Unitedstyles Can Make You a Fashion Designer, Put You in Business

The unique fashion e-commerce site Unitedstyles might not have won the TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing ‘Start-up Battlefield’ prize yesterday, but I found its fashion design and manufacturing service the most visually impressive and captivating of the six finalists (see who won here). And so I felt it’s worth an overview. As a bonus, it’s based in Shanghai, despite having overseas (Dutch) founders.

What makes Unitedstyles spectacular is that it allows users to design the entire outfit, preview it with 3D online modeling, share your designs socially, and then finally order the production of your own fashion creations. It’s aimed at labels, not individuals, and could even enable someone to enter the fashion business with original designs in a Unitedstyles online store with little-to-no overheads.

When presenting at the Start-Up Battlefield final session yesterday, two of its founders, Xander Slager and、Joop Dorresteijn, described their start-up thusly:

You can design online like a designer. We call this user-generated fashion.

Virtual fashion has unlimited possibilites […] Once fashion is digital you can crowd-source it, and gamify it.

The duo also emphasised that this model “democratizes branding and designing,” and takes B2B fashion to a new level. It has already attracted US$150,000 in VC funding from an unspecified source, and will utilise Chinese manufacturers to bring your designs into material reality. Another co-founder is Marc van der Chijs, who was behind the video-sharing site Tudou (NASDAQ:TUDO).

The sweet web app has templates and provides an invisible guiding hand in creating new garments, with the founders aware of the risk of bad-looking clothes potentially ruining their reputation at this delicate early stage.

You can try your hand at designing something without even signing-up – give Unitedstyles a try here.