INTERVIEW

We have been featuring some Japanese startups. Now, let's look at the world. We will feature some uprising startups in the world to Japanese market.
This time, we invite 3DLOOK, a company which provide mobile body scanning for appeal industry.

Speaker Profile

Vadim Rogovskiy

3DLOOK (CEO, Co-Founder)

About 3DLOOK

We help consumers find the right size of clothing by uploading just two photos on their favorite ecommerce website. And after they upload two photos, they receive the recommended size.It means if they buy items close to this size, it would fit them perfectly and they want a need to return it. Retailers that are selling this clothing will get better conversion, will reduce returns, which leads to more profit.

Funding Status & Mid-term goal

We got the initial investment from Angel investors that I knew. We raised a Series A round at $6.5M, and total investments in the company over the years adds up to $11.2M.
We plan to grow at least four or five times as we did last year. We have to hire a lot of people. This year, we already hired about 20 people in total for U.S., Ukraine, and Spain.
We are looking for people worldwide. Location is not very important for us, not important at all, I would say, except sales and customer success teams that we are trying to build in New York. We consider New York as our U.S. headquarters.
We have some upcoming product launches. Actually, tomorrow we are launching our out of the box as a product for uniform manufacturing. It is the first product of its science in the world. And then we will launch an enterprise product of fashion ecommerce called Your Fit around 2nd or 3rd quarter of this year.

What’s your thoughts on how your service can change the consumers’ experience?

It's going to change the way brands produce clothes. Until today, apparel manufacturing started from the brand. Brands decide the launch of the new collection twice a year for this target audience, the style, etc. That's what we are used to. But things started to shift. Now, it should start from a consumer. They are the ones to determine what she/he needs and they should get it from the brand. So that's why we consider ourselves as a critical element in this supply chain.

When Japanese people hear about your service, they might think about the ZOZO suits. There are other players in this sector, so what is your strength and different points?

The similarity is obviously that they were trying to solve the same problem, but our solution has proven to be much more feasible and scalable. Their idea was smart, out of the box, I would say. But a lot of friction really about description. That is what kills as an innovation. If you need to get this costume to go, to get it shipped to your house to then to try it on, then scan. And actually, we have even better accuracy at the moment than those who had in the past. They compared results and ours were more accurate. So I think that ZOZO suit was a great example of innovation, and it was great actually. I like the fact that it attracted a lot of attention to the fall area of mobile body scanning. So we are grateful to them that they did it. But obviously we think that it's much easier just to take two photos, then also try on some physical things.

OMAKE：Founders' Story

Founder's Background

So my background is I have a degree in business and management. I started to launch some small projects with some small entrepreneurial adventures when I was like 18 at the University. But then my first real company was a software company to optimize your online marketing campaign.It wasn't a tech industry. It didn't take off as well as expected, but I managed to sell it as an equity-hired deal, and sold it to a US company after that. Then I completely switched to my second company, which was an ad tech industry. It was a mobile advertising platform that helped app developers to promote their mobile applications and also to monetize them. And the company grew. I managed to grow it to 13M euro annual revenue. I've sold a part of my shares to private equity, and then I exited.
After that, I didn't get excited about the industry as I was in the very beginning. I didn't feel that we are bringing any significant value to end consumers, to advertisers, to have developers. That is why I started to think about something else, and it was quite a hard transition for me to start a business in a completely new industry, but I managed to do it.

The reason to continue Startup

I just love it. Since day one, when I was like 18 years old, I started just to do some of my first small projects. I treated it as a game. That's why it was much easier for me to go through some difficult times that always happen when you run a startup. Obviously now it's not a game. It's life. It's not work. I think startup should be your life. Otherwise it's just very hard to continue and succeed.

Writer's Comments

Vadim has been selected as one of Forbes Magazine's 30 Under 30. He is a serial entrepreneur, has founded 3 companies. Rather than listing his company on a stock exchange, he is more focused on social significance and the impact he can make to the society. A great service that allows you to create your own personalized service with just two photos. If there are any domestic companies that run apparel or e-commerce sites that are interested in this service, let me know. I will intro you guys!

Interviewer Profile

Natsuko Mitsugi

Pivot Tokyo

Co-founder of Pivot Tokyo, the hub for CxO and startups based in Tokyo, Japan. She is also a co-founder of early childhood education school, GKCors.