VALUE AGENTS S.L. was founded in April 2014 in Barcelona, to develop STILAVIA, a new system that aims to definitely change the way people shop fashion online.
STILAVIA is a service in between consumers and fashion retailers, offering users a new concept of shopping experience, both educational and recreational, where an intelligent engine will recommend them items that fulfill perfectly their image aspirations, while they also learn the main concepts of image and beauty.
In March 2015 the management team applied for and won the Phase 1 grant from the SME Instrument of the European Commission’s Horizon 2020, worth € 50,000, which has allowed the team to conduct a thorough market analysis and to develop a detailed business plan .
The feasibility study has been developed focusing on different sensible areas, which have been grouped afterwards in a projected Business Plan for 2016:
1. Market research: With the help of external consultants, several reports and statistics about the market have been collected, compared and summarised, in order to get the best insights and key data to develop the financial forecast. Some of these reports were paid and received from specialised market research companies.
2. Technological research: The collaboration with the Computer Vision Center at the Universitat de Barcelona has been key to determine and evaluate potential R&D future developments.
3. IP regime strategy: A study of patentability has been performed by an external Intellectual Property specialised agency, confirming both the novelty and the degree of invention of the proposal, so a strategy for industrial property protection has been defined, together with the Business Plan for 2016.
4. Work plan and budget for 2016: All the people around the project, togheter with specialised consultants, have worked to properly define tasks and work packages, describe human resources needs, and identify and measure all other needs involved.
5. Financial Business Plan. All the information above: market research and projection, budgeted tasks, human resources and materials, has been put together to develop the final Business Plan.
The product launch will take place this November 2015 in the Spanish market, with a first expansion planned for early 2016 in the UK, as a first internationalization step to the most mature markets of Europe
STILAVIA has been born with the determination to be a disruptive phenomenon in the online fashion market.
