Startup Threadicated will find your ‘look’ for less

Tim Ladhams

14th Dec 2022

Threadicated, the innovative personal styling platform, has made a way of shopping once exclusive to the wealthy elite attainable for the average man and woman on the street.

Danielle Johansen founded Threadicated in her North Sydney home in late 2019 to provide an efficient and cost-effective personal fashion styling service that gives her customers a sense of self-love, self-esteem and self-empowerment. “The right clothing – its style, colour and feel – has the power to bring that confidence out in someone, and we love being a part of helping our clients find their best self through style,” Johansen avers.

The business is the practical manifestation of a belief she has had from a young age that the clothing we wear can affect our mood for the better, and sometimes for the worse.

“I knew I wanted to be part of lifting people up through fashion, so I studied fashion design at the prestigious Whitehouse Institute of Design,” Danielle explains. “It was a great place to start on my journey to a career in fashion.”

Over the years, Johansen has worked in most areas in the industry, trying to find the place that would connect most with her purpose of inspiring people through fashion; her CV covers the spheres of design, buying, and product development, through to marketing. “It was during my time in marketing that I realised the best way to fulfil my purpose, and I came up with the idea for Threadicated,” she says.

“It takes our clients less than 10 minutes to sign up and fill in their style profile.”

Acquiring the services of a personal fashion stylist traditionally involves at least $500 for their skills plus the cost of the clothes they select for you; it is out of the realm of possibility for so many people. So, Johansen created Threadicated to offer the same level of service as in-person styling for a fraction of the time, cost and effort. “It takes our clients less than 10 minutes to sign up and fill in their style profile, and only $79 to start receiving curated looks from their personal fashion stylist that are shipped to their door,” Danielle says of the business model. “We make it as easy for them as possible and offer free and easy returns and a risk-free trial.”

Because Threadicated was the first business model of its kind in Australia, Johansen wasn’t sure how well what she was doing would be received and never envisaged the business would become as big as it is today. The concept has resonated widely. Thousands of people across Australia – men and women – are using the platform to kit themselves out.

After starting out with what she describes as a “perfectly imperfect” website, Johansen quickly realised that she needed to offer her customers a higher level of service.

“We started by consolidating all the brands we work with onto one platform – Threadicated’s internal styling portal – with basic filters, and we have been advancing our tech ever since,” she explains. “Today, we work with hundreds of established and emerging brands and have developed our own unique AI to sort through tens of thousands of styles to recommend potential matches to our personal fashion stylists.”

Johansen has also developed measurement technology that helps her team find the best-fitting pieces for each client’s unique shape. “Combining this tech with our accredited styling team arms us with an unparalleled ability to get an amazing fit and style for each client, every time,” she enthuses.

Constantly looking for ways to improve service and offer clients more, Threadicated has a number of exciting Australia-first developments launching later this year, innovations that Johansen is confident will redefine the boundaries of what is possible with personal fashion styling.

This story was originally published on Inside Small Business.