A few days ago, I talked to you about María Fernández, a woman full of energy and illusion who is passionate about the fashion world. Well, today, thanks to María and her network, I bring you a man, founder and CEO of a company dedicated to the fashion world for the woman of today, for the moment, and who is succeeding on the e-commerce. Last 23rd of February he visited us at MET Community.
I encourage you to know him and his business, which is succeeding among women.
The protagonist of today’s post is Oier Urrutia, a restless, innovative, adventurous, active, ambitious 32-year-old with many ideas. He studied Business Administration at the University of the Basque Country and a MBA by the IESE Business School of the University of Navarra and the Walter A. Haas School of Business of the University of California, Berkley. Apart from Basque, Spanish and English, Oier speaks Mandarin, a language he learnt a few years ago at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He has experience as a leader of projects, director, manager, investor and now as a founder and CEO of his own company. The other big protagonist of today’s post is Lookiero.
Lookiero is the first Spanish startup with a technological base that provides women online services of a personal shopper in an exclusive and personalized way for each client and with a minimum cost of 10 euros.
Funded with seed capital given by business angels, its launching to the market was made on the 15th of February of 2016 (when the spring-summer season was starting) and since then it has only grown. Nowadays it works on the Spanish and French markets. It already has more than 150.000 registered clients and it has gone from 3 to 120 employees. And that was only in less than 2 years. Impressive, right? Oh, and if it seemed little, their workplace is placed in an industrial unit of 4000 meters.
To achieve what Lookiero is today, Oier decided to associate with two key people on the fashion world for this adventure: José Iraolagoitia, with more than 30 years of experience as a designer and fashion coordinator, and María Uranga, personal shopper with more than 20 years of experience on this field.
Arising from his session at MET Community there are some ideas, thoughts and comments I would like to mention:
- It would be good to ask yourself these questions:
- Do I have enough experience to start a business?
- Am I passionate about the project?
- Am I willing to strive 24 hours a day, to work a lot and hard?
- Am I willing to take risks?
- It’s essential to have a good team willing to give it all, and not in any market, but in a raising one.
- Before launching your (monetizable) idea to the market, it’s recommended to:
- Learn from the good ones:
- Analyze other business models that work well.
- Study market niches that have a future.
- Surround yourself with good people, professionals who know the field (better less and good than a lot but not that good).
- Prototype and test your idea.
- Find clients willing to pay for your product.
- Dedicate time to do numbers.
- Learn from the good ones:
- Once you launch your idea, you have to:
- Keep surrounded by those “good people”.
- Externalize everything you can (consultancy, computer specialists, marketing…)
- Empower your employees.
- Create a good network.
- Diversify as soon as possible.
- You’ll always have to keep learning and look out for every kind of innovation.
- You’ll have to grow and, finally, escalate, always for the good of your company and the people who work on it because they are the ones who make your business work and because, at the end, as Oier told us:
“It is worth because we are making many people happy”
Lookiero offers the possibility of doing some shopping in a simple, comfortable way without going out of your home, but always as long as you like what the personal shopper have chosen for you.
Let me explain you how it works. You just have to enter the site and follow these next 5 steps:
- Complete your style profile by filling out a small survey where you’ll have to give information about your size, eye and hair color and your tastes and preferences on clothes and fashion in general. Oh, you’ll also have to mark the range of prices that most suits your budget and the necessities, such as how adventurous you want to be when they chose the clothes for you.
- Request your Lookiero with just a click. Click on the “Quiero mi Lookiero” (I want my Lookiero) and fill in your shipping information.
- In a few days you’ll receive your Lookiero at home. Your personal shopper will be in charge of selecting 5 clothing items FOR YOU that they will introduce in a box and send to you with a variety of looks about how to combine each item and some advice. It’s important to know that in Lookiero they work with more or less well known European brands that contribute with something different.
- During the following 5 days you’ll be able to choose what you like and send back the rest without any extra charge. When you decide what you want to keep you’ll have to go in Lookiero.com and do the checkout, not before indicating the motives of the return. The reason for that: to know better your tastes and give you a better advice the next time.
- There’s no problem if you need to return any item, you’ll be able to put the items you don’t want to buy in a bag you’ll find with the return label printed on it and follow the return instructions.
If it still isn’t clear, here they explain it very clearly:
Lookiero recently received the ON Bizkaia Award for the Creation of Companies in its latest edition, some awards promoted by the Provincial Council of Bizkaia through Beaz, which are a recognition to Bizkaia SMEs for their contribution to the generation of economic activity and employment in the territory.
Which one will be the next one?
Enjoy the week.
Translated by María Ubierna Quintanilla and supervised by Arantza Arruti.