Decentralized Fashion Ecosystem - From the people, for the people.

davidtosin (8)in #cryptocurrency • 7 years ago

Fashion business is looking all good and promising. While against this backdrop, a lot of emerging and talented fashion designers are left feeling downbeat and marginalized when they fail to monetize their clothing. A report commissioned by the British Fashion Council highlighted ?high failure rates and the lack of business skills and entrepreneurial training? as some of the key challenges faced by fashion designers and the fashion industry as a whole.

The large amount of failure results mainly from lack of funding and absence of community.

Lack of Funding
A lot of designers have their perfect design concepts ready and may even have a prototype. However, it takes much m ore then that to build a clothing line. Fabric-sourcing, manufacturing, quality control, shipping and logistics are all important aspects to consider in the process of running a working fashion line. Most designers don?t have access to funds, and if they just happen to run out of money at any stage, the brand won't able to survive let alone get off the ground.

Generally speaking, venture capitalists tend not to invest in fashion in the early stages. Private investors prefer investing in fashion brands that are slightly more established. It largely depends on designers them selves to raise capital. There are currently different ways to get funded, one of the most known approaches would be awards such as the coveted LVMH Prize and prominent fashion incubators. The influence of such prizes or incubators on graduates is clear. Graduates who were heavily influenced by extrinsic rewards, such as financial success and recognition from ?opinion leaders? will highly likely lose their freedom of expression. Judgments coming from the mega corps in the industry will restrict a young designers understanding of their future options. Many emerging designers? career goals are concentrated towards very small or niche markets and then would be marginalized.

Many emerging designers seek the alternative way of working for large corporations to gain exposure and opportunities. It is not a easy path either as corporations have dom inating power over individual designers. In July 2017, fashion student Terrence Zhou believes Victor & Rolf 's recent couture show m ay have been inspired by designs from his portfolio that were submitted as part of an internship application. It ?s the fashion industry ? just take it because that ?s the way it is.? advised by his professor at Central Saint Martins.

Absence of Community
Just like any business or startup, building a com m unity around the product is key. Popular ways to build community would be building up an Instagram or Twitter following. Designers will showcase their designs there and drive traffic to the websites where the sales happen. However, brands need to have a significant num ber of followers to have real traffic in Shopify to have meaningful revenue - this creates the classic chicken-egg problem .

There are a handful of fashion business which throw a large percentage of their funding into PR & Marketing, hoping that it might help to create hype. Sometimes it does create a short term raise of attention, but it is not a sustainable model as there is not strong bonds built between the designer and random followers. Things will start to fall once the hype fades away.

Other Side of the Story
On one side, the clothing and fashion design industry is highly competitive; it is full of individuals competing to get their clothing line noticed by investors. There are fashion-aware individuals who are m ore than willing to invest in emerging brands that give them exclusivity and even personalization. However, average consumers don't have easy access to investment in the fashion business. Most fashion investors are medium -large Private Equity Funds. It 's nearly impossible for an individual to get in any investment without a pre-existing relationship with the fashion industry, a lawyer and serious industry knowledge dedicated to it.

Martini is a decentralized global fashion ecosystem set to provide emerging and talented fashion designers with a transparent platform to efficiently monetize their clothing lines, also to give individual investors access to invest in early-stage designer brands. Furthermore, it offers a marketplace for trading valuables, including clothing and fashion-related expertise between fashion designers, fashion consumers and professionals such as models and photographers. We believe future world should be decentralized and equal - for fashion as well.

Fashion will not be defined by a handful of prestigious brands. Fashion designers will have the chance to showcase their talents to a global audience and individuals will have the choice and the means to support his/ her favorite brands, however niche it would be.

Martini brings value for everyone in this peer-to-peer fashion ecosystem .

For Emerging Designers

Crowdfunding. Martini provides the best and most efficient way to raise fund for emerging designers' clothing lines. Designers will conveniently achieve this by giving part of the revenue to investors. Especially for niche brands that cater to under-served markets, the time and cost to build a direct-to-consumer brand and scale the business will be reduced drastically.
Real market insight. A large com m unity of fashion lovers will provide designers with the opportunity to do agile testings and fast iterations to gain valuable feedback from a real and responding market.
Community. Talented designers will attract audience who naturally form a strong and dedicated com m unity to safeguard designers' success.

For Individual Investors

Investment gains. Martini gives individual's access to invest in one of most profitable businesses.
Industry exposure. The business of fashion will eventually be accessible to anyone in the world and will no longer be defined by a handful of brands. Everyone could contribute to the success of future stars in the fashion industry.

For Fashion Consumers

Exclusivity. Designers who are funded on Martini will opt to sell their latest, chic and unique designs only in our marketplace, which offers exclusivity to our com m unity members.
Customization & Identity. Martini facilitates the conversation with designers and end consumers, which incorporates a much m ore personal touch than traditional e-com m erce platform .

For Professionals
Monetization Martini presents the most dedicated platform for fashion-related professionals. Models, photographers and other professionals will be able to monetize their skills and work for the brands they personally appreciate. "Fashion Martini for all".

FASHION MARKET PLACE
Martini will allow for a marketplace of clothing and fashion-related professional services for anyone on the platform . In order to maintain the security of our users while also acknowledging and bending to the realities of the average consumer, we handle this through a blockchain architecture which critically relies on the MTN utility token. MTN acts as a value transacting medium and allows interchanging of valuables between users on the Martini platform .

Clothing
Designers who are funded on Martini will opt to sell their latest, chic and unique designs only in our market place. As designers gaining more traction, Martini will become the future go-to place for in-season apparel.

Professional Service
Successfully running a clothing line required talents from different sectors. For any clothing line, there will need to be a whole team of creative professionals working together to ensure the entire production process runs seamlessly. Models, photographers or manufacturers are welcome to price their services in Martini Marketplace. Skills in the content creation process will also be considered by designers:

Photoshoot Operations
Video/Photo Production
Model Casting
Copy-writing

ICO and TOKEN DETAILS

ERC20 Token

Name - MTN

Price ETH - 0.000025

Total Supply - 1,000,000,000

Hard Cap - $7.5M

Soft Cap - $0.5M

*Only individuals with over 20ETH contribution are eligible to apply to be a member of Martini Executive Board.

The Martini Token, with a ticker name of MTN, will be an ERC20 compatible utility token which is expected to fuel the Martini Ecosystem. The fact that it uses smart contract means it will also be integrated with the utility function of a decentralized autonomous organization.

That means, DAO will function as the Martini Ecosystem consensus platform, which handles voting processes.

Any transaction within the Marketplace will be done using MTN Token. In rare cases, other payment vehicle such as ETH, can be used. However, it depends on the popular demand and technical limitations within the marketplace.

Token Sale

The ERC20 compliant MTN token is suppose to have a total token supply of 1,000,000,000 MTN and is expected to cost 0.000025 ETH per MTN. The hard cap for the project is $7.5 Million, while the soft cap is $0.5 Million. Please note that, only individuals with over 20 ETH contributions will be eligible to apply to be a member of the executive board.

The Token sale is divided into the pre-sale and the ICO sale. Furthermore, there are bonuses associated with purchasing the token at each of these stages. Check out the website to get the details on how the bonus works.

3-Day Early Bird April - 50% Bonus

Pre ICO TBD - 30% Bonus

ICO TBD - 20%, 10%, 0 Bonus

Token Allocation

As said earlier, a total of 1,000,000,000 MTN tokens were created and here is how the token will be allocated. According to the Martini website, the largest percentage of the token supply will be used fro the token sale.

Although the exact percentage wasn’t specified, the founding team and company reserve are expected to receive an equal amount of percentage. Finally, the smallest percentage is supposed to be used for bounty service.

Fund Distribution

According to the website, 40 percent of the fund will be used for research and development and another 40 percent will be used for marketing. Fifteen percent of the fund goes to operations, while the final 5 percent will be used for overheads.

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