Member Article

How London’s fashion and beauty start-ups are taking the UK by storm

British fashion and beauty brands are harnessing innovation and technology like never before to become market leaders and benchmark-setters in their respective fields. From retailers to apps, here are four start-up entrepreneurs who are pushing boundaries and effortlessly connecting with their tech-savvy millennial target audiences.

3INA – Pioneering cosmetics brand for whom speed is their success secret

Cosmetics brand 3INA (pronounced ‘Mina’) have rewritten the make-up rulebook thanks to a unique business model that accelerates the speed they get products to market. Launched in 2016 by retail mavericks Pablo Rivera and Mark Eve, the accessibly priced brand that showcases bold and youthful colours can develop and place products on the market within four months. Unlike other brands that take years to develop new products, 3INA are able to adopt emerging beauty trends as they’re happening.

Rivera and Eve met whilst at New Look and built an expert 3INA team including marketing manager Helen McGee from Net-a-Porter, and Sephora’s César Perez Lunaas head of business development. Since opening its flagship store in Covent Garden’s coveted Beauty Quarter, 3INA launched brick and mortar stores in seven countries in just six months - a world first in terms of rate of expansion. With an ecommerce site on the way, 3INA is on course for a market-conquering 2017.

Care for Hair – Inspirational hairstyle finder that enhances the salon experience

Making choosing a new hairstyle an effortless experience, Care for Hair is a UK-centric website from Swedish studio Eighty Done AB. With a user-friendly, intuitive interface, users can browse galleries of celebrity hairstyles for inspiration and source the hairstyle of their choice by adjusting a set of filters. “User experience is at the core of our strategy,” explains developer DarkoPerunicic. “The product is very simple, it’s like a Pinterest of hairstyles, and with a custom search filter specifically designed to find the desired hairstyle in the shortest possible time, we want to make things as easy as we can for the user.”

With over 100,000 users in 2017 alone, the uncomplicated UX is proving popular and soon Care for Hair will be demo’d on iPads in London salons. With a view to streamlining and enhancing the hairdressers experience for salon-goers, Care for Hair’s USP is its simplicity. A Care for Hair app is also in development.

Grabble – Stylishly edited, Tinder-style shopping app

The UK’s fastest growing fashion and lifestyle app, Grabble is like the Tinder of fashion. Essentially an ecommerce platform, users can swipe through their favourite brands and opt to discard or save something for later to purchase. After receiving £1.85 million from investors in 2015 they’ve grown exponentially, winning Drapers Digital Awards for Best Tech Start Up. In 2016 Grabble had a user base of over 400,000 and 50,000 daily users. Grabble’s success is in part due to its simple binary ‘love-hate’ interface similar to Tinder and the well curated portfolio of brands they partner with like Harvey Nichols, Marks & Spencer and Wolf & Badger.

Open for Vintage – Luxury vintage marketplace uniting international boutiques

From flea-market finds on eBay to luxury on Vestiaire Collective, selling vintage clothing online is nothing new. One new start-up, however, Open for Vintage, recently received a £500,000 investment from venture capital firm eDot Invest and is shaking up the market. Rather than individual users selling their own goods, Open for Vintage is a high-end market place that expertly aggregates over 10,000 pieces of vintage clothing and accessories from 53 international boutiques. Celebrity endorsement from high profile figures like Kim Kardashian and Poppy Jamie has been key in elevating Open for Vintage’s profile and the investment will spent to increase marketing, improve the platform and expand on the boutiques they partner with.

“2017 looks to be a great year ahead for both Open for Vintage and our boutique partners.” Explains CEO Colin Saunders. “Sales and traffic continue to increase month on month and this latest round of funding enables us to continue to improve the customer experience, plus increase the number of unique boutiques that sell on the platform.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Kalyna Kapur .