Farfetch, the leading global technology platform for the luxury fashion industry, has announced the first cohort of start-ups for its Dream Assembly programme. The 11 companies were selected from targeted applications from around the world. Farfetch’s Dream Assembly programme was launched in April to provide mentorship, knowledge, networking opportunities and early-stage funding to start-ups.
Stephanie Phair, Chief Strategy Officer of Farfetch, said: “We were delighted by the response from so many incredible companies. The companies we have selected for the first Dream Assembly cohort all have great potential to present innovative solutions and are capable of shaping the future of commerce.”
The companies chosen for the programme are working with technologies including virtual reality and artificial intelligence and are exploring ways of applying these and other technologies to revolutionise the future of commerce. Dream Assembly will welcome the first cohort of start-ups in Lisbon, on 7 September. The 12 week programme will include a series of workshops, one-to-one sessions with Farfetch senior leaders, and mentorship meetings covering topics including e-commerce, marketing, technology, fashion, logistics and operations, giving the start-ups direct access to Farfetch’s expertise in the luxury fashion and technology industries.
Additionally, Dream Assembly will offer networking opportunities for the participating start-ups, connecting them to relevant contacts in the fashion industry. Global luxury brand Burberry, will be contributing with knowledge and resources for the first Dream Assembly cohort. In addition to sessions in the Portuguese cities of Lisbon and Porto, Seed Accelerator 500 Startups will be hosting a one-week growth bootcamp in San Francisco. The programme also includes a demo day in London, where companies will have the chance to pitch their projects to a selected pool of external investors for follow-on funding.
Cipriano Sousa, Chief Technology Officer of Farfetch, commented that “It is a pleasure to be able to give back to start-ups and the fashion technology ecosystem, sharing knowledge and expertise, and helping promising companies to scale to the next level”.
Meet the start-ups:
FTSY - 'footsy' (Canada) is an app that makes shopping for shoes online easy and fun. From the moment FTSY users “Add to Bag”, they can be confident that the fit will be great and that they’ll love the style. How? By using AI and a smartphone, FTSY scans a user’s feet and instantly curates a personalized footwear collection to match the shape of their foot and their style preferences. With FTSY, everyone gets their Cinderella moment!
Buy Buddy (Turkey) created a smart shopping device that provides real-time inventory, product security, customer behaviour data to retailers and allows customers to shop without going to check out. When a customer comes to a store, Buy Buddy can rapidly help them find the desired items and process payment without having to wait in line.
For Upteam (Hong Kong), luxury always means luxury, even if pre-owned. Rui&Gui, two Portuguese entrepreneurs based in Asia for over a decade, took this basic idea and created Upteam - a data driven B2B pre-owned luxury bag and accessory curator, supplying authentic items to both online and offline shops across 30 different countries. Operating in the fast growing US$20B pre owned luxury market, Upteam acquires, authenticates and curates all its stock. It carries over 5,000 products from fashion's most luxurious and coveted brands, giving their clientele unlimited access to timeless pieces.
Shopvious (France) aims at giving luxury brands access to the most reliable and actionable analytics through a new ground-breaking data source: Blockchain-based Digital Certificates. Attached to each luxury product, these Certificates provide full visibility on the supply chain, guarantee authenticity through the entire product lifecycle and create a permanent link between brands and end users.
The Restory (UK) is a technology-powered luxury restoration brand using proprietary technology and data to engage directly and deeply with customers. Starting with shoes and bags, their strategy is to earn entry into the rest of the closet and to transform an out-of-date utility into a lifestyle service. The Restory empowers consumers to invest in the brands they love and enables brands and retailers to leverage a down-stream after-care ecosystem.
Reckon.ai (Portugal) uses computer vision to collect relevant information from websites, catalogues and social media to create a platform where retailers could easily monitor their competition. Additionally, using image recognition, it is able to detect objects like clothes in real time.
WISHI (USA) is solving the “I don’t know what to wear” problem. How? Connecting people with an online personal stylist and outsourcing styling will help people feel and look better every day. By offering access to stylists who provide personalised recommendations on what to wear, WISHI unlocks a previously luxury service.
Like Airbnb, Uber or Lyft, Villageluxe (USA) is promoting the sharing economy revolution and more so what women have been doing naturally for years: sharing their closets. Villageluxe wants consumers to buy better, therefore buy less and lend more. Villageluxe believes in the power of peer to peer and sustainable luxury fashion, and it provides an endless world of high fashion and luxury accessories available to borrow from some of the most sought-after closets in New York City and beyond.
Fashpa (Nigeria) is a global marketplace for African Fashion & Design. It seamlessly connects consumers to unique and sustainable merchandise from independent brands and boutiques through a single online storefront. Starting with Africa, Fashpa offers its sellers in emerging markets end-to-end technology to power e-commerce, a digital storefront, supply chain management and market access to clients from all over the globe.
Auverture (Netherlands) The No.1 designer fine jewellery destination, leading the evolution of individual expression through distinctive fine jewellery. Auverture curates unusual luxury pieces that they have scoured the world to find. They specialise in unique, fine designer jewellery, dreamt up by artists and brought to life by skilled craftspeople in under-the-radar ateliers and workshops, scattered across the globe. Time and effort have culminated in these original creations honed from precious materials of exceptional quality. Crafted with Love. Curated with Taste. Worn with Character.
Didimo (Portugal) is the leading creator of high-fidelity digital humans. Its technology brings authenticity to virtual interactions. Didimo is a deep technology company stemming from over a decade of cutting-edge research on computer graphics, machine learning, and facial animation. It gives brands a simple way to streamline and scale the production of unique lifelike 3D characters. For a retail company, incorporating Didimo’s technology will improve the customer experience while shopping online, reducing the returns of online orders, resulting in financial loss.
For more information please visit www.dreamassembly.com