There are many occasions when we have to decide between a garment or another: Which tie matches better with this shirt? With this dress, heels or flats? These kinds of questions – which we all have asked at some point – will get the best response through the Vudoir app. You only have to share in this social network the options of choice, adjust the time you need to make a decision, wait, et voilà! The community, by voting, will help you take a decision. As easy as that!
SlashMobility is also part of this great idea, well, we take care of the maintenance of the Vudoir app for Android and iOS.
Today we interview Paolo Rizzardini, managing director of Vudoir, to tell us how the whole Vudoir experience has been, let’s go!
Vudoir is born with the help of a project accelerator, how do you value this experience? How did it help you in the beginning?
Actually, Vudoir was born a little earlier though intense market analysis and idea valuation. A task that has allowed us to start and also be admitted to Connector, a very important accelerator here in Spain. Connector, has supported us by giving us a space in the offices of MEDIA-TIC and giving us also the opportunity to count with mentoring of an extremely high level. We have been fortunate to work with people like Micky Ribera (BeAgency), Manel Jadraque (Jennifer), Marc Vidal (Idodi), Vanessa Estorach (WomenInMobile) who have helped us perfect the idea and make the project grow very fast.
How was the search process for funding? Can you give us some tips for other entrepreneurs?
It is a continuous process because, in our case, the strategy is to make small and increasingly frequent rounds, this way we can demonstrate who has invested and know who wants to invest, how we use the resources and also the results we get. Clearly, this means that the effort for us is greater because the time we dedicate to this activity is also longer, but we think it is the most appropriate way of working and we are very happy with the results we have achieved and are achieving.
Mobile applications are increasingly present in our lives, in the case of fashion, what do you think is the biggest impact of mobile technology in this sector?
The world of fashion and technology – especially mobile – are a perfect match. Fashion-tech is a very young sector with a very high potential.
We have started by helping users answer a very simple question like “what do I wear?”. This question is something that everyone suffers: a study by Marks & Spencer says that we spend an average of 17 minutes each day to decide our outfit.
When people talk about creating apps it’s usual to associate it with development, but what can you tell us about the app’s design? Is it what you were looking for?
Ours, is a social app with very well defined target. Design is as important as development. If one of both is missing, the user experience is negative and the product will not grow.
And the maintenance, what importance do you think it has in this type of projects?
Maintenance is also important, but for us it is more important to create an evolutionary maintenance process.
An app like ours is the communication channel of a community, it has to improve continuously ensuring that everything that exists continues to work in a perfect way.
Do you have any other projects of this kind in mind?
The truth is that we have so much to do at Vudoir that we need to focus entirely on this project. Today, Vudoir is a visual app that is based on still images, but we are already studying the possibility of using videos, augmented reality solutions and also virtual reality. A technology that I personally love and that this year has come very strongly to the consumer world.
How do you think technology affects start-ups in general?
Technology is a fundamental element to make our ideas real. Without the technological evolution that the mobile world has experienced, we would not be here talking about apps today. It is vital for a start up to take advantage of technology and above all, understand how it will impact on people’s lives, because it is the only way to create services and products that impact on a daily basis.
Since Vudoir, what do you think will be the short and medium term future of mobile applications?
The mobile ecosystem has three important elements: that they can still improve in a brutal way: the availability / quality of connectivity, computing power / memory and diffusion among users worldwide and of all ages. These three elements make us think that the world of apps will continue to grow for many years.
On the other hand, the devices have an important feature: the user can interact with the device in both what he sees (physical screen) and what he does (touch). In the future, we think that evolution is doubtless.
What are you waiting to download it? 🙂
