Deal highlights

• Clothing collection crafted with state-of-the-art fiber technology
• Collagen Collection named “The Next Big Thing” by Hollywood Reporter
• Seattle flagship store delivering a 70% returning customer rate and $350 average order size ($347 to be exact)
• Founded/led by designer Joey Rodolfo and marketing executive Stacy Bennett, both with proven track records and 30+ years of experience
• Founders have personally invested their own money towards launch
• Multi-channel marketer targeting $292B US apparel market
  
  

Consumers must choose between “performance” and “luxury”...but they want both

People want to wear clothes that feel incredibly comfortable but look stylish and are easy to take care of.  Typically, they need to choose between “Performance” clothing, which is usually athletic, athleisure, or active silhouettes, or “Luxury” clothing, which are beautiful, but expensive. There isn’t a luxury clothing brand that offers consumers desk-to-dinner styles with performance qualities...until now.

Today's apparel consumer wants it all 

US fashion trends have fundamentally become more casual, driving a growing athleisure market, but consumers are demanding more than ‘sweats’.

There are other clothing brands doing ‘technical’ clothing, but not in the luxury space, and not as a full clothing collection for men and women.   

As a result, the $292B US apparel market is void of a high-end clothing collection that offers performance qualities in desk-to-dinner silhouettes.

People want to wear comfortable clothes that can take them from desk-to-dinner. With the benefit of innovation, and technology, Buki makes that possible.

Welcome to the wardrobe revolution

Technology is improving every aspect of our everyday lives, and your clothes are no exception.  We craft what we think is the world's most comfortable clothes by combining state-of-the-art fiber technology with luxurious fabrics.  Our seasonless collection of wardrobe staples are great for travel, and even better for everyday.

Buki performs unlike anything you've ever experienced because it is crafted with our proprietary state-of-the-art Japanese fiber technology, Kinoki-3.0™:

We believe in “Fabrics First” and design our collections around our proprietary fabrics that perform:  from keeping you warm, to cooling you down, and even softening your skin...Buki is a Wardrobe Revolution. 

Our story 

Co-Founders Joey Rodolfo and Stacy Bennett, seasoned industry executives, had a dream of creating the world's most comfortable clothing collection and Buki is turning that dream into a reality.  

Rodolfo developed our proprietary fiber technology, Kinoki-3.0™,  with the leading fiber innovation company in the world (located in Japan), and designed the collections around the innovative fabrics.  

The perfect intersection of Performance and Luxury

Bennett heads up the company’s marketing and operations efforts and together they are a dynamic duo that is passionate about innovating the apparel market with technology.  

They opened a Pop-Up Shop downtown Seattle in November 2016 to test the concept and it was quickly a hit; the Seattle store has become their Flagship location and they are now carried in 65 high-end retail boutiques around the country.  

Buki is making headlines 

Growing 50% year-over-year since launch

Since launch, Buki has gotten great traction in their Seattle retail store, on their website, and in high-end specialty boutiques across the country.

Our customers

A wardrobe revolution in-store and online

• 27% retail
• 57% wholesale
• 4% online
• 12% partners

We believe in the retail channel as a way to bring our collection to life; customers benefit from experiencing our revolutionary technical fabrics to fully appreciate them. And the true epiphany happens when they try them on and experience fabrics that they’ve never experienced before (because we’ve developed all of them).

The real testament is in wearing Buki over time; 70% of our sales are from repeat customers. Once you wear Buki, it’s all you want to wear.  And our price points range from $98-248 so it’s accessible to build a capsule collection of comfort.

We’re planning to further develop our business into three primary channels:

• Wholesale: Our wholesale business will target high-end specialty retailers with our clothing collections and spas/resorts with our collagen clothing and accessories. Targeting $10M in sales in year 5
• Retail: Our Seattle store has become our Flagship location and we’re looking to expand into key markets with additional pop-up stores. Targeting $5M in sales in year 5

• Online: www.bukibrand.com is our spotlight for our entire collection, including preview/pre-order styles. Our web sales are stronger in geographic regions where we have a solid wholesale presence and so we see major upside in growing our web business as our wholesale business builds across the country. Additionally,  we would like to continue building our digital marketing programs to ramp up our web business significantly. Targeting $2M in sales in year 5

Partners/Events: We are exploring several creative strategies to increase Brand Awareness and Sales with additional retail outlets: Corporate Pop-Ups (Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, etc) and B8ta Retail Stores.

Our desk-to-dinner technical clothing is very appealing to corporate tech employees and we were invited by Facebook HQ to host a Pop-Up Event at their Silicon Valley corporate headquarters; we are actively pursuing these type of corporate events.

We are a featured vendor partner at B8ta retail locations in Chicago, San Francisco, Houston, and New Jersey.  The Impressions and Discoveries that we receive in their retail stores are of scalable volume with great synergy between our target customer and their target customer. Targeting $1M in sales in year 5.

The US apparel market is worth $292B, and athleisure is $46B

Buki focuses on well-educated, well-traveled, and well-employed consumers who appreciate luxury, comfort, and style. 

While we are targeting the $292B US apparel market, we keep our eye on the $46B athleisure market because of the comfort and easy-care factors. The comfort of Buki’s clothing is on par with athleisure, but the desk-to-dinner style is categorized in the Apparel market proper.

Our strategy is to introduce our clothing collection into their shopping path via their favorite high-end specialty retail boutique (our own stand-alone Pop-Up or via a retail partner) and by becoming a go-to clothing solution for their weekday, weekend, travel, and work. 

Buki is good for you and the environment 

Other brands are doing ‘technical’ clothing, but not in the luxury space, and not as a full clothing collection for men and women.

Most competitive fabrics that are marketed as ‘technical’ are simple polyester stretch with little to no technical function. All of our Buki technical fabrics are created with state-of-the-art fiber technology that outperforms other “performance” fabrics; plus, they are all sustainable and machine-washable (no dry-cleaner, no iron!)

Bootstrapped

We tested the waters with a Kickstarter campaign in 2017, but our fundraising journey really begins here at Republic. Joey and Stacy have personally invested over $500,000 to kick things off and prove the concept. Buki has obtained a $150K small business loan and has $292K cash in the bank.  Conversations about potential future funding are underway with high profile individuals.

On track to expand Buki across the country in 2019

Our launch was a success and customers are loving the comfort, style, and ease of our luxury technical clothing: we’ve created our most innovative fabric yet in our Collagen Collection and we’re ready to expand into the high-end wholesale market this year, including spas and resorts.

May 2016: Finalize technical fabric development

Nov 2016: Launch Pop-Up Shop & website

March 2018: Buki gifted to all NFL owners/wives

June 2018: Launch Collagen Collection

December 2018: Reach $775K in sales

2019: Grow Wholesale

If we reach our goal of $107,000, we will be able to fund more aggressive sales and marketing programs to further accelerate our growth in 2019.

Founders & team

Joey and Stacy are passionate about how technology drives innovation. Joey was inspired by Richard Hellmstetter, the inventor of the Big Bertha, at Callaway who provided the design direction, “Design clothes like they’re equipment.” And Joey has designed clothes to function and perform FIRST, ever since. Stacy was influenced by her time at Clarisonic, a category creating device which was the perfect intersection of beauty and technology. She sees a similarity to Buki, which is targeting to be the leading ‘technical clothing’ brand in the world by intersecting technology and clothing. 

Join the wardrobe revolution! 

Together, we can transform how people dress from desk to dinner.  Thank you for your support. 

- Joey & Stacy