Boasting 270K+ clothing items, Japan’s fashion coordination app XZ has raised $1.2M

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See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Standing Ovation, a startup that operates online fashion community XZ (pronounced as ‘closet’), has fundraised 140 million yen (about $1.2 million) in July from Gumi Ventures, DBJ Capital, iStyle Capital, and several angel investors. This is the second investment following the initial seed investment from Skyland Ventures.

Boasting over 55,000 outfit patterns with 270,000 clothing items

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Many women are complaining that they have no clothing to go in to wear before their closets. But the true problem lies elsewhere. They actually do have plenty of clothes, but they just don’t know how to coordinate what they have.

Users of this app register their closets on XZ and just like that, one can find ideas for coordinating one’s own clothing and that is XZ’s biggest allure. These online closets are growing fast, they now have 270,000 registered closets on the app. Also, they have over 55,000 clothing coordination ideas. Some of the users register more than 600 items in their online closets and create over 400 arrangements.

One only has to register the items and obtain coordination ideas for the clothing one would never have thought of. Users enjoy it so they register more items. The company plans to add a variety of functions to enhance its circulation in the future.

Large-scale upgrades and enhanced content

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In order to offer experiments for promoting discovery of new clothing coordination ideas to more users, they are going to add a Q&A section. Also, they will find content with clothing coordination ideas that are buried deep within the system. After the upgrades, they will have 100 clothing coordination ideas that can be provided per registered and posted items.

Furthermore, in September, they are going to release a web version that allows one to browse it on smartphones and PC. By highlighting the content as an allure for people, they create a user flow going from ‘Learning on the web, then trying it on the app’; it is said that they are going to support users with poor clothing coordination skills by providing them with very interesting clothing coordination content, coordination theories and color science information.

As part of their business model, they will enhance their omni-channel cooperation with apparel brand shops. They will go on to provide a B2B solution which enables the ultimate services in shops while developing a virtual system enabling customers to try on new clothes.

Until now, fashion has always been something pushed to users by the media. With the online close and XZ’s growth every day, fashion has taken on a new way of existing through a bottom-up system that begins from interaction among the online closets of individual users.

Translated by Chieko Frost via Mother First
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy