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Name: Lookcraft
One-Liner Pitch: An e-commerce site that helps men decide what to wear and lets them try out fashion items for free from the comfort of their own homes.
Why It's Taking Off: Lookcraft re-imagines the shopping experience to tap into the multi-billion dollar online retail market for men.
There is a long held stereotype that men hate to shop for clothes, but Jamie Quint believes the real problem is just that shopping experiences are rarely if ever designed specifically with men in mind.
"The shopping experience as it exists today is really an experience for women," Quint told Mashable. "I think there was a perception for a long time that men didn't care about shopping, and to some extent that's true. But the U.S. is 50% men and they all have to wear clothes. It's a little bit under-served and ignored."
That's something he hopes to change with his new startup, Lookcraft. The e-commerce site, which launched earlier this week, tries to take the pain out of shopping for men by re-thinking the traditional e-commerce shopping experience to make it simpler and more convenient. Rather than ask guys to sift through hundreds if not thousands of retail items online, Lookcraft asks men to take a brief style survey when signing up for the site, which is then used to put forward a limited number of suggestions for fashion items to buy.
Don't worry, guys, you won't be asked to name your favorite kind of tie or declare whether you prefer straight-cut pants to loose-fit pants. It's a visual quiz rather than a written test. You'll be shown a series of pictures of men dressed in different styles and asked to select the outfits you like best, and then be prompted to fill out a few questions about your size and body type. After the initial quiz, Lookcraft gives users the option to take a couple additional tests to assess their color and pattern preferences. Lookcraft worked with professional stylists to come up with the style quizzes as well as the selection of items available on the website.
Based on the answers, Lookcraft will put forward a set of seven recommended items at a time, including shirts, pants and shoes from a variety of brands. If you don't like some of the suggestions, the site will offer up others. Once you find an item you do like, you can opt to have it delivered to your home for free and you'll have up to seven days to try it on. There's no limit to the number of items you can try at a time, and Lookcraft will only charge customers for the items they don't mail back after the seven days are up.
In essence, Lookcraft encourages men to use their homes as dressing rooms so they never have to set foot in a retail store again.
Several startups have tried to tap into the e-commerce market opportunity for men in recent years. Gilt Groupe launched a dedicated section for men's apparel, but is reportedly planning to shut it down because it wasn't profitable. Other services like ManPacks, Birchbox Man and the Dollar Shave Club tend to rely on a subscription model for a narrow selection of products. Mr Porter, a men's fashion site, does sell similar items to Lookcraft and provides some style tips and suggestions, but doesn't offer quite the same effortless experience.
Lookcraft raised a small seed funding round from First Round Capital as well as several prominent angel investors, including Roger Dickey, the founder of Mafia Wars, and Angus Davis, who founded the purchase-sharing startup Swipely.
According to Quint, Lookcraft makes money by partnering with brands to buy items at wholesale prices and sell them to customers at retail prices. To date, Lookcraft has partnered with about 20 brands.
Images courtesy of Lookcraft; thumbnail image courtesy of Flickr, JonoMueller
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