@andyfoundlight I am not sure if my startup can be purely categorized into creator economy model. However my startup is mostly useful for fashion creators such as designers, bloggers or anyone interested in fashion as a hobby or profession.
If someone wants to launch their own design or a fashion brand, the current avenue is to get a factory or White Label supplier in Asia with their own MOQ (minimum order quantity) while simultaneously setting up the business aspects. This process alone can take between 2-6 months with huge initial investment. (Until and unless it’s DTG t-shirts which is cheaper)..
Now this is where we come in:
Creators can easily submit their outfit designs by selecting their choice of fabric from the app. We charge between $35 - $120 depending on the style category. We produce and ship the design to the original creator while listing the same in our e-com store section inside the app.
The original creator earns 15% commission on sales.
The app is a cross between Instagram, e-commerce & Shopify supported by our own manufacturing, supply chain management and logistics making us a vertically integrated platform.
I have been running my own manufacturing unit for a long time coupled with past experiences in selling t-shirts, DTG and multiple failed attempts at launching my own fashion brand owing to MOQ, capital constraints & other backend complexities.
Hence I started a manufacturing company from where I could help other designers launch their own brand with super low MOQ but sadly the business model wasn’t profitable owing to razor thin margins due to low unit economics and long credit time frame..
Most of the designers were also suffering or closing down due to high operational cost, marketing expenses, logistics etc leaving them with no margins.
Also most new designers or brands don’t sell that many units per design in-order to adhere to factory MOQ, and even when they do they are left with tons of surplus inventory..
I had faced exactly the same problem while trying to launch my fashion company which pushed me to eventual failure..
So the win-win solution was to reduce the MOQ to 1pc but with the cachet that I also be allowed to sell the same design to my customers. Initially we didn’t have a revenue sharing model but after getting good responses; we finally introduced a commission model along with providing the creators with all the needed tools and dashboard.
It’s not only creators who are submitting their designs but regular users too; and the good thing is these regular users are making enough money to cover their submission cost.
And for us, we are able to hedge the design risk to our customers while earning from hit designs.
So I am not sure how my business fits into the creator economy model but it is infact helping fashion creators monetize their designs easily.
We now have over 13000 users and have shipped over 18000 products within 8 months with very minimal marketing.