In this Founder Institute Demo Day pitch, Mariana, founder and CEO of Look Styler, presents a global shopping platform that links international travelers with local fashion stylists, designers, and travel partners across more than 70 cities. She frames the problem as a three‑dimensional market gap: fashion shoppers traveling abroad lack curated shopping tours and local fashion intelligence, while local retailers struggle to attract international customers amid online competition. Mariana cites rapid growth forecasts for the global travel‑retail and luxury markets (5% CAGR to 2030) and the rise of experiential luxury among millennial shoppers. The solution is a marketplace where vetted, often celebrity, stylists act as luxury shopping concierges, offering half‑day or full‑day tours that can be bundled with transport, dining, and accommodation. Revenue comes from tour fees, store commissions, and bundled travel services, with budgets ranging up to $1 million per day for high‑net‑worth clients. Since its pre‑seed round, Look Styler has secured over 300 partnerships—including MasterCard, Lufthansa, Virtuoso, and exclusive supplier status for Virtuoso’s shopping experiences—and has demonstrated strong month‑over‑month growth in users, bookings, and partner count. The company has received press coverage (e.g., Forbes) and claims a 400% revenue lift for partner stores. Mariana highlights a lack of direct competition, positioning Look Styler against Stitch Fix (U.S.‑only, no travel) and Airbnb experiences (non‑luxury, non‑vetted stylists). She explains scalability through a connector model that links travel agencies, local stylists, and retailers across many cities, and outlines a rigorous vetting and training process for stylists, with plans for a certification program. The pitch concludes with a seed round raise of $1.5 million (already $1 million committed) and a call for additional investors and board members.
Chapters
Hi, my name is Mariana and I'm the founder and CEO of Look Styler, a global shopping platform. Meet Sarah and Jenny from New York, our target customers. They're planning a trip to Italy and they want to go shopping as well, but struggle with finding any shopping tours and local information about fashion stores in Milan online. And they were so looking forward to sharing this on Instagram. So what is the market that we're addressing here? It's three-dimensional. So besides fashion, we are targeting global travel retail market and global luxury market, and both are growing exponentially. So the predictions show that they will both grow by 5% each year till 2030. Two-thirds of the future luxury shoppers will be millennials, and two-thirds of their spend will go on the so-called experiential luxury, which is linked with buying experiences, not just goods and items. So this is the solution that we bring to the market. We are a global platform that shows shopping information for over 70 cities worldwide. We connect international shoppers that travel to shop, like Sarah and Jenny, with travel partners and local fashion brands, designers, and stylists. So we actually use these top fashion stylists, and many of them are celebrity stylists, and they're not accessible right now. And they act as local travel guides so they can offer the experience of luxury shopping. Then we also take fashion photos of our shoppers and they can share them on social media. So this is a win-win solution for everybody because customers now get much more targeted help and they can book an original shopping experience with us in any city worldwide. Stylists get more work and access to international clients. We act as an add-on to any travel partner. So be it a travel agency, tour operator, transport company, a cruise line, or a local luxury hotel. And we also drive traffic to local stores and increase their revenue by 400%. So currently we don't have any direct competitors, but our biggest competitor on the market is Stitch Fix that actually uses stylists for shopping help. And they're doing pretty well. They're worth $3 billion, but they do not operate outside of the US and they're not in travel. So how does the booking work for customers? So they would send us a request. They book a shopping tour, they get screened. We organize a virtual chat with them with any local stylist they want to chat with from any location. And we book a shopping tour for them. And it's usually a half day or a full day of shopping. And this is how we make money. So we basically monetize on the shopping tour. We charge for the tour and then we take commission from the stores. And some of these shopping budgets can be pretty high. They can go up to $1 million per day, some of these high net worth shoppers. And then we can also bundle up the whole travel experience. So we can also add transport, dining, accommodation, etc. So both fashion and travel partners love our product. So since we raised our pre-seed, we have secured over 300 partnerships and several of them are global, like with MasterCard, Lufthansa, Virtuoso, etc. And here you can see our growth since we raised the pre-seed since January. It's growth in partnerships, users, and bookings. So our peak month was actually August for our shopping tours. We are featured in press and Forbes just published an article about us presenting us as the future of shopping. Saying that we turn hope into strategy for local fashion businesses worldwide. On our team, we cover diverse skills. So from coding, fashion, travel, business development, social media, sales, and marketing. I have personally traveled to over 100 countries and I'm also a One to Watch Digital Award winner. We're now raising our seed round of 1.5 million and we already have 1 million committed, but we are still looking for new investors and board members. So please reach out to us. These are our contact details. Thank you.
Amazing. Good job. This is great. So, um, you know, talk to us a little bit about your, you, you here. Why are you doing this? Why are you building this company?
Yeah. As I said, I've already traveled to 100 countries and I've always loved fashion. This is actually my second startup. I had launched previously another fashion startup, which was a platform for customized clothing. And when I actually worked worked with my customers who are also affluent people, I just realized that there's a much bigger potential in styling people. And just by analyzing the market trends, as I have shown, like especially in global travel retail market and luxury market, these are where the trends are going, and especially in the next 10 years. Plus, I'm also a millennial, so I can really relate to this type of customers that are going to be the future of, of luxury of shopping.
Why do you believe the time is now for this opportunity?
Because, because of the growth in the market. And because, as I said, the main trend in the travel market right now is about booking experiences. And the travel companies, the classic big ones, are all of them now adding experiences to their platforms. So we are now talking to Expedia, Booking.com, all of these big partners. They want to add experiences. So the time for us is now because we add shopping experience. So we are kind kind of like a shopping concierge, and we can act as an add-on to any type of travel company.
And why do you believe your company has a high growth potential?
It's mostly because of what Forbes has written about, because we bring solutions to local retailers which are struggling right now because of all the online shopping. So we connect all of these people with international shoppers that now wander around and they get not— they they do not get connected with local retailers. And we also have this massive network of fashion and travel partners worldwide. And this network is giving us competitive advantage. So as I said, we have grown very quickly in the past 8 months. So we have over 300 partners and we can easily reach like over 1,000 partners in 1 year.
That's awesome. And this kind of ties into Alex's question on, on your increase in sales figures. Can you talk about that a little bit more? How are you able to, you know, grow so significantly over the past year? And, you know, what does the future look like there for you?
So we were able to grow because we have no direct competition on the market. So there is no other company right now doing fashion experiences in travel. So there are some styling platforms that use stylists locally, but we are the first ones to do it for the travel industry. And the response of the travel industry has just been overwhelming. So it has been really amazing. We have secured some exclusive partnerships with Virtuoso, for example, which is like the VIP travel association, like the most luxurious one in the world. So we are the only supplier for Virtuoso for shopping experiences. And we have the same contract with Lufthansa CityCenter that has a network of travel agencies worldwide. Which Traveler Made, Clia for cruises. And as I said, we have several hundreds of other partners that are basically interested in us. And for the customers, especially the ones that love luxury, it's something new on the market. And they really like it because we personalize each tour. So each tour is unique and we can always bundle up something original for them so we can take them to any store. So it's not just the typical department malls they usually go to. but we can take them to independent designers that they wouldn't discover on their own. Uh, we always personalize each and every tour and we can also add like a VIP store experience. So customers love it because we really take care of them and we offer this kind of customer service.
Um, which, and this kind of ties into Jackie's question a little bit here. So you do, you're very high touch, right? This is kind of, uh, one of the main benefits here. So how does this, how does this scale? You know, since she's putting a lot of time in screening customers, firms, etc.
Yeah, basically it scales quickly because we connect 70 cities. So we are just a connector between travel partners that actually organize the whole tour and then stylists locally, they organize the whole shopping tour. So we basically just connect all of them together. And this is primarily for the high net worth shoppers. But when people travel, actually, it's also upper middle class that go shopping. When they're abroad and people tend to spend more money when they're abroad than they would at home. And they spend on experiences and things that maybe they wouldn't buy back home. So this is what is unique about our product.
Can you talk a little bit about like the competitive landscape a little bit more? For example, I asked the question around how, how do you compete with Airbnb experiences or personal stylist on Airbnb experiences?
Yeah, Airbnb is not luxury. So basically we offer this luxurious experience because we have the top stylists. So our stylists that we work with are not featured on Airbnb. People that you have on Airbnb are people that are, they call themselves personal shoppers, but people that we work with are stylists that have styling degrees that now work on TV, with magazines, with celebrities. So we vet our stylists, and these are really people that you cannot even book right now. And now when you travel, you can book them in any city through us. So basically we offer a unique network of these people that have special skills, and we are very well connected also with independent designers and other bigger brands as well.
Awesome. And final question here before we get to the next presenter. So how do you, you know, how do you ensure that, you know, your local people will deliver a great experience to your customers?
So as I said, first we vet them to see who they are, we check their portfolio, and then before each tour, we actually train them, we talk to them. And in the future, we also want to create a certification program for our stylists because in luxury it's also very important. It's all about how you treat the customer, how you make them feel. But so far we've had amazing reviews and we have steady bookings right now since we launched our app and they're growing and our customers have all given us amazing and excellent reviews.
That's great. And for everyone in the chat rooms that where we can get to some of your questions, I apologize. We do have to move on to the next presenter. However, you know, you can reach out to Mirjana here and then you can continue the discussion and she'll also be hanging around in the chat room as well. I see some of you asking several questions here. So, sure, Alan, I really appreciate your time doing this. Awesome.
