Philip Sblendorio is the cofounder of SprezzaBox.
Officially, Philip Sblendorio was an insurance underwriter for hedge funds, but his unofficial title was fashion consultant. Always immaculately dressed in a tie and a pocket square, Sblendorio was the guy other guys unabashedly went to for advice on what to wear.
Followers flocked to the selfies he took of each day’s outfit on Instagram. As his fashion persona took over, Sblendorio developed a startup idea with two friends for a Birchbox-like service for men called SprezzaBox that would help them replenish fashion basics on a monthly basis and introduce them to cool new brands. For a monthly fee of $28, SprezzaBox ( sprezza means dapper or stylish without trying in Italian) ships out a box of three to four accessories and a grooming product.
“There wasn’t much out there for a corporate guy,” Sblendorio, 31, said. “I wanted ties and socks and stuff like that. At first, the idea was to do it as a side project.”
But after a two-month beta period, and a formal launch in May 2014, revenues and growth for the side gig were strong enough that by the end of last year, Sblendorio quit his insurance job and cofounders Disi Fei, 28, and Lenin Batista, 31, soon followed. The founding trio used their own savings to bootstrap the business although they are currently working on closing a seed investment round.
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Sblendorio declined to specify revenues, but said the company, fueled by the popularity of Instagram followers, has now shipped more than 40,000 boxes subscription boxes to the United States and Canada, and its annual sales are in the “seven-figure” range.
The startup’s e-commerce site sells to customers in 25 countries and SprezzaBox recently built out a second location with a warehouse and its own fulfillment center next door to its headquarters in Long Island City, Queens. In June, it acquired Bedford & Broome, a Brooklyn-based men’s fashion company whose goods were featured in the boxes, and which is now being operated separately.
Sblendorio blogs for GQ and says a partnership with the publication to cross-promote the company has helped, but he primarily credits Instagram for the success of SprezzaBox. SprezzaBox has 120,000 Instagram followers, just shy of Sblendorio’s 124,000. This sizable audience has helped the company in more ways than one.
Because the companies that it partners with want the type of exposure that SprezzaBox can offer, it gets everything it sells in the subscription boxes at cost. In exchange, Sblendorio and his team do social media marketing for the brands that are featured in its boxes.
“They see how many followers we have, and how influential we are with the consumers, so they trust us to build a marketing campaign and help build their brands,” Sblendorio said. The brands it works with provide limited-edition and special products just for SprezzaBox, items that do not interfere with what is sold on their own brands’ websites.
SprezzaBox is hardly the only fashion company benefiting from Instagram. Curalate, a technology platform with offices in Philadelphia and New York, has built its business around Instagram through a platform that includes “like2buy” buttons that make it easy for consumers to purchase what they spot on Instagram. With its focus on beautiful images and minimal text, Instagram is a direct hit with Millennials who prefer to get all their information from their phones, says Matthew Langie, chief marketing officer, at Curalate.
“What it does it helps create an inspirational purchase,” Langie told the New York Business Journal. “They’re not just looking at a product for how does it fit, they’re looking to be inspired by something.”
Curalate, whose partners range from startups like Love and Lemons to Nordstrom, says brands can use it to create a sense of community, and develop engagement with customers.
He also has slew of tips on how to use Instagram based upon data that indicates conversion rates from browsing to buying. His advice: don’t overuse the hashtag (maximum of 2 per photo works best); don’t post too often (once daily is a good rule of thumb) and choose light images over dark, with the product in the foreground. Another odd one, he admits: images in which blue is the dominant color perform 24 percent better than images with a preponderance of red. Also, if you have a piece of apparel or another product with a great deal of texture to it on Instagram, that item is 79 percent more likely to sell than something without texture.
At SprezzaBox, the Instagram photos are appearing more often these days, thanks to a new ambassador program for which it received 800 applications from people who want to represent SprezzaBox. In exchange for sharing their favorites on social media, the ambassadors get a discount code on purchases.
Sblendorio said that looking back to his previous job, he doesn’t miss it, although he had to cut his salary “big time,” to lead a startup.
“I was working 16-hour days between my day job and then doing this at night,” he said. “When it became a viable business, when I went finally full-time, I found myself working even more, 16 to18 hour days with just this. But I love it. If anything, I maybe would have just quit sooner.“
Men"s fashion startup SprezzaBox owes it all to Instagram and selfies
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