“Zoora is a smarter way to buy clothing. Members can shop our hand-picked designers and customize the clothes they find. Add pockets, remove sleeves, change colors and create clothes that fit your individuality.”
As CEO and Founder of Zoo-ra.com, 26-year-old entrepreneur Aubrie Pagano has created an outlet for many unknown designers to sell their products to a mass market. Let’s face it, most designers just want to design and with so much competition out there its hard for small designers to keep their collections fresh and innovative while having to worry about maintaining a robust website to generate sales. Aubrie created Zoora with the intent of relieving that problem. Zoora is a members-only online platform that sells lesser-known designer’s pieces through consignment. Aubrie and her team created a platform that extends a broader reach then most designers can attain on their own. They curate every look, upload the photos, and create the product descriptions and bios for the designers. The Zoora team handles the marketing and maintenance of the site and all the designers have to do is maintain their inventory and design fabulous clothes….
Read more after the jump and find out how you can join Zoora!
Aubrie, a Harvard University alum, got her grounding working in finance and strategic consulting at Fidelity where she worked 3.5 years before deciding to leave and devote full attention to Zoora. At one point she was basically working two full time jobs, going in from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. at Fidelity then from 7 p.m.-2 a.m. working on developments for Zoora, a cycle that continued for about 7 months. Aubrie describes the experience as “harrowing” but more than worth it.
As she began to develop Zoora, Aubrie knew she needed a network that extended her own and that’s when she decided to hire a head buyer at Bloomingdales who had the experience she needed and a great eye. She began to scout designers for Zoora through different networks until eventually designers began to seek out Zoora themselves.
Aubrie (third in from the left) and her team.
So how does it work?
Once designers sign on with Zoora, they provide all of their looks each season. They are then provided with a spreadsheet to document their inventory. Then the Zoora team goes to work added the designer to the site. Members (Its free to join yay!), are able to look through the designs, pick their favorites, and checkout through the site. Some orders can even be made to order and customized to your measurements.
And that’s that. Members get access to unique designers across the globe from Iceland to Sweden to Australia, that they would not otherwise be able to find and designers are able to reach a much broader customer base.
Just in the first month of their launch (Jan 25th) Zoora had over 1000 members join and Aubrie does not plan on stopping the momentum. Eventually she plans on creating a whole network where consumers can interact with designers and share their ideas and style. She plans on developing a larger consortium of designers and clothes, but not too many. Sites like Etsy have over 200,000 sellers, Zoora aims to keep their numbers much smaller in order to keep from over saturating consumers and allowing all designers works to be seen. At the time of our interview Zoora had 13 designers on the site and 4-5 in queue.
Where did she get the name Zoora anyway?
After playing with many ideas like “Utique” and “Designer Be Mine,” Aubrie was continually drawn to the Italian word for measurement, “Misura.” She just loved the sound of it. So to play upon the same sound she came up with Zoora (‘Zu-‘Rah). It was short and sweet, easier to pronounce and sounded like nothing else out there.
Some photos from the Lookbook
(All photos courtesy of Zoora)
Want to join Zoora? It’s free! Just go to Zoo-ra.com and sign up with your username and password and begin shopping exclusive designs!
