. Which means you won't be in front of enough customers and therefore won't
sell enough and won't raise your volume into the scale needed. Most successful
fashion designers had economic partners, who supported them. We try to be that
to the crowd by aggregating production, taking the cashflow risk and using our
production network.

TL;NR: Fashion production below several hundred pieces is highly expensive.
Garmz links them with customers and aggregates the needed volumes, produces
and sells the pieces in its webshop.

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jamesteow
Thanks for the info. Good info to know to pass onto some of my aspiring
fashion school/designer friends.

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andreasklinger
Thanks

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TooSmugToFail
Hey man! I met you guys at Seedcamp in Zagreb... Glad to hear you're doing
good!

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andreasklinger
Cheers! :)

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permanentmarker
Not sure. Wouldn't buy by any designer...

