Growing up, I remember reprimanding my mom every time we look through old pictures of baby me in the same outfit twice or in a not fitting one. I made sure this was never the case once I gained control of what garments I always been into clothing and fashion. I often find myself spending more time shopping for clothes online than I’d like to admit. However, I always found it frustrating trying to sift through thousands and thousands of items trying to find a matching pants or a fitting blazer. I also found it time consuming to try to keep up with continuous flood of trends, styles and new brands.
After having chats with friends and family and connecting over similar frustrations I decided to do something about it. I embraced on a journey to find a solution to the laborious process of buying clothes. After bouncing back and forth between multiple ideas and concepts, I decided to create Outfitter, a mobile app that lets you browse and buy complete outfits (as opposed to individual items) put together hand in hand by professional stylists and algorithms.
This to me was more than just a business idea. Having seen the wonders a nice outfit can have on your self-esteem and confidence, I felt like I was empowering people. A small confidence boost might be the only thing standing between someone and talking to their crush, doing great on a presentation or go on to make an idea a reality. The thought of empowering people through technology fueled my motivation. Fueled by that thought I managed to find a co-founder, apply to the biggest accelerator in Turkey and get through a grueling application process to eventually be featured on their website. You can find Outfitter’s page on their website still (for some reason. Maybe they really like the idea?) here: Outfitter – Etohum.
Having just moved to a new country, I lacked the support base to make my idea a reality. A combination of language barrier, not having the network necessary to put together a team and tech giants entering the market with services like Amazon Prime Personal Shopper made me drop this venture in favor of another exciting new journey. Looking back, I never thought of this as a failure. Seeing tech giants like Amazon and Facebook implement similar technologies almost 3 years after coming up with the idea gives me an ego boost. It also affirmed my goal to one day return and lead another venture to use technology to empower people and make their lives easier.