The Exchanges

Q It's amazing insights from your time at Apple. So Ben, you've now shifted. You're focused on a phone. It's an application called YoShirt. Tell us real quick, what is YoShirt?

A So YoShirt basically puts the power of a clothing company and a clothing designer, you know, in your, in your pocket as in a mobile experience, you can drop into the app and design You know, if you're, if you're a woman, you want to design some yoga pants or, you know, a lady's tee, a scoop neck, a racer back, you can drop in and do that. If you're a guy, you want to go and design some t-shirts or something funny, or actually something that's representative of an experience you had, or, you know, a design you have in, in your head, and you want to just make it real, you can design it on the phone. One touch, we actually take that design and make a physical garment out of it.

AI assessment note: “YoShirt basically puts the power of a clothing company and a clothing designer”

Q Is that good for, I don't know what apparel, is that good?

A So it is good for customized apparel. Typically, um, what you're getting when you, when you buy a t-shirt off the rack is, you know, a cotton tee with one little area printed on it. What we're, what we enable, and really one of the things that's unique about Yo Shirt is that we print it on a single piece of fabric before we sew the shirt together. So we're able to have, you know, your sunset map all the way across your sleeves, and what's different about us versus any other app in this space is that we actually cut and sew the garment. So we're not stamping it on a blank. You know, that would, that would produce a cheaper garment and inferior quality, but you know, if there's any wrinkle in the shirt or when you look at the seams, you're going to see a white spot. It's not something you really want to wear and it's not necessarily representative of the memory you're trying to capture. So we're, we're going for a higher price premium product.

AI assessment note: “So it is good for customized apparel.”

Q It makes good sense. So how do you, where is most of the growth coming from? I mean, I know you're testing some different things with musicians and bands, but where is that growth going to come from?

A So right now, we've got a couple other bands lined up. The Fall Out Boy activation was incredibly successful, and in terms of net overall merchandise, we were able to add over 20% to their merchandise sales. And the reason we partnered with Fall Out Boy on the activation was that they're famous for taking band selfies. You know, when, when they played in, you know, Charlotte, South Carolina, for example, they took a picture of the band up on stage with the crowd in the background. If you were, if you were in the audience, and you texted FOB to three one, three one, three one, then by the time you left the concert, you got a text message from the band saying, hey, you know, to buy some gear, some customized one-on-one apparel from, you know, from tonight, click here. And when people click that, if they don't have the app installed and they're on an iOS device, we take them to the app store. The first time the app loads, they see the picture of the band from that night. And if you're in the first 25 or 30 rows, you can literally see yourself on that garment with a picture. If you drop into the sticker section of the app and click on the little smiley face, you see all of the Fall Out Boy band's custom graphics that we developed from. So each Like emojis? Yeah, exactly. Emojis, hearts, um, band logos.

AI assessment note: “we've got a couple other bands lined up. The Fall Out Boy activation was”

Q about utility of applications versus these like stupid applications that don't do anything except play like fart music. So you can like joke on your friends. It sounds like, I mean, your shirts really creating a utility for people. I think that helps them take, you know, physical experiences and actually put them on a physical garment so that they live forever. Do you guys think about utility a lot?

A Yeah, we do actually. One of, one of our key advisors is a guy named, um, well two actually individuals that have just been instrumental in In any, I, I don't want to say success, but in any, uh, wins we've had to date, you know, they've been instrumental in, uh, Heaton Shaw and Arjun Sethi. So Heaton did Kissmetrics, Crazy Egg, you know, self-funded, also did the VC route, very successful entrepreneur, and then Arjun Sethi, who's the vice president of mobile at Yahoo, um, he's coming out with a new app now. He was at MessageMe and Lowlabs, early Facebook guy, and, um, They just did a, I think it was Arjun that did a Medium blog post on talking about the utility and the life cycle of applications, and that's really what we aim for. You know, we're not looking to be the next kind of fart or sticker or flashlight app in the app store. We're looking to change.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, we do actually. One of, one of our key advisors is”

Q with, created with your shirt stuff, all this kinds of clothing with your shirt stuff. So, you guys are growing like crazy. You just land funding from Kleiner Perkins, which is one of the top VC firms in the world. I mean, you guys are crushing it. So walk me through some of the numbers. How long have you guys been around and how many people have downloaded the app?

A So we're north of a million downloads now. Um, and we're, we're pretty happy about that. We've had double digit percentage growth really since we turned on the, turned on the marketing engine and started any outbound marketing month over month. And, uh, you know, it's been incredible. It's, it's been, you know, challenging. I think, um, a lot of people underestimate what it really worked Requires to throw everything you have at a problem like this and, and be able to really keep up when you're successful. You know, there's that fear of, okay, like now we're going live. We're going to let, we're going to put our product out there. We're going to see if people like it. And you know, you never really think what happens if too many people like it, you know, what happens when we need to.

AI assessment note: “we're north of a million downloads now. Um, and we're, we're pretty happy”

Q That's amazing. Okay. And so do these people, like, do they typically get addicted? How, how do they typically use the app? They buy one per week, one per month, seasonal, what?

A A lot of people, you know, drop in and the first time they purchase, they're not sure what to expect. And if we're, you know, able to deliver a quality garment that, that they really appreciate, then they typically start going to wild. You know, you, you may be going to a, all right, I just did a shirt for a venture capitalist in New York actually, Hit us up on Twitter, and I didn't know he was UVC, but hit us up on Twitter and said, hey, can you do a rush order? And, you know, it was late, I was in the office writing some code, jumped on Twitter, sort of going back and forth, and we were able to turn around a shirt and a bag for him for a birthday party he's going to this Friday in Connecticut, and, you know, we turned that and had it at his doorstep, 72 hours later. So he got, he was just blown away. Um, and what it, what it allows you to do is wear a garment that is so unique that it, it, No one, no one that sees you wearing it can just walk by without saying something. There's another woman actually in, um, in Austin, Texas that I'm working with. Her son's a paintballer, and she got a picture of him winning the tournament. It was, you know, it was like the winning shot, and she printed it up, put it on his shirt, gave it to him for his birthday. He wears it constantly. Every time he goes to a paintball tournament, people are like, hey, that's you, that's your winning shot, …

AI assessment note: “they really appreciate, then they typically start going to wild.”