Computer Scientist and Fashion Entrepreneur
UNC Computer science alumnus Calvin Young (BS 2010) is making a name for himself in the fashion industry and as an entrepreneur. Young is the co-founder and CTO of an online women’s consignment store named Twice.
Even while Young was a student at UNC, he knew he would start his own company. After graduation Young went to work at Google, where he met Noah Ready-Campbell, his future business partner. After less than a year, Young and Ready-Campbell left to start their own business, but they did not find the right business idea immediately. They initially tried a few different business ideas before coming up with the idea for Twice.
After studying trends in the marketplace, they noticed an increasing trend in companies founded on the idea of collaborative consumption. Collaborative consumption is an economic model based on sharing, trading, or renting products and services. Other examples of some successful startups built around this idea are Uber & Airbnb. Young and Ready-Campbell noticed there was not a leading apparel company built around this principle yet. They decided their goal for their company would be to create a Nordstrom-like shopping experience for high-quality and lightly-used women’s clothes with an Ebay price range. Young and Noah-Ready began testing for Twice in November 2011 and by January 2012 they launched their website. Two years after the initial website launch, Twice employs 200 people in the San Francisco area. In 2014 the company announced a huge new investment totaling $23 million from a variety of investors, led by $18.5 million from Jeff Jordan of Andreessen Horowitz.
Twice buys clothes mailed in from women around the nation who are cleaning out their closets. Those who are interested in selling to Twice can request a prepaid shipping bag be sent to their address. The company compensates sellers by check, store credit, or PayPal, and sellers have the option to donate any clothing not accepted by Twice to Goodwill. Once the clothes come in and are inspected, they are then cataloged by software custom-designed by Young, and the images are listed on the company website for sale.
Designing the custom software was one of the biggest and most fun challenges for Young. Every single garment that comes into Twice is unique and must be cataloged by brand, size, type, color, material, and measurements. To help expedite the process of getting each image online as fast a possible, Young created an image software that utilizes Computer Vision techniques to detect garments, remove the background, rotate, zoom in or out, and adjust the lighting, all automatically.
Twice has already become one of the major online retailers of women’s lightly used clothing. When asked about the future, Young says they hope to expand their company beyond fashion and into other areas, including second-hand electronics and other things that can be found around the house.
You can visit the company website at liketwice.com.