Retooled startup offers personalized lingerie
April 10, 2015 by admin
Filed under Latest Lingerie News
There’s nothing like a good fit.
That’s the idea behind Peach, a Waltham startup that sells what it calls better-fitting lingerie. The company has been keeping a low profile, even after raising more than $3 million in venture capital. But it’s quietly assembling a network of commissioned sales agents around the country — the company calls them stylists — to help market bras, underwear, and hosiery.
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How do you get a better fit? Peach’s stylists will do measurements in their own homes or those of their customers, chief executive Janet Kraus said.
Peach isn’t exactly a new company; it’s a reinvention of a 2004-vintage startup called Zyrra, which sold $98 bras that were custom crafted, based on a woman’s measurements. Zyrra won $50,000 in the very first MassChallenge startup competition in 2010 and raised roughly $1 million from individual investors.
Kraus was an entrepreneur in residence at Harvard Business School who had a seat on Zyrra’s board. “I watched and helped as certain things were really working, and others weren’t working as well,” she said. One big issue: Customers didn’t like waiting six to 10 weeks for their custom-made bras.
In 2013, Kraus signed on as CEO, with Zyrra cofounder Derek Ohly staying as chief operating officer. They developed the Peach brand, expanded its product offerings to things like tank tops and sleepwear, and stopped producing made-to-order bras.
Peach stylists still visit the homes of customers or hold office hours in their own homes to take measurements. Then, Kraus said, when customers reorder products from the website, they can access their stored sizes.
The company’s target market, Kraus said, are women over 30 who “look at Victoria’s Secret and say, ‘It’s awesome that Heidi Klum is 41 and looks like that, but who really does?’ ” She said many moms “put shopping for this category of clothing below getting a root canal.”
Kraus said the company has been recruiting stylists around the country and now has about 100 in 20 states.
Peach has also begun holding promotional events in cities where clusters of its stylists work. They take place in hotels or country clubs and offer fittings for Peach products, along with manicures and massages. Kraus said the company may do its first event in Boston next month, or in June.
Peach has 12 full-time employees. Its investors include Boston-based NextView Ventures and FKA, a Cambridge firm that previously was the tech arm of Atlas Venture.
Scott Kirsner can be reachedat kirsner@pobox.com. Follow him
on Twitter @ScottKirsner and on betaboston.com.
