Mike Viheula is working on a project that combines online clothing shopping with social networking. The company’s logo is something like this.
Since winning San Luis Obispo’s first ever Cal Poly Startup Weekend in late January, the Haberdash team and its founder, Mike Viheula of Paso Robles, have been working to get their intuitive “fashion DNA” online application up and running.
More than a month has passed since the Haberdash team beat 11 others at the startup event, where the team developed a program that would help people pick a wardrobe.
In the meantime, Viheula and his team have learned how meticulous starting an online business can be.
More than 80 participants on 12 teams presented their prototypes at the three-day January gathering, which is planned as an annual event, according to Cal Poly officials.
A panel of four judges — faculty and local business executives — critiqued teams on customer validation, business models and execution. Mentors worked during the weekend to coach teams and guide them through problems.
As the winner, the Haberdash team will have the opportunity to continue to refine its product through the Kauffman Foundation’s FastTrac program, thanks to a donation by the Cal Poly Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
Viheula and his team, four of whom are freshmen engineering majors at Cal Poly, have run into many of the obstacles new companies face.
Examples include locating funds, balancing schedules and working out the quirks on the technical side of things, but Haberdash hopes to have the private data it needs to run by the end of April.
Haberdash, which will be developed into an online, iPhone and Android application, can initially be understood by its slogan, “Discover your fashion DNA,” but most may need a further explanation.
“In the presentation, I described it as solving the same problem for your wardrobe as Pandora solves for music,” Viheula said, referring to the online music-streaming service.
Pandora picks music for its users by starting with a single song or artist as a style reference, then fine tunes the selections.
Haberdash’s functionality as a digital wardrobe is largely based around Pandora’s structure.
By feeding off user-provided data, the team’s own “intelligence apparel algorithm” will be able to suggest which styles of clothing best suit individual users.
It is an industry with unlimited growth potential because a large percentage of shopping is done online these days, Viheula said.
Although women’s apparel will remain the dominant demographic of the industry, Haberdash will market its product to 18-to-40-year-olds who are computer savvy.
Last month, a marketing opportunity presented itself in which Viheula — founder of Viheula Winery in Paso Robles — spent several days in New York City meeting with investors, designers and fashion bloggers.
Although the winery is not this entrepreneur’s first priority (he has sold it to his parents), he admits that it was, and will continue to be, a great way of getting his foot in the door to the fashion community.
Since his trip to New York, Viheula has been working on an executive summary that he hopes will attract investors.
The summary includes: what the Haberdash product is, who its competitors are, what the market opportunity is, who is leading the team, how much money it is seeking and how the team would be using that money.
Viheula said his startup would probably seek between $300,000 to more than $1 million from investors.
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