Industry Fashion Headquarters San Francisco Type of business Private company | Revenue $17M - $18M (2015) Founded 2005 | |
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Traded as Betabrand, formerly Cordarounds Key people Chris Lindland, Matt Their, Jared Graf, Colin Stuart, Lana Hogue, Aaron Magness, Anthony Jaffe Profiles | ||
Betabrand is a retail clothing company and crowdfunding platform, based in San Francisco. The company designs, manufactures, and releases new products in limited quantities each week. Its founders include Chris Lindland, part of the startup team of the late 1990s data storage company i-drive.
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History
The company started as Cordarounds in 2005 – selling corduroy pants with horizontal corduroy wales rather than vertically running wales – before being renamed Betabrand in 2009. As of October, 2015, Betabrand had raised $29M in venture capital.
Crowdfunding approach
In 2013, Betabrand launched a crowdfunding platform, similar to Kickstarter, so that users can crowdsource clothing concepts and prototypes into actual products. Since the inception of the crowdfunding platform, Betabrand has funded almost 100 garments, including its 'Dress Pant Yoga Pants' (dual purpose design to look like formal trousers) and an urban jacket modeled on space wear. A feature of production is the turnaround from initial design to sellable article – which can be in four to eight weeks. As of October, 2015, Betabrand carried more than 300 crowd-created products in its catalog.
Brick-and-Mortar Store
Betabrand has a brick-and-mortar retail store in San Francisco's Mission District that opened in May 2013. The store is located at 780 Valencia Street.