

Show HN: Boutine - From Goldman Sachs to Women's Fashion - adambarber
https://www.boutine.com

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nchlswu
Reading the name, I immediately thought of Poutine.

What else was the name a play on, aside from 'Boutique'?

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mitchty
I had to read it twice to not see Poutine.

Looks pretty cool, out of sheer curiosity though, what is the female/male
ratio in at this startup? Seeing stuff like this makes me wonder what more
women in tech/startups would create. This seems like an ingenious use of
social+fashion to me.

~~~
adambarber
Good question about the ratio. In the office right now, there are 3 men, and 7
women. Boutine was founded by guys, but the key branding and merchandising
decisions are made by women.

I totally agree with you though - more women in tech is a good thing!

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leeny
Are product reviews on the roadmap somewhere? I'm in your target demographic
(I think), in that I'm female and regularly buy stuff on Etsy and
Gilt/MyHabit. However, I think there's a huge barrier to buying from you right
now. Namely, there's no brand recognition, so I can't base judgments off that,
and I have no secondary way (like product/boutique reviews) to gauge quality.

~~~
leeny
This site also looks like it was made by a couple of men. Specifically, the
current layout/content, with the exception of the inventory itself, looks like
it could be recycled for any number of online stores. There's nothing on the
site that screams "we love fashion", and you might as well be selling
electronics.

Maybe if you had some featured pieces with an explanation of how they fit into
current trends, e.g. "Color blocking is really hot right now, so check out
these shoes and dresses.", you'd more effectively create a fashion-specific
brand.

Another thing you could do is, for each designer, show any press they've
received right out of the gate. You say your designers have been featured in
Elle etc, but I have no idea which designers they are.

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bherms
Too bad <http://www.styleowner.com> launched like 1.5 years ago.

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adambarber
Style Owner was definitely an inspiration for us when we started -- I think
they're a great site.

The biggest difference between us and them is how we get our products. Each of
the designers is hand picked for the site, whereas they partner with major
retailers and pull in products from there. In that regard, our catalogue is
growing MUCH slower, but we think the careful focus on finding designers our
users will love and can connect with makes a huge difference.

~~~
bherms
Do you think there might be any potential problems considering even your
taglines are practically identical? "Build. Share. Earn." vs "Style. Share.
Earn."

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malandrew
Flagged. How is this relevant to hacker news? Looks, feels and navigates like
any ol' ecommerce fashion site. Is there anything technically interesting
about this? If so, can you blog about that and then let the curious browse
your homepage instead of just linking to the home page directly.

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pkrein
It seems like high school & college girls would go bananas for this. They'd
get to peruse clothes all day and try to make money? The right in on Facebook
or Twitter seems like it would go a long ways.

~~~
adambarber
We've integrated with Facebook's Open Graph so we've got a pretty good idea of
demographics, and high school/early college are the most active on the social
side of the site so far.

Interestingly enough, it's pretty popular in Eatern Europe as well. Women in
Poland love discovering fashion.

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adambarber
Adam here - one of the co-founders. I'm happy to answer any questions that any
one has!

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lix2333
What was your role at Goldman? IB Analyst? Ops? Did that experience help you
with starting this business?

Did you have programming/web design skills beforehand or did you join up with
a technical co-founder? How did you guys meet?

Thanks

~~~
adambarber
The following is from Pramod (CEO/other co-founder, since he can't comment for
some reason...)

Yeah, I was an IB analyst for 2 years. After that switched over to the
investing side spending a few years focusing on consumer internet and software
companies. Both of these experiences definitely helped me with starting a
business. You come across so many different entrepreneurs and business models
that you get a good feel for what works and what doesn't work. Granted, every
company is completely different and most of the things that work for one
company don't work for others, but it just gives you a lot of insight and
learnings. You also get an inside look at what investors look for and struggle
with in terms of business models and teams which is helpful.

I did not and currently do not have programming or web design skills and it
took a really long time to find the right partner to join the business. I
started out getting the product outsourced and when I had something
presentable, I started getting a lot of interested from the developer
community. I spent a lot of time going to meet ups and other events to connect
with developers. We met at one of the events, but stayed in touch regularly
over a few months. We both had very similar visions for the business and the
product and really seemed to work well together. It took a lot of time, but
now we have a great team in place that we are both extremely happy with.

~~~
lix2333
Thanks for the reply. Its great to know that networking and meeting developers
at meet ups can lead to partnerships. I will be looking out for these events
in my area. I'm working as a IB analyst at the moment, so I'm always a bit
worried about meeting the tech side. Thanks!

