Executive Summary: Luevo Startup Company (Essay Sample)

Executive summary
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Executive summary - Luevo
Elevator Pitch
Luevo Startup Company is creating the very first product-based crowd-funding platform for individuals in fashion designing. This startup is revolutionizing both the creation and consumption of fashion with aim of empowering growth in local economies. It helps fashion designers to obtain the financing they require basing upon guaranteed paid in advance pre-orders. This startup offers shoppers a discovery as well as buying platform for finding the most recent fashion by up-and-coming and new designers influencing the brands of tomorrow. In essence, the platform of Luevo is designed to be international and scalable in scope, and able to draw consumers and designers from different countries around the world (Luevo, 2014).
Overview
Luevo was founded by Ana Caracaleanu who is currently the company’s Chief Executive Officer. Mihnea Stoian is the startup’s cofounder and the Chief Marketing Office. It is based in Toronto, Ontario Canada and operates in the eCommerce, Apparel and Fashion industry. The products are targeted at the female demographic. Luevo was founded in the year 2013 and has a workforce of 8 employees. Its specialties are fashion and crowd funding. The company is privately held. At present, the fashion designers working with Luevo include Isabelle Donola, Leighel Desiree, Jose Luis Rocha, and Jaefields (Luevo, 2014).
Industry Size/Structure
The industry is dominated by several crowd funding platforms, chief among them being Kickstarter, the largest crowd funding platform in the world based in America and whose mission is to help in bringing to life creative projects. Other noteworthy competitors include IndieGoGo, Crowdfunder, RocketHub, Crowdrise, AngeList, and Somolend. In the year 2012, the overall crowd funding industry was able to raise $2.7 billion in over 1 million individual campaigns worldwide, and it was expected to grow by more than $5 billion in the year 2013 (Barnet, 2013). At present, Luevo is the only company in its industry that helps fashion designers to obtain the financing they require basing upon guaranteed paid in advance pre-orders (Digital Media Zone, 2014). No competitor helps emerging fashion designers in crowd funding their collections with the use of a pre-ordering platform (Caracaleanu, 2014).
Opportunity
Before Ana Caracaleanu launched Luevo, there were very few platforms – competitors – that supported independent projects and one of them is Kickstarter. Nonetheless, there was not any such crowd funding platform appropriate for the fashion industry; hence, Caracaleanu launched Luevo. Shoppers typically like to do online shopping and view detailed images of apparel and various angles of the item (D’Alimonte, 2014). The crowd funding platforms that existed then did not have a consumer friendly e-commerce interface (Caracaleanu, 2014). Moreover, in the fashion category, the majority of shoppers are male looking for techy goods and no one really goes to Kickstarter to look for recent trends in fashion. If successful, the fashion designers in other platforms had to fulfill particular rewards to the buyer which were not essentially selling the product, for instance giving tours of their studio and writing thank you cards. Such activities basically remove the fashion designer from the core business values of designing, creating, and selling their apparel products (Caracaleanu, 2014). According to Caracaleanu (2014), Luevo’s CEO, 80% of new fashion brands fail in the initial 2 years of operations due to their inability to get the finances they require for production. The other major reason is that they do not have guaranteed sales or a central channel of distribution directly to the buyers.
Product/Solution
Luevo meets the market need since it links fashion designers to their target demographics and consumers by enabling buyers to support and pre-order from their preferred fashion designers. Luevo’s pre-ordering platform helps designers accept pre-orders for their apparel products directly from the runway, before they go into production. In essence, lovers of fashion are now able to reserve limited-edition and unique looks right from the runway and showroom, and be the first to enjoy fashion of the next season (Caracaleanu, 2014).
Technology
So far, Luevo has enabled fashion designers to be able to raise funds through e-commerce. Luevo’s preordering platform is very unique in the industry and through levering on technology, the company allows fashion lovers to reserve limited-edition and unique looks right from the showroom and run-way. No other competitor has the technology with such capabilities.
Company
Luevo is likely to be highly successful in its industry primarily because it allows consumers to have access to the garments on a more immediate basis (Tossell, 2014). In essence, waiting for the desig...