Founder Interviews: Greg Vilines, Fittery

In this brand new series, Startup Atlanta interviews Greg Vilines, Founder of Fittery.

It’s not every day that you get the chance to crawl your way through two new tech startup hubs in Atlanta.

Luckily, Startup Atlanta had this opportunity two weeks ago and we wanted to take full advantage of the new podcast room set up at Switchyards Downtown Club.

It was an honor to officially “break in” the new room by recording the first ever podcast there while interviewing and hearing the raw story of Greg Vilines, Founder of Fittery.

Fittery believes that finding clothing that fits you shouldn’t be hard. That shopping online should make life easier, not harder. That clothing that fits well makes you feel great about yourself. Which makes you feel like you can do anything.

Their mission is to cut out all the time you used to spend searching for and trying on and returning clothes and let you go conquer your world instead.

Listen to the full episode of our inaugural “Founder Interviews” podcast series below.

Interview Recap:

Tell us more about yourself and your business.

My name is Greg Vilines, and I’ve been in the Atlanta tech scene for a while.

I met my partner, Catherine, while at Autotrader.com and we found this idea that hadn’t been solved in the market: it’s really hard to understand how well clothes are going to fit you when you’re shopping online and you have no way of trying it on when you’re clicking a mouse.

Just the cost of those lost sales from returns is an $18 billion problem for retailers — with the #1 cause of returns being fit. Fittery is solving the online fit problem.

How did you know that “now” was the right time to start your business?

That’s always a tough question.

For Fittery, we knew that the market problem was huge but we had a technical challenge — could we actually match people to clothes and predict how well things will fit them without them actually trying them on?

So we spent about 4–6 months in guerilla-style alpha testing to help us build a really robust and precise prediction algorithm. Then we launched Fittery the company, left our jobs at Autotrader.com, and launched our website in late 2015.

In addition to Startup Atlanta and Switchyards, what other resources do you recommend that people who are starting up in Atlanta take advantage of?

There’s a lot of great things building here in Atlanta; ATDC, Atlanta Tech Village, Opportunity Hub, Meetup.com events, and another great one specific to Fittery was the ATL Fashion Tech Collective which we found through General Assembly.

Entrepreneurship is a journey filled with challenges and obstacles, could you give us a specific example of a roadblock that you faced and how you overcame it?

We had to get inventory to get people to visit our site.

So in 2015, we spent a lot of time building brand relationships to try and come on board before our product even existed. It took a leap of faith for them to buy into our vision when we didn’t have a tangible thing yet.

What advice would you give to someone who is just starting up in the city of Atlanta?

Really understand your network.

Ultimately, it’s your network that will make or break you. Leverage and build relationships with people who will support you and your dreams.

We hope you enjoyed the

first edition of our

“Founder Interviews”

series!

We’ll have a brand new edition releasing next week featuring Caitlin Abshier, Founder of Revive Bath + Body, but in the meantime check out Fittery today so that you can go and conquer your world.

Are you an Atlanta-based entrepreneur interested in being featured in our new “Founder Interviews” series?

Drop us a line and let us know!

With ❤ for ATL Startups,

Startup Atlanta, Content Committee Lead