Fabricly (YC W10) launches threadless for fashion and raises money (opens in new tab)

B) This reminded me of this: http://www.ted.com/talks/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashio...

High fashion frequently succeeds on brand name alone. Knockoffs are allowed to completely copy a style - but since they can't take the brand name, they fail. People buy Se7en jeans because they're Se7en jeans - and that's about 80% of it. The other 20% is because they look good. This startup completely ignores that thought process.

With both companies why go high fashion instead of mass-market Tween / young buyers style?

That would seem like a clearer path to take to get some serious scale and attention, especially with the clear connection to FaceBook / social media you guys have implemented.

That feels like a clearer path to exit too - a big box store would LOVE their retail to transcend internet / social media.

I'd like to hear your rationale about pursuing high fashion - margins? Built in audience for the boutique designers?

So in the end, it boils down to whether they can get the amount of "votes" required to be as low as possible, which could enable more designs to be manufactured.

P.S. As a side note, shops in China selling through http://taobao.com can make that happen already by moving the cost of production so low that prior buying is not a requirement, as the cost of keeping stock is very cheap.

I read a couple of years back about a store in London that was using a laser scanner to precisely measure customers and then making them perfectly fitting jeans for something like £300 a pair. It'd be really cool to see something like that but with an XBox Kinect doing the measurements.