Launch HN: Queenly (YC W21) – Marketplace and search engine for formalwear
Hey HN! I’m Kathy, cofounder and CTO of Queenly (https://queenly.com/). We created a marketplace and search engine for formal dresses (think wedding, prom, quinceanera, etc). Our search and recommendations system focuses on showing the buyer these products at the level of precision they are looking for, in terms of body shape, color, style, height, skin color and fabric, trained on the text and visual signals from our user-generated content.

It’s always been a tricky process to find the perfect dress. The women’s formal wear industry has been decentralized and offline for decades, fragmented across mom-and-pop boutique shops, with sparse inventory available online and within department stores. In other words, finding the perfect wedding gown or prom dress meant driving for hours to different stores hoping these stores carry your size or the style you want. This is especially frustrating when that special occasion you are shopping for means so much to you. Similarly, it’s been tough to resell these items after that special occasion is over, as buyers on generic marketplaces like eBay or Poshmark tend to not focus on giving a safe and easy shopping experience for this type of inventory. Moreover, it takes a lot longer to sell dresses on these platforms since the buyers there have much lower intent on purchasing this kind of inventory.

Queenly attempts to solve that two-sided problem. We’ve launched a web, iOS, and (pared-down) Android app for consumers to upload their dresses that they no longer have a user for and for small business owners to bulk upload their dress inventory to help them generate more revenue.

We’re solving this problem because of our personal backgrounds: Trisha and I are two minority immigrant founders from low income families. For us, having that transformative Cinderella dress was tremendously meaningful but never truly attainable. My cofounder, an emancipated youth, found her Cinderella opportunity through joining pageants during college. For her and many young women, these pageants had not only helped her personal growth, but also helped her pay tuition and survive. This experience gave us both a strong pillar of support and got her through tough times, and so we dedicated ourselves to the mission of providing affordability and access to dresses for young women. Through forging friendships with other girls we met during pageants, and working with formalwear fashion designers, we found solace in a diverse community of those trying to push the boundaries of what it means to feel beautiful and confident in the modern age, that such traits can come in all shapes and sizes, and embracing them wholeheartedly.

From this experience, we understand that search precision for one’s body type, skin tone, height, and budget in this market is not a secondary concern but rather a first-order necessity. The 50k+ dresses uploaded onto Queenly are indexed by color, fabric, dress size, hemline, neckline, silhouette and sleeve length. In beta testing now is searching by skin tone, filtering by height, and computer vision image search.

If you’ve experienced this frustration buying or selling formal dresses, or know someone who has, we would love to hear your feedback. We’re very excited to be sharing this with HN, and we’ll be here to answer questions you want to throw our way!