Angela Miller is a social engagement tool that allows women to have their friends pick and style their wardrobe in a pinterest style fashion plate.
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Angela Miller started as an accessories boutique in Alderwood Mall outside of Seattle, WA. We sold women’s accessories. Everything a girl would need to complete her wardrobe. When we decided to close our doors I felt like we weren’t finished. There was still a need in women’s accessories that wasn’t being filled.
In the current market, most fashion websites offer an exclusive stylist. Pitched by the latest celebrity. They use their celebrity likeness to send “stylist” recommended picks each month which is really a recommendation algorithm that really doesn’t work. My company Angela Miller is helping women between the ages of 18-35 put the term stylist where it belongs. With their friends!
We are a social engagement tool that will allow women to have their friends pick and style their wardrobe in a pinterest style fashion plate.
Before the Lean Startup Challenge our initial hypothesis focused on membership fashion websites like JewelMint, ShoeDazzle and JustFab and realized there was a lack of variety and selection. We initially interviewed customers based on the notion that they were women and they shopped without any real focus on who we were targeting and why.
Using the tools we learned in our initial class we went back and targeted women in our customer interviews who were already members of fashion subscription websites. We created a landing page www.angelamiller.com and email campaign that targeted two groups of women on facebook and instagram 18-35 and 35-45.
We found that our hypothesis was correct in that there was a lack of variety on the sites. However, what was a more compelling argument were the ‘Stylist’ recommendations. Almost each and every person we spoke with had an issue with the Stylist recommendations. Which led to the next Hypothesis.
Most women use their friends as a sounding board when they are trying to style an outfit.
Turns out, the engagement from our interviews when we discussed obtaining their friends opinion went up 10 fold.
This became the sounding board to what we are calling the Fashion Plate. The fashion plate will allow customers to upload or take a picture of themselves and accessorize the items on the fashion plate or share with their friends to allow them to accessorize for them. What better way to engage and shop with your girlfriends online.
The most valuable aspect of the lean start up challenge was the Customer Development Process. I initially had a set of ideas of how I envisioned this company moving forward. Without the customer interviews and the customer development process I would be headed down the wrong path. Because of the lean start up challenge I now have 3 paying customers and on my way to an MVP.
I want to say Thank you to Todd Wyder & everyone in the Lean Startup Challenge and Veatrice Glenn for constantly pushing me.
We are looking for User Experience designers, web developers, a Social Media Manager as well as bloggers and vloggers to join our team.
Check us out at www.angelamiller.com
as always, Live Beautifully!
