The Tale of Two Investors: The Business Plan

Kevin Ryan is the founder and CEO of Gilt Groupe, a fancy, one stop internet shop that offers over 3.5 million members elegant merchandise, stylish fashions, home decor, delicatessen food. They also have Jetsetter.com that offers discounted but luxurious travel to places like treehouse hotels in Kenya or iceberg hotels in Europe and activities like white water rafting in the Colorado. He is an angel investor in Theladders.com. Not to mention, the founder of a network of affiliated Internet companies, one of which is The business Insider under the AlleyCorp and he is the chairman. Kevin is a Yale graduate and has a MBA from INSEAD. Given his economic and business mindset Kevin Furthermore, he doesn’t particularly believe in writing business plan and for good reason. He acknowledges his way of thinking is flipped. Kevin basically feels if you know your business or market you do not need to develop a business plan for it.  Kevin Ryan further explains that everybody has an idea, so it is about your execution of the idea that creates success.  Essentially nothing is new under the sun. He explains before Google exploded on the Internet search engine front there were several other search engines. They had to execute that idea differently. Kevin likes to focus on the employee development and the constant execution of idea. If the execution of an idea needs to be modified then modify it. He feels it’s about recognizing that you have a good idea; whether is it a specific enough market and having good people behind you. He eschews business plans that just focus on the financials and fails to tackle the in outs of the specific market.

Karmaloop Hype

In 2000, Greg Selkoe, a young Bostonian with an undergraduate degree from Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, launches an online streetwear store named Karmaloop.com amidst the dot.com bust but survives the crisis in epic fashion (pun intended). The Karmaloop hype is based upon the company striving to bring their consumers a plethora of the freshest, trendiest streetwear brands and styles. A decade and some change later, the company has grown tremendously. According to Alexa.com, Karmaloop has over 4.5 million unique visitors monthly and is ranked the 1,450th most visited website in the US.

Fashion Analytics, Digital Linguistic and Kinectic Scanning

As I pursue an entrepreneurial dream to open a retail boutique somewhere in California I often contemplate, strategize and methodically plan ideas in which to incorporate technology into the business idea in order to generate a buzz or I guess "disrupt fashion". Here, I am thinking about web 3.0, phone apps and interactive website/blog. However, I may have been thinking too small based on what I recently read on Forbes online.

Intelektual Prop Presents: A Fashionable Game Theory: Fast to Fashion

Intelektual Prop Presents: A Fashionable Game Theory: Fast to Fashion: I recently read yet another article discussing the “fast fashion” boom within the world and how fast fashion companies have double their g...

Intelektual Prop Presents: A Fashionable Game Theory: Uniqlo: Unique, Cheap and Thoughtful

Intelektual Prop Presents: A Fashionable Game Theory: Uniqlo: Unique, Cheap and Thoughtful: My first ever and only Uniqlo shirt was sent to me as a gift about a year ago from one of my closet friends who is currently living and t...

Uniqlo: Unique, Cheap and Thoughtful

My first ever and only Uniqlo shirt was sent to me as a gift about a year ago from one of my closet friends who is currently living and teaching English to Japanese children. The shirt was a large Yellow crew neck t-shirt that had a The Freedom Rider printed on it. Even though I appreciated the gift but it took me a year before I even wore it. I had never heard of Uniqlo nor had I seen any storefronts at the time (There are only three stores in the U.S. all in New York). When I finally revisited the T-shirt I realized that I had a Uniqlo shirt in my possession this whole time.  My friend knew my taste well before I did apparently. In the past year have come to favor this brand that I can hardly get my hands unless I ask my friend in Japan to send me more gifts or I can shop through their online store, although I prefer a gift. When I finally decided to wear the shirt, took the tags off and fell in like with this brand even more. There were two tags one with the color, sku number, UPC and size. The other tag was a Blue Note Records folded informational leaflet. The shirt in my possession was paying homage to a selection of Blue Note Records best designs. In this case, The Freedom Rider is the title of a Jazz Album composed of artist Art Blakely & The Jazz Messengers, an influential Jazz group. At that point, Uniqlo made me a fan. Although they are a fast fashion company they slow down just enough to pay homage a to jazz band.  I found that to be an admirable quality in clothing company.

Fast to Fashion

I recently read yet another article discussing the “fast fashion” boom within the world and how fast fashion companies have double their global footprint.  However, this Reuters’ article written by consumer retail reporter Nivedita Bhattacharjee, Analysis: Retailers play catch-up in fashion speed race, goes more in depth on the tactics and strategies of the fast fashion company. 

Methods of retail fashion distributions are changing amidst fast fashion competitors.  Traditional fashion retailers now have to play catch up to Europe and Japanese based retailers that are either cheaper, trendier or both.  Essentially, companies such as the Gap Inc., American Eagle Outfitters and Macy's Inc. now have to place smaller orders in more factories in order to have a quick turnaround in order to get new designs and colors to the cheap, picky, young shopper faster.