UCLA Anderson School of Management MBA alum Kelsey Doorey (2013) decided to even the gender gap in wedding fashion, citing what she calls the ’27 Dresses’ problem.
Doorey’s company Vow to be Chic is a breakthrough wedding fashion startup that provides customers with rentals of designer bridesmaids dresses. The company recently received $5 million in Series A funding.
Among the firms that contributed to the funding are The Pritzker Group and the Women’s Venture Capital Fund (WVCF). “The time was right for us to invest,” said WVCF managing director and co-founder Monica Dody. “Vow To Be Chic is a company for women and by women focused on disrupting an outdated industry to better service the way that millennials want to shop – online, cost-effectively and hassle-free. [Our fund] has been closely tracking Vow for the past year and their robust growth has proven that women are eagerly seeking this option.”
Kelsey Doorey saw a massive opportunity in the $100 billion plus wedding fashion industry. To Doorey and her colleagues, it became obvious that millennials would no longer settle for the archaic process of spending hundreds of dollars on a dress that would probably only see the light of day once. “Men have been winning for decades by renting tuxes while women purchased expensive dresses that they only wore once. I knew something had to change,” she said.
Vow To Be Chic customers can rent a designer dress (labels include Jenny Yoo and Nicole Miller) for an affordable $50-$95, while receiving top-level online customer service. Customers also receive a personal stylist, along with free shipping and post-wedding dry cleaning.
Matt McCall of The Pritzker Group lauded Doorey’s success, saying, “We have been exceptionally impressed with [her] and the Vow team’s execution… [We] are excited to double down on our existing investment in the company”