Flair Atelier: NikeId for womenswear.

What is Flair Atelier?
Flair Atelier is an intuitive e-commerce platform that enables women to customise their garments to reflect their style and fit.

The problem and the solution.
Shopping for the perfect clothes can be stressful and time-consuming. We all know the feeling of having something we would like to buy in mind, and the struggle to find it. Often, the dress we are looking for exists only in our mind: “Too short, too long, it would be perfect if it was in another colour, I would love this model if it only had sleeves...” How amazing would it be to be able to design it yourself?
Flair Atelier ends the eternal search for an appropriate attire. In a playful and intuitive way, each woman can easily customise every detail to create a full wardrobe of items she loves to wear. Each piece can be made on her precise measures.

How does it work?
The client can customise her garments starting from one of our proposals or from one of our classic basic designs, changing colours, tops, length, and sleeves. The collection is entirely designed by one of the most successful British designers, previously design director of womenswear at Burberry.
Our customiser tool is friendly and easy to use. The client can experiment and visualise her dress changing in real time (soon with a 3D true-to-life visualisation). She can request to receive at home swatches of the fabrics. If she would like to have her measurements taken, one of our personal stylists and traveling tailors, can meet her at her convenience or during one of our dedicated events.

Why Flair Atelier?
Flair Atelier is a revolution in fashion.
We are not a standard e-commerce website, at Flair Atelier nothing is bought off a shelf, everything is designed by you and made for you. Compared to a traditional tailor, we are cheaper, faster and we make your life easier. No fitting and no waiting time needed.
We combine traditional tailoring and technology to create the uniqueness that each client needs offering a new shopping experience. We make every piece on-demand with a sustainable production model.

Why now?
Personalisation is a big trend, it fulfils the desire to feel unique, and it’s a trend definitely here to stay: big brands offer the possibility of adding a personal touch, you can customise your shoes, for example on NikeID, and there is a growing offer of made to measure menswear at all price points. Flair Atelier is uniquely positioned to make a difference in the still underserved customisable womenswear, and to adopt in the near future all the innovations made possible by our internally developed technology (we are working on the 3D tool to offer a true-to-life visualisation).

Competitors:
Summisura: Made-to-measure fashion, lower price point, lower quality.
e-Shakti: Mostly serving the American market, lower price point, no real time customisation, longer delivery time. Michaela Jedinak: Customisable womenswear, no real-time visualisation, different style, target, quality.
Tailor Italy: Customisable womenswear, standard size, different style and positioning.

Similar companies operating in other product lines:
JD Hilburn, Lanieri, Spoke London, Apposta (customisable menswear); NikeID (customisable shoes); Shoes of Prey (customisable shoes for women).

Business Model.
We are a direct to consumer digital business. We operate with low fixed costs and high margins thanks to the direct sale channel and the flexibility of our production network, in Italy and UK. As production starts only after the payment is received, we operate with low working capital and we are profitable from the first order.
The great flexibility of our technology set-up and the modularity of our design, allows us to produce on-demand and deliver to our clients in days.
The immediate adaptability is key: it takes only a couple of weeks to add new items on Flair Atelier, each one with infinite possibilities of customisation and colours, so we will never miss a trend.

What’s the market size?
The market potential is great: the global market for luxury apparel is worth 40 billion pounds, with over 20 million women in the premium EU womenswear. In the UK a quarter of the 6 million premium consumers in womenswear are interested in customising their products. Online retail is the fastest growing market in the UK.

How do we sell?
Flair Atelier sells directly to the consumer online and offline through a network of personal stylists and at dedicated events and pop-up shops to give the opportunity to our clients to try on, and see and touch our fabrics. We are planning a number of private events in collaboration with banks, women associations and blue chips, and dedicated corners in shops.

Does Flair Atelier offer made-to-measure garments?
We provide this service during our offline events, where clients can meet our tailors. We will add an online feature very soon, where with just 2 pics (full body from front and side) we will take all the measures we need. Meanwhile, you can contact our tailoring team through our customer service page and we will arrange an appointment for you.

Where are the garments made?
We are a London based company and our tailors and production team are located both in London and near Venice, in Italy. Our suppliers and mills are all Italians.
We make the best use of technology and we strive to innovate every process, but still believe that traditional manual skills and artisanship shine through in all our garments, as a reflection of our heritage and our identity.

Is Flair Atelier an ethical fashion brand?
We founded Flair Atelier with the idea of sustainable excellence firmly in mind. Flair Atelier works with passionate professionals and expert tailors, ensuring that work and pay agreements make happy all employees.
We carefully select our materials and we have set up our manufacturing processes to minimise the impact on the environment and to benefit people and communities.
On-demand production allows zero waste, all our garments are made to last. We are the antidote to fast and disposable fashion.

Who is the team?
A team of professionals with backgrounds in traditional tailoring, fashion e-commerce, start-ups, and finance.
• Marianna Ferro, CEO, founder, and shareholder. First work experience at YOOX when the company (now YOOX-NET-A-PORTER Group) was still a promising start-up. More than 15 years of experience in finance and private equity.
• Cristiana Posani, COO, co-founder, and shareholder. Previously a planning director in the private sector, and co-founder of MyLux Caffe’, a startup distributing luxury coffee.
• Marco Bettiolo, CTO. Vice President at TES, leading the Software Engineering Department.
• Designer and creative director. Currently curates 18.01, a consultancy company and garment research
archive.
• Michele Fabbro, special effect director at Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) and Disney Corporation for movies like Star Wars: the last Jedi and Harry Potter, is now creating true to life 3D rendering for each
customisation option.
• Maria Stan, creative pattern maker. Founder of Martex Design, specialises in digital pattern-making for
womenswear, using advanced industry softwares.

Board of Directors and Advisors:
• Max Benedetti, BoD, and shareholder. Marketing, CRM, logistics, e-commerce expert. He is an entrepreneur, investor, digital strategic consultant, and an independent board member for the YOOX-NET- A-PORTER Group.
• Silvia Pace, BoD, and shareholder. Portfolio manager focused on retail and luxury. In 2016 she founded Space Capital, a hedge fund where she manages a global equity portfolio.
• Nicola Nott, advisor. 18 years’ experience in production and product development for luxury fashion, the last 8 years developing Burberry’s women tailoring collection and Aquascutum.
• Alessandra Vecchi, advisor. Senior fellow in fashion management at the London College of Fashion and University of Bologna, her research focuses on disruptive technologies.

The Founders say:
Marianna Ferro (CEO): “I felt that in fashion was missing a true collaboration between the client and the brand, so we created Flair Atelier, that is more than a new shopping experience, it’s a different way of looking at fashion: there is a special bond with your clothes, when they are made for you, designed by you."
Cristiana Posani (COO): “At Flair Atelier we imagine a future where every item we buy is made just for us, according to our desires and in the most efficient way.”

We are crowdfunding soon.
We are proud to have been recently selected among many from Virgin Startup to be part of Crowdboost Program, an accelerator for entrepreneurs who want to raise funds and awareness through an equity crowdfunding campaign. We are launching soon our campaign on Crowdcube where we are raising £200,000: The proceedings of this round will be used for adding new collections, marketing, and the 3D visualisation tool.

Future Development.
In the future, we will offer our platform B2B to create customisation experiences on an industrial scale for other brands (white label). We will look into factory automation to complement the work of skilled seamstresses.
We will introduce an AI software that will find and suggest to you what is the best outfit based on your size and fit. As soon as possible we will use our e-sizing technology to gather your measurements. Possible developments include also AR/VR dressing rooms, enabled by our 3D capabilities, with a body scan that will allow you to virtually try on garments in a virtual changing room.

Is Flair Atelier EIS qualified?
Yes, we are. Investment in unlisted companies often carries a high risk. EIS can offer some compensation for that risk through income tax and capital gains tax reliefs to investors who subscribe for shares in qualifying companies and qualify personally for the relief.
Investing in Flair Atelier you can have 30% upfront Income Tax relief up to maximum investment of £1 million, which can be carried back to the previous tax year (assuming the investor has sufficient income tax liability); 100% Inheritance Tax relief (provided the investments have been held for at least 2 years at time of death); No Capital gains tax after 3 years; Deferral of gains realised on a different asset, where disposal of that asset was less than 12 months before the EIS investment or less than 36 months after it; Tax-free growth and tax relief from investment losses.

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