Erica Schmitz, founder of a startup that’s developed a web application for clothing designers, walked away from Wednesday night’s Top Gun Showcase event with a $25,000 check—and the distinction of being the first woman to win the statewide business-pitch contest.
The first-time entrepreneur impressed the judges with her pitch for her startup, MyBodyModel, which is an online tool that provides users—primarily hobbyist sewers, knitters, and clothing designers—with fashion sketching templates customized to their exact body measurements, or body measurements of their choosing.
Schmitz, whose background is in nonprofit management, started her company because as a hobbyist sewer herself she was disappointed with her options when she wanted to sketch out designs for clothing she wanted to make for herself or others. Existing templates—think: the sketched outline of a person’s body used as a template for fashion design—are grossly exaggerated and don’t match an average person’s body. The women portrayed in traditional fashion sketching templates are nine to 10 head-lengths tall, Schmitz said, while the typical human is only seven to 7.5 head-lengths tall. Not only does that potentially reinforce negative body-image concerns, but it also makes it harder to design clothing. A design or pattern on an abnormally tall, stick-thin model could look much different than the same design on a shorter and more typical human form.
“They’re so stylized,” she said of traditional templates. “They’re not designed to look like a real person.”
She’s tried creating a sketching template by tracing from a photograph of herself, but that wasn’t an ideal solution. So she decided to try to fix the situation. With the help of a few seed grants from the Maine Technology Institute and a successful crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter that raised nearly $27,000, Schmitz began building her business. She hired Big Room Studios, a Portland-based software development shop, to build out the initial beta product, which Schmitz is rolling out to her Kickstarter supporters over the next three weeks. The official beta release to the general public is scheduled for June 12, Schmitz said, followed by an official release in the fall.
Top Gun and its first female winner
Top Gun is a three-month entrepreneurial training program developed by the Maine Center for Entrepreneurs (MCE). More than 30 entrepreneurs went through the program this year.
The Showcase event, which was held May 23 at the University of Southern Maine in Portland, featured eight finalist entrepreneurs (two from each of the regional cohorts: Bangor, Brunswick, Lewiston/Auburn and Portland).
Schmitz is the first woman to win Top Gun since MCE began awarding a first-place prize in 2015. Past winners are Rapport in 2015, Revolution Research in 2016, and Thrivant Health in 2017. Not only that, but MCE reported that this year’s cohort had the largest-ever share of female entrepreneurs (a 50-50 split) and that five of the eight finalists were women.
“There were so many good companies in this cohort,” said Tom Rainey, president of MCE. “We’re thrilled to see who won and how far the other companies progressed over the course of the program.”
Entrepreneurs presented 5-minute pitches to an audience of roughly 175 people and a panel of judges, who followed each pitch with some brief questions for the entrepreneur. The judges scored the competitors based on their presentation, as well as innovation, scalability and feasibility of their business idea. The judges were Susan Ruhlin, director of business development at Introspective Systems; Chris Sauer, chairman, CEO and co-founder of Ocean Renewable Power Co.; John Henshaw, COO of the University of Maine’s Center for Graduate and Professional Studies; and Janine Bisaillon-Cary, president of the consultancy Montserrat Group LLC.
DIY-fashion market
Schmitz told the Top Gun judges that the do-it-yourself fashion industry is a multi-billion-dollar market. But, that at least initially, she is targeting a specific subset of that market: hobbyists, primarily women, who are active in online sewing and knitting social media communities. Based on her initial market research, Schmitz said there at least 5 million women who fit into this category. But it could be quite a few more. Ravelry, an online social network for knitters and other fiber artists, claims to have at least five million members alone, according to Schmitz.
In the future, though, she sees additional customer segments among professionals, including costume and fashion design, and at art schools.
Her revenue model is based off per-download fee. Users are free to use the web app to plug in their body’s dimensions, or dimensions of their choice, to create a custom sketch of their exact body type. But if they want to download the templates without the MyBodyModel watermark, they need to pay. Schmitz says many of her users will want to download and print the templates because hobbyists still like to sketch their fashion illustrations on paper.
Looking ahead, she has plans to release a mobile app in 2019. She expects her mobile app will be based on a subscription revenue model rather than a pay-per-download one.
She plans to use the $25,000, which was provided by MTI, to help with her marketing and sales efforts as she rolls out her beta version to the public, and to put toward further development work. She’s also hoping to secure an additional MTI grant that will be put toward app development.
She praised Top Gun, including her lead mentor Becky McKinnell, for helping her zero in on her business’ priorities and helping her perfect her pitch.
“As a new entrepreneur in Maine, Top Gun was a great way to quickly get connected to the people you need to know, including potential investors and amazing mentors,” she said.
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