Where did AndeAndrea.com go? I see you had your beta launch & mobile app launch, what happened?
To be blunt, our lawyer is in a dispute over the trademark & copyright ownership with a bidbot site that hijacked the domain when I had ended the employment of most of my last staff. I had several developers that had worked for me on the original beta launch & because much of my work is international, unfortunately I ended up losing a lot of money for work they ended up dissolving in the end, with no backend built & not the level of technological integrity I expected.
Their employment ended with me, and unfortunately they took the domain with them & allowed it to lapse. It’s been a long process trying to get everything back to normal since then. Same team was working on the app, and so I lost a lot of valuable time & money. A lot of lessons were learned in business during this time. And I have just been focusing on finalizing our revamp and all the additions we have for the relaunch. Our current team is really amazing & involved in several companies, so I feel very confident moving forward, despite having such public set backs in the beginning.
What other additions do you have planned for the company?
Personally would really love to add a pre-styled exclusive section for members. I think having pre-styled high fashion rental outfits for Men & Women would be such a great convenience! In addition to this.. I have a few other ideas in the works, so as we get our feet back on the ground, I’ll reveal more when the time is right.
Saw your guys’s write up on Crunchbase NYC, are you going to always be NYC based?
Currently, our location & address is NYC based. This will not change. We have our warehouse spaces in Colorado, but will be moving all primary operating locations into the New York area in the very near future as we grow.
What steps are you guys taking to be sustainable?
Currently, we only work with GREEN dry cleaners, we recycle all of our company logo bags, and we have been having amazing success with many of our previous customers extending their rental times, often. Which allow for less shipping & travel time.
Would you eventually like to do rentals internationally?
Yes! This has already been talked about with my business partner. But we do have some thoughts on business in London & Moscow in the long term future. We will see what 2020 brings us first.
What is your team currently working on & when will you relaunch officially??
Currently we are doing lots of integrations & backend work in the upcoming weeks, after that lots of testing. We are also building a better more advanced e-commerce app (think Zara mixed with Farfetch) so that will be coming out soon to. Closest projected launch time is now end of Feb/March time.