A Marketplace for Authentic Designer Fashion

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Name: Hello La Mode

Quick Pitch: A place to buy and sell designer goods.

Genius Idea: A third party verifies the authenticity of purchases before payments are transferred.

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Search for a designer handbag on eBay, and you're likely to come across more than a few fakes. The auction site has made general efforts to prevent the selling of counterfeit goods — namely, by agreeing to take down items at the request of brand owners, or that users report to be "suspicious." Despite those sanctions, shoppers still must rely largely on their own knowledge of a product — the brand of a zipper, the shape of a buckle — to determine if an item they're looking at is the real thing.

Hello La Mode, which launched publicly Wednesday, is out to provide a better solution. Here's how it works: Sellers create listings and, once they've found a buyer, ship their item to the company to verify its authenticity and condition. If it passes the check, the seller is paid and the item is shipped to the buyer.

And how are items authenticated? A spokesperson for Hello La Mode says it has "in-house experts" who have worked in upscale consignment shops and "the studios of top designers." Those experts examine an item for signature markings and construction to determine if it's a fake.

All of this comes, of course, with a cost. eBay takes only a 9% cut of items sold on its site; Hello La Mode charges more, on a sliding scale:

• Less than $100: $25
• $101 – $500: 23% of purchase price
• $501 – $1,000: 20% of purchase price
• $1,001 – $3,000: 17% of purchase price
• $3,001 and up: 14% of purchase price

The company notes, however, that its rates are "significantly lower" than the fees charged by traditional consignment stores.

And what happens if a fake does slip through the system, or if a buyer is otherwise unhappy with her purchase? The company says it "might" offer refunds "if the item is found not to conform to the website description," but if a buyer isn't happy for any other reason — say, the item doesn't fit, or she doesn't like the color — she's out of luck. The company does encourage unhappy buyers to relist their items on the site and will assume the cost of the transaction fee.

Throughout July, Hello La Mode will be hosting a number of sales from "celebrity tastemakers," including designer Byron Lars, Theia designer Don O'Neill and model Alek Wek, to benefit the charities they support. A HTML5 site optimized for mobile is also in the works.

Tell us: How do you dispose of designer goods you no longer want? Does Hello La Mode's solution appeal to you?

Front-page thumbnail courtesy of Edition01

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Series presented by Microsoft BizSpark

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The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives software startups three-year access to Microsoft software development tools, marketing visibility to help promote their business and a connection to the BizSpark ecosystem, giving them access to investors, advisors and mentors. There is no cost to join, so if your startup is privately owned, less than three years old and generates less than U.S. $1M in annual revenue, sign up today.