Last weekend, Aviary represented the photo front at the Decoded Fashion Hackathon in NYC. Attendance was outstanding, with a reported 300 developers and designers, 40% of which were women. A corporate-style hackathon with a twist, Decoded kicked off the event with an all-star panel of Fashion guru’s who talked about the real issues in the fashion world and the technology they’d like to see to solve them.
The panel expressed that a large chunk of the problems revolve around the supply chain. According to Uri Minkoff, CEO of Rebecca Minkoff, 80% of the problems in fashionrevolve around getting the right product on the floor at the right time. Miscommunications, shipping delays, botched samples and language barriers all contribute to an enormous loss in revenue and product that can’t be moved.
The panel also addressed a lack of industry standards for backend inventory management. According to them, the typical designer will work with spreadsheets, while the more tech savvy will shoehorn generic project management tools into their process. They expressed a strong desire for a more targeted solution.
Over the course of the next 24 hours, developers and designers, with the help of business savvy mentors, sought to find solutions to many of these problems. When Sunday afternoon rolled around, there were a total of 78 hacks, 32 of which earned to opportunity to present in front of the two panels of judges.
Submitted app categories included: Consumer Sentiment Analysis tools for businesses and designers, Fashion Discovery tools for consumers, Inventory Management tools, and Brick and Mortar Engagement tools.
In the end, there were five finalists. Each will be spending the next two weeks improving and polishing their apps under mentorship from Gilt founder Kevin Ryan. On Feb 14th, they’ll have a final chance to show off their work at the Decoded Fashion Finale, a runway show where a winner will be chosen and offered a grand prize of $10,000.
And now, the finalists!
42
A retail engagement platform, 42 offers the power of online stores to their brick and mortar counterparts. A mobile app allows users to track products with simple scan of a barcode on in store items and mark them as “Try On” or “Purchase”, simulating the Wishlist and Shopping cart of online stores. This allows for future engagement with sales and algorithmically generated product recommendations based on past purchases. Users are incentivised to participate by an immediate in-store discount or sale. They can also mark items for later.
Congratulations to Cathy Han, Nicolas Porter, Lucas Lemanowicz and Sarah Hum for 42!
Read more on Hacker League.
Avant Garde
Helps designers move excess inventory by targeting customers who are more likely to purchase that particular product. They leverage a brand’s existing user databases to do real time image and sentiment analysis of their social media activity to find users who are most likely to to buy that item right now.
Designers can use that data to deliver targeted email campaigns to move specific inventory.
Congratulations to Carrie Mantha, Ajay Mantha, Dustin Hayes and Vladimir Dedov for Avant Garde!
Read more on Hacker League.
Coveted
GetCoveted.com
An e-commerce backend for tumblr, Coveted is a platform that provides an easy way for designers to post their items tumblr and link their posts and photos to a buy now page. This means that any reflags, pins or shares will also link back to the product page. Once users have a Coveted account, they’re able to purchase items with a single click from the product page. They’re project is already live with an item for sale from a CFDA member.
Congratulations to Michael Dizon, Jason Fertel and Ian Culley for Coveted!
Coveted get's an extra shout out for best use of Aviary in a hack! When users upload their product photos for tumblr, they’re able to touch them up using Aviary’s web editor.
Read more on Hacker League.
Fashion Dashboard
fashiondashboard.herokuapp.com
An analytics package that monitors social activity around brands and stores, provides customer insights, brand comparisons, and measured influence of local, nationwide and global campaigns.
Congratulations to Stephen Alber for Fashion Dashboard!
Read more on Hacker League.
SWATCHit
SWATCHit is a peer to peer platform that aims to connect global designers with emerging market artisans and overseas producers. They’re able to reduce complexities in overseas production by creating a direct communication channel between global designers and overseas producers, eliminating any intermediary channels and getting more revenue into the hands of the artisans.
Because they’re working directly with the artisans, their able to maintain a supplier database with analytics tools that designers can use to build their businesses.
Congratulations to Hendrika Makilya, Jag Gill, Jackson Lin and Paul Yun for SWATCHit!
Read more on Hacker League.
If you'd like to have Aviary at your Hackathon, feel free to reach out to ari@aviary.com.