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Comment by hedgehog | Hacker News Reader

It's news because they were an interesting idea that ran through $65M of venture money with some turmoil and then folded. If you you think you're seeing a generational change in the way retail works and you see a charismatic founder who has found what looks like a new winning formula it doesn't seem that crazy to back her and see what happens. If you're the founder and you think you have fair odds at going from all of a small business to a large slice of the next H&M by pushing growth really hard then maybe that sounds like a good idea. My guess is that was the decision and she decided to go for growth, it would be interesting to hear why it blew up though.

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They sold clothes online? I don't get why their idea was any different from the thousands of other retailers that is selling clothes?

Yeh, but going for the large growth and taking huge amount of vc money is very risky since if the growth you dream of never come that vc money is a ticking bomb.

Most retailers don't have any different of an "idea" than "pay us money for stuff." They're differentiated on brand, positioning, marketing, customer service, etc. LL Bean's "idea" is the same as J. Crew's but they're both very different but very successful companies.

Yeah, I mean this isn't like a startup where people are trying to strike it rich by exploring a whole new greenfield.

Retail clothing sales is well trodden ground. No one is inovating, everyone who survives just executes better than the other guy.

Oh wow, I guess clothes that is being sold is just some widget. Too many people in the tech world simply do not get fashion.

I don't think the OP was saying that - they were saying that it's not a technically difficult issue, and they would be fairly right.

In my experience, most large fashion sites can comfortably run on a Magento instance with a fairly simple architecture, normally a small handful of load balanced PHP instances, with a dual read slave / master database configuration.

Fashion itself, however, is a much different beast, being cool, hip, whatever, it takes a lot of skill - to really understand your target market and sell them something they don't even know they want yet.

Source: I'm a software engineer who has previously worked for www.missguided.co.uk, www.jdsports.co.uk, www.boohoo.com and currently works for www.countryattire.co.uk

I like to think we're innovating at Thread (thread.com). We're innovating on the customer side with recommendations and more educational content than a standard ecommerce experience, but also on the business model/stock/supply side.

Just signed up, it's perfect, the service I never knew I needed but clearly always have.

Is there any time limit on purchases? I'm not paid for a week, I wouldn't want to go through that signup process and have it disappear for whatever reason.

Nope, you only sign up once, and then log in to your account any time you want to check your latest recommendations or just browse what we have, ordered by how suitable we think it is for you. We're also trialling direct contact with your stylist.

I went through the process, even though I live in the US. It's certainly interesting, but nothing that I don't get from simply walking into a Hugo Boss or Hermes' store.

They'll happily take my measurements, and let me call in for recommendations.

I do suppose the idea of giving personalized recommendations to lower spending groups might work though I bet that department stores do the same thing. I know that women's fashion websites tailor their experience to users already.

I guess the differences between us an a Hugo Boss/Hermes store are:

- Only high end stores do personal styling/personal shopping, whereas we have a range that suits all budgets.

- Styling in-store has a much more limited range, we have ~1500 brands.

- Going into a store, or chatting on the phone, is much less accessible than browsing a website (although obviously a trade-off on being able to try on the clothes right there, but we do free returns).

> this isn't like a startup where people are trying to strike it rich by exploring a whole new greenfield

Most of the startups I hear about aren't doing that either. The vast majority are slight variations on a theme where most of the supposed novelty is in the marketing — just like Nasty Gal.

perhaps somebody could summarise what was interesting about thier idea.

I think he just did, but I can do it further.

Nothing new, investors threw money at a bad idea, business failed.

So, how about lunch?

Is it normal to get $65mm in VC money for an online clothes store? Should I be trying to found a company like this?

Also, does one get to keep some of those $65mm (without risking jail, that is)?

If you can grow a profitable company with no debt (prior to VC), with a [reported] revenue close to $100 million (in 2012), sure why not.

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