Zeng said that the company's first $5.4 million round, which included investments from firms like New Enterprise Associates and Forerunner Ventures, was oversubscribed.Įurie Kim, a general partner at Forerunner Ventures, said that her firm was interested in Choosy because of the company's unique merchandising approach. Most items on Choosy are priced at around $50, although jackets and clothing with bead work and premium fabrics run closer to $100. The company's competitive pricing is a result of both its direct-to-consumer business model and its ability to avoid planning out inventory altogether.Ĭhoosy's model of consumer-focused "social commerce" has caught the eye of investors. The team creates small batches of the first crop of styles in-house if an item proves popular, the manufacturing is outsourced to another nearby clothing factory in order to meet demand.Ĭhoosy's fashions can be found on its Instagram page. Zeng, whose family runs a number of textile manufacturers in China, has leveraged her connections in the textile industry into a fast-paced fashion production network. Now, Choosy is building a brand that delivers algorithmically informed fashions in as little as two weeks. We thought, 'Okay, we can build a real company around this.'" ![]() "The entire collection sold out and we had nearly 10,000 names on the waiting list," said Zeng. To do so, Zeng and her co-founders kicked off their fashion company in an unusual way: By writing algorithms for fashions that were trending online in real-time.įor its debut, Choosy's team created four algorithmically-inspired outfits drawn from styles worn by supermodel sisters Gigi and Bella Hadid. Zeng decided to open her own retail brand centered on providing consumers with the items they've expressed interest in purchasing online. "And then, when you do find out what item they're wearing, it's usually so expensive that it's unattainable for the everyday consumer."Ī model shows off one of Choosy's algorithmically-inspired designs. "No one ever answers those questions," Zeng told Business Insider. Zeng built her company around questions she saw cropping up again and again on the images of celebrities and influencers: Where can I buy that outfit? What brand is that? How can I get what they're wearing? Choosy's chief goal is to put the bespoke, buzz-worthy items worn by the site's social media darlings into the hands of consumers, for a fraction of what the real items cost. Zeng's company, Choosy, draws its fashion inspiration almost exclusively from the top trending posts on Instagram. When Jessie Zeng set out to open an online fashion house, it made sense that she would do so by way of Instagram: She describes herself as a "social media obsessive" who spends hours pouring over the fashion stylings of the site's A-lister accounts. Choosy received $5.4 million in a funding round led by NEA to launch the site in July 2018.Its CEO, Jessie Zeng, created an algorithm to find the top trending fashions. ![]()
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