“When Fashion Meets Tech” Panel at Chicago Fashion Week

The Chicago Fashion Foundation will host a free panel at 1:00 p.m. on October 19, 2013 at Fashion Focus — also know as Chicago Fashion Week — discussing technology’s impact on the fashion industry. Join Daliah at the Chicago Cultural Center as she moderates the panel featuring local Chicago fashion innovators. These industry experts will explain how the fashion industry is taking advantage of available technology and how tech is helping them reach new markets, increase sales and create new business models. Whether it be the development of an app, website or hardware, technology is impacting the fashion industry like never before. The all star-panelists, handpicked  by Saper Law, are extremely knowledgeable about the intersection of both fashion and technology.

Tyler Spalding – CEO & Founder of Style Seek

Founded by two MIT graduates and a FIDM professor, StyleSeek is a personalized e-commerce site for lifestyle products. Its team of software engineers and creative professionals has developed a platform that integrates recommendation technologies, editorial content, and e-commerce.  Featuring the first interactive relevance engine on the web, StyleSeek works across the style spectrum by enabling users to create, refine, and share their unique StyleDNA.

StyleSeek provides a new way to shop that’s completely customized on your terms, helping you make decisions that inspire your best look, whatever that may be. No judgments, no pressure—just style.  StyleSeek has relationships with over 150 online retailers, including Macy’s, Barneys, Saks and Nordstrom.

Alex Batdorf – CMO of ZipFit Denim

ZipFit Denim is a Chicago retailer with an e-commerce presence using technology to make jeans shopping quick and easy for men. Technology is the core of ZipFit’s business model. . ZipFit uses technology to recommend jeans to customers based off a pair of jeans they already own or based off of their body type and fit preferences. ZipFit is increasing its sales by using digital data to both analyze and determine what recommendations to make for its customer’s future purchases.

Essentially, technology is what differentiates ZipFit from other retailers since it is using Tech to simplify clothes shopping for customers versus making suggestions based on trends. 

Liz Salcedo – Founder of Everpurse

Everpurse is a bag as powerful as you. Everpurse combines cutting edge technology with fashion forward style, resulting in functional expertly designed handbags that wirelessly charge a variety of smart phones. Invented by Liz Salcedo, a former social worker turned entrepreneur, Everpurse quickly grew from a personal solution to an internationally celebrated tech product made by and for women. Each Everpurse is designed, constructed, and hand sewn in the USA

Sarah Watts – Style Consultant at Trunk Club

Trunk Club was started to solve a simple problem – shopping for clothes in stores or online just doesn’t work for most guys. It’s overwhelming, inconvenient, and takes way too much time. With Trunk Club, guys discover awesome clothes that are perfect for them without ever having to go shopping. We combine top brands, expert service, and unparalleled convenience to deliver a highly personalized experience that helps guys look their best and saves them time.

We scour the planet for the very best in men’s apparel and curate an ever-evolving assortment of pieces from our favorite designers. With the best inventory anywhere as our point of departure, a Stylist on our team hand-selects a trunk of items based on each customer’s needs and tastes. They keep what they love and send the rest right back to us, at no cost to them.

While Trunk Club is definitely a men’s fashion company making huge waves in a previously stagnant industry, it is also a tech company, and the two are not mutually exclusive. It is a fashion firm with a revolutionary concept and a tech team that stays ahead of the curve. With a unique algorithm designed to determine which brands will fit each client based upon the way a particular brand runs, an i-phone app providing clients with access to Trunk Club at all times, and a live inventory catalogue developed for its stylists to pack trunks at any time, any place.

Jeremiah Green – CEO & Founder of Purely Fashion App

Purely fashion brings cutting edge fashion to the world through a clean and curated mobile application.  We are one of the first unified platforms to discover and buy fashion from brands that are at the forefront of the industry. We have exclusive agreements with designers to offer fashion on a pre-sale basis as well as up-to-the-moment images of fashion as it comes out on the runway. 

Technology in the form of our mobile application and forthcoming website, is a major distribution channel of content for our business and provides the only platform for us to engage in those activities.  Through a measured approach between between core mobile app content, product development, external blog content and multi-channel digital marketing, we are able to drive customer acquisition and sales.  We see technology as a tool that allows us to keep our customer acquisition costs low, increase activity within our app, increase retention and ultimately drive referrals back into our business. 

Sharon Schneider – Founder of MoxieJean

Parents trust Moxie Jean to help them find high quality, like-new baby and kid’s clothes from their favorite brands and designers online. Whether buying or selling, Moxie Jean makes it easy to save money and keep kids looking stylish from play time to Sunday supper. 

Moxie Jean is using technology to let moms from rural Kansas shop the great designer clothes that New York mamas have always been able to find in the local resale store. 

Boo Fagan O’Keefe – marketing strategy and biz development for Lookcast

www.lookcast.com, is a revolutionary web-app that leverages the dynamic nature of the internet to transform the lookbook into a digital communication platform for the fashion industry. LOOKCAST enables emerging and established designers, stylists, and retailers to easily create stunning digital lookbooks; to share them both privately and across social media platforms; and to track the resulting interest, inquiries & orders.

Be sure to join as at 1pm on October 19, 2013 at the Chicago Cultural Center, Claudia Cassidy Theater, 2nd Floor North.

Fashion Focus Chicago 2013 supports the local fashion community with industry events including a full day of free education seminars hosted by the Mayor’s Fashion Council and featuring local fashion organizations, on topics ranging from intellectual property to sourcing locally and internationally to mastering social media. Saper Law handles a variety of intellectual property and social media issues and is thrilled to be a part of Fashion Focus Chicago!