Inline Founder, CEO
📌 Summary
- Founded Inline, the first iOS-native wholesale platform, tackling entrenched analog processes in the $7.68T wholesale fashion industry by directly addressing core inefficiencies of product digitization, order automation, and document generation.
- Delivered transformative operational efficiencies across international fashion weeks, slashing product digitization time up to 84%, appointment duration up to 79%, and processing over $12M in brand sales annually as the go-to tool for luxury brands like Eckhaus Latta, Slam Jam, and M5 Showroom.
- Earned elite industry backing & partnerships with industry giants LVMH and Farfetch as part of their prestigious incubator programs in Paris and Portugal, while securing VC backing from Sequoia, Farfetch, Baron Davis, and Bread Ventures.
Capabilities: 1. Generate custom line sheets & visual invoices 2. Import collections & create virtual showrooms 3. Mobile workflow mimicking the in-person wholesale appointment 4. Invite buyers to collaborative orders 5. Online & offline order taking capabilities 6. Manage & bulk action order history
Select clients: Eckhaus Latta, 1 Granary, Slam Jam, M5 Showroom, Christopher John Rogers
LVMH La Maison des Startups, 2020 Farfetch Dream Assembly, 2019 LVMH Innovation Award Finalist, 2019 WWD | Vogue Business | BoF | Fox News
ℹ️ Background
- Interned at Alexander Wang for the FW17 Fashion Week in NYC, supporting sales representatives conduct wholesale appointments with the biggest retailers, boutiques, and department stores in the world.
- Closely observed an intensely manual and inefficient wholesale ordering process. Handwritten notes, Excel templates, and cumbersome email exchanges were commonplace despite the multi-million-dollar orders.
- Recognizing a clear opportunity for improvement, I chose to dedicate my senior capstone project at USC's Iovine Young Academy to tackle the inefficiencies within the wholesale fashion ordering space.
📊 Research & Validation
- Conducted over 175 interviews with domestic and international fashion labels, sales representatives, boutique and department store buyers, and even existing fashion wholesale software company founders.
- Shadowed 12 in-person wholesale appointments at single and multi-brand showrooms to deeply understand user behavior and operational pain points, including LA/NYC Fashion Week and major fashion trade shows.
- Created 5 in-depth customer journeys and defined 8 distinct user personas (luxury sales reps, trade shows reps, boutique and department store buyers, and multi-brand showroom reps).
⚠️ Problem
- The $7.68 trillion wholesale apparel industry still primarily relies on outdated analog methods (such as handwritten notes and fragmented Excel processes) leading to increased time, cost, and error.
- Existing software options were costly, unintuitive, and primarily aimed at enterprise-level clients, ignoring the critical in-person showroom experience that shaped buyer/seller interactions and relationships.
🧭 Approach
- Determined the best product strategy and target market was to serve traditionally underserved emerging fashion brands seeking easy-to-learn wholesale technology with a low barrier to entry, similar to Shopify’s success with D2C commerce.
- Identified the biggest opportunity as streamlining multiple inefficient digital document-exchange steps (line sheets, buyer selections, invoices, product amendments), significantly reducing time and enhancing seller-buyer communications.
⚡ MVP Solution
- Following graduation and a modest $25K pre-seed funding round, we developed Inline, the first cloud-based, iOS-native wholesale platform and automation tool, tailored explicitly to enhance the first touchpoint in a wholesale order, the in-person wholesale appointment.
- Product differentiators:
- Rapidly digitized apparel collections in minutes (compared to days)
- Mobile first, intuitive UI meticulously imitating the actual wholesale appointment process for ease of adoption.
- Instantly generated digital line sheets, selection documents, and invoices directly during showroom appointments.
- Display support for both CAD mockups and product photos
🎯 Zero-to-One
- Officially launched our beta MVP in Q1 2019 in NYC with luxury menswear brand Everest Isles at the renowned M5 Showroom, achieving remarkable operational improvements including:
- 84% reduction in setup time for digital product line-sheets and SKU documentation.
- 95% faster document generation cycles compared to traditional methods.
- 55% reduction in total appointment duration, drastically improving productivity and brand-customer experience.
- Eckhaus Latta also became an early adopter, testing Inline at Paris Fashion Week shortly thereafter and experiencing unprecedented success:
- 79% reduction in total appointment duration, allowing more meetings per day.
- 82% increase in total number of appointments, resulting in their highest wholesale revenue season at that time.
- Overall beta-test results consistently demonstrated Inline’s ability to reduce wholesale appointment times by an average of 33%, saving fashion brands precious days worth of manual data entry and preparation.
🚀 Growth
- After 6-months in beta, tested and validated through 3 trade shows and 2 major fashion weeks, we officially hard-launched Inline in June 2019 with excellent initial traction:
- Achieved 100% beta-to-paid subscriber conversion rate and maintained 100% retention.
- Finished 2019 with:
- Participation across 14 international fashion weeks in New York, Los Angeles, Paris, London, and Mumbai.
- 11 active paying subscribers, 34 pre-orders for the upcoming season.
- Facilitated 600+ wholesale orders, processing over $3M in total brand sales.
- $13K ARR in 6-months (not including pre-orders).
- Other notable successes:
- Eckhaus Latta processed a remarkable 138 wholesale appointments over a 5-day span at Paris Fashion Week with major retail names including Nordstrom, SSENSE, and Browns Fashion.
- Strengthened our industry credibility through partnerships with leading multi-brand showrooms (M5 Showroom, the US distributor for brands such as Stone Island and Herno).
- Fisher + Baker, an upscale men's clothing brand, successfully tested Inline at the Project Trade Show in Las Vegas. Their Head of Sales, Jessica Rush, provided positive feedback, noting it was "extremely intuitive to use unlike Joor and NuOrder." (incumbent competitors)
- Growth Strategy
- Our initial monetization strategy was a clear-cut SaaS model, with plans to evolve into tiered subscriptions, integrated payment monetization, and ultimately build a wholesale marketplace connecting brands and retailers seamlessly.
- Our forward-looking growth strategy aimed at enhancing the platform to continue the journey with wholesale users' workflows, transitioning seamlessly from mobile-first physical showroom appointments to web-based digital order confirmation and data-driven inventory forecasting, culminating in a robust wholesale ecosystem.
🏆 Incubators & Awards
- May 2019: Selected as a prestigious LVMH Innovation Award finalist at the industry-leading Vivatech Paris event, presenting directly to luxury brand executives and significantly increasing our market visibility.
- August 2019: Invited into the exclusive LVMH accelerator program, La Maison des Startups, working directly with operational executives of top luxury brands to refine our product strategy and being provided an office in the heart of Paris.
- September 2019: Accepted as 1 of only 6 startups in Farfetch’s acclaimed Dream Assembly Accelerator, receiving strategic investment of $25,000, personalized mentorship, and direct collaboration opportunities to enhance market strategy and product-market fit.
🌅 Impact of COVID-19
- By March 2020, we built considerable momentum, preparing to onboard 50+ committed brands to significantly accelerate ARR and position us strongly for our next round of funding.
- With the onset of COVID-19, the physical event-driven wholesale fashion market collapsed virtually overnight, halting our pipeline of prospective deals and forcing us to reconsider our runway and viability amidst unprecedented uncertainty.
- In August 2020, after carefully assessing market conditions and runway realities, our team made the difficult decision to close Inline.
- Personally, the transition clarified my passion: I deeply enjoyed building exceptional products and wished to strengthen my experience as a product manager without the operational complexities of being CEO and founder.
- In February 2021, I joined JOOR, today's leading wholesale fashion technology provider serving over 375K luxury brands and retailers, sharpening my product management expertise and continuing my commitment toward innovating in the fashion-tech industry.