Mass Customization in Online Fashion E-Commerce: Indochino CEO Kyle Vucko (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s stay in the 2006 to 2007 timeframe. I’m assuming that you’re talking about a period when you hadn’t yet started the business because all of these things had to be in place to launch a custom tailoring shop, right?

Kyle Vucko: Right.

Sramana Mitra: So you identified one or two tailors in China and then you launched this site?

Kyle Vucko: We had to track down a couple of tailors. We had to learn how they measured.

Sramana Mitra: What about the patterns?

Kyle Vucko: Initially, our patterns were actually owned, controlled, and refined by the tailors we used. We used their patterns, and then over time, we defined the pattern. We wanted a more modern fit, which involved some tweaking of the patterns.

Sramana Mitra: What about the fabric?

Kyle Vucko: We partnered with our tailors. In Asia, they have fabric markets where you can buy fabrics one meter at a time. They have rows and rows and stalls and stalls of fabric. It evolved from there.

Sramana Mitra: Was it Chinese fabric?

Kyle Vucko: Not always, but typically. One of the things that we learned is that China is actually the world’s largest miller and producer of fabric. What we’ve continued to learn is that China really is THE place to make apparels.

Sramana Mitra: There’s an incredibly high amount of knowledge and sophistication. There’s no question.

Kyle Vucko: Exactly.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s look at that period when you were a student and you were thinking about this business idea. What did you do to get it off the ground? You obviously did all this research to find the tailor. You said you raised some angel financing. Tell me a bit more about that. Tell me specifically what you were able to show the angel against which they gave you the financing.

Kyle Vucko: I’ll take a step back because when we started working on the idea, we started working on a business plan. Before we went to Asia and before we talked to investors, we put together a business plan. We started building it around some best case business practices. We also applied for a few business plan competitions locally. There were a couple of big contests that we entered. We found that to be very helpful, because it forces you to be more structured and work towards deadlines. We built our business plan around their plan.

Simultaneously, we were researching the concepts and leveraging all of the resources that our university provided for free–access to libraries and industry databases. That helped us understand the market and the opportunity. We took our idea and affirmed it with some data.

From there, we actually started connecting with local mentors. My school actually had mentor programs, so I was able to get help from them. I was able to meet with the most successful entrepreneur in Victoria. I had a big list of entrepreneurs and business people who I was sharing my idea with, getting feedback, and developing relationships. We didn’t end up winning the business competition, which was frustrating. But we really developed our business idea. With that knowledge and with these relationships that we built with our mentors, we were able to turn that into an angel.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Mass Customization in Online Fashion E-Commerce: Indochino CEO Kyle Vucko
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