Alicia Yoon is the founder and CEO of Peach & Lily. Alicia struggled with eczema throughout her childhood until she began to educate herself on the topic which led her to enroll in beauty school and continue to pursue skincare as a hobby while enrolled at Columbia University. Upon graduating with degrees in Philosophy and East Asian Languages and Cultures, Yoon worked at Goldman Sachs before attending Harvard Business School. While working at the Boston Consulting Group, she realized the untapped potential of the Korean beauty industry in the US and quit her job to found Peach & Lily.

What inspired you all to create this company?
I grew up with severe eczema. I went to esthetician school in Korea to understand how to manage my eczema — and completely transformed my skin. I started my career in finance and consulting, but nights and weekends were spent giving facials and skincare consultations helping others transform their skin. In 2012, after graduating from Harvard Business School, I decided to take the leap and start Peach & Lily to pursue my passion for helping others transform their skin full-time. To help people achieve their healthiest skin, we provide the best of Korean beauty products and complimentary skin consultations with licensed estheticians. We both curate brands and create our own products and distribute them on our e-commerce platform as well as in national retailers including Ulta, CVS, Target and more.

What distinguishes your company and product in the market?
Peach & Lily was one of the first companies to bring Korean Beauty to national US retailers and helped pioneer the K-Beauty movement Stateside. Our business is unique in that we offer both a true retail destination for Korean and Japanese beauty products on our website carrying hundreds of carefully curated products – and offer complimentary advice from skin therapists every step of the way to help educate consumers about the world of Korean beauty. We also create our own beauty products and offer a differentiated take on formulations leveraging Korean beauty technologies allowing for a “zero compromise” standard of nontoxic formulations, high-performance and sensorially delightful textures. We are one of the fastest growing beauty companies in the US with wide distribution across several national retailers including Ulta, CVS and Target.

Ally Maki is a fourth generation Japanese-American actress and entrepreneur known for her roles in Toy Story 4, Marvel’s Cloak and Dagger, and TBS’ Wrecked. The founder and creative director of Asian American Girl Club, Ally is committed to her personal mission of redefining what it means to be an Asian American woman in the modern era and moving the conversation forward through unification and normalization.

What inspired you all to create this company?
With the growing representation of Asian Americans in media, we believe it’s important to create visibility across all media types -including what we wear. Along with that, creating sisterhood and setting an example of unity and female friendship is deeply rooted in our mission. AAGC is the brand we wished we had as a kid. The one that was invisible from the marketplace. We are here now to make you feel included, celebrated and seen- all while looking fashionably you.

What distinguishes your company and product in the market?
Asian American Girl Club is an apparel company set to redefine what it means to be a modern Asian American woman. Whether it be through flooding your timeline with powerful images of rad women, creating content -from interviews to skincare to straight up real talk, or designing goodies with you specifically in mind, we’re dedicated to the normalization of the next generation of AAPI gals and boss babes. To give voice and celebrate.

Anna is the technical co-founder of Lioness, the sexual wellness company that built the world’s first and only smart vibrator that improves orgasms. Because she grew up in an immigrant, Korean family where talking about sex was taboo, she is a big advocate in Lioness’s mission to destigmatize women’s sexuality through knowledge of their own bodies. Before Lioness, Anna was a mechanical engineer at Amazon, launching the Kindle Voyage and Amazon Dash Button. She has been featured on the Engineering Insight podcast and spoken at top universities like UC Berkeley and Chalmers University, SXSW, and CYFY India and Morocco.

What inspired you all to create this company?
We started Lioness inspired from our own upbringings of growing up in conservative families where we never talked about sex. The lack of conversations around sex, especially as women, made us feel alone in feeling ashamed of our own body. When we started having conversations with other women, we quickly discovered that we were by far not the only women who had questions about their sexual health left wondering, “am I normal?” Unfortunately, the question far too common among all women because when we look at the history of research in women’s health, and even further into women’s sexual health, there’s still an incredible lack of research- often held back by societal taboo. Most of the female physiological sex research that we, as a society, lean on to this day are from the 1980’s from a sample size of 15 women. We founded Lioness, the world’s smartest vibrator, as a step toward helping women, and ourselves, discover their own answers. Not only does the Lioness use advanced biometric sensors to show data on their own sexual pleasure and orgasms, we also partner with sex researchers and doctors to advance the knowledge and research beyond the imaginable.

What distinguishes your company and product in the market?
Lioness is a Silicon Valley, women-led company with strong female engineering, design, and executive leadership, which surprisingly in this industry, is an uncommon feat. Our product is women-centric at its core, from our choices to use the same materials as those used in medical devices to tailoring the Lioness smart vibrator’s ergonomics to how women actually hold vibrators. Most importantly, there are no other vibrators or products in the consumer market that have the technical capability of our exclusively patented integration of smart, biometric sensors along with our statistical data methods to provide insights on sexual arousal to improve orgasms.

Athina previously worked as a production coordinator for international and domestic fashion brands. Her global experiences inspired the need for a more inclusive eyewear market. Focusing on fit, she believes in designing styles that will bring each wearer ease and confidence. Before Covry, Florence worked in strategic branding and communications for designer and contemporary retail brands. She is a founding member of the Accessories Innovation committee under the umbrella of the Accessories Council, designed to empower emerging talent in accessories innovation.

What inspired you all to create this company?
We started this company in 2015 to celebrate our beautiful diverse face shapes. We’ve always settled for eyewear that never fit quite right, which inspired us to create our signature Elevated Fit®.

What distinguishes your company and product in the market?
Our exclusive Elevated Fit is designed to complement low nose bridges and high cheekbones. As Asian American women, we understand the need for better-fitting eyewear that goes beyond the standard fit

Charlotte Cho is an esthetician, author, co-founder of K-Beauty destination Soko Glam and skincare content site The Klog, and now the founder of Then I Met You, a premium direct-to-consumer skincare line focused on a meaningful experience and quality ingredients. In 2019, Charlotte was named Adweek’s Trailblazer of the Year, WWD 40 under 40, and has been featured in media outlets such as Entrepreneur, The New York Times, Allure, Harper’s Bazaar, and Fast Company.

What inspired you all to create this company?
I wanted to help all people believe there are only good (skin) days ahead.

What distinguishes your company and product in the market?
Soko Glam is the best place for you to discover high quality Korean beauty products and learn about skincare.

Sarah Lee and Christine Chang have a combined 20+ years of experience in global beauty, working both in Korea and the US. During that time, they spread their experience across 8 international brands, developing and launching hundreds of products while testing tens of thousands more. In 2014, Sarah and Christine founded Glow Recipe to create a lovingly curated destination for natural, harsh-free beauty products and as a platform to introduce the latest skincare innovations from South Korea to the world. Glow Recipe Skincare was born in 2017 with the launch of the Watermelon Glow Sleeping Mask and Blueberry Bounce Gentle Cleanser. At launch, the Watermelon Glow Sleeping Mask sold out over seven times on both glowrecipe.com and at Sephora, generating a waitlist that exceeded 8,000 people. Today, Sarah and Christine have focused entirely on their namesake brand, Glow Recipe Skincare, and has expanded the line to include products that harness watermelon, avocado, and pineapple. Glow Recipe can be found online and in Sephora stores throughout the US and Canada.

What inspired you all to create this company?
Glow Recipe was founded with the mission to elevate skincare to selfcare with fruit-powered treatments that are clean, efficacious, sensorial and unapologetically fun.

What distinguishes your company and product in the market?
We believe you are beyond a skin type, your skin’s needs are different everyday. We empower our customers through education to create custom routines – and feed their skin for a healthy glow.

Cindy Gallop is half English, half Chinese and grew up in Brunei. She’s the founder & CEO of www.makelovenotporn.com launched at TED 2009 – ‘Pro-sex. Pro-porn. Pro-knowing the difference’. Today MakeLoveNotPorn is the world’s first user-generated, human-curated social sex videosharing platform, socializing sex to make it easier to talk about, to promote good sexual values and behavior. Cindy speaks at conferences globally and consults, describing her approach as ‘I like to blow shit up. I am the Michael Bay of business.’

What inspired you all to create this company?
My personal experience dating younger men and realizing when we don’t talk openly about sex in the real world, porn becomes sex education by default. I’m pioneering a whole new category – social sex.

What distinguishes your company and product in the market?
MakeLoveNotPorn is ‘Pro-sex. Pro-porn. Pro-knowing the difference’ – world’s first user-generated, human-curated, social sex videosharing platform, promoting consent, good sexual values and behavior.

Coral started her career at Bain, where she advised Fortune 500 companies on retail strategy. Coral has always been passionate about luxury retail and consumer brands, which led her to work with Prada’s COO and CEO of Americas on marketing, commercialization, distribution related projects prior to its IPO. Coral was most recently a Principal at Medallia, a leader in SaaS/big data analytics, where she worked with leading luxury and global retail brands like Apple, Sephora, and Nordstrom. Wendy is the Co-Founder and COO of Senreve. She most recently worked in Chanel’s Sales Planning and Development group where she helped provide insight into sales performance across Chanel’s wholesale distribution network. Previously, Wendy was an investor at TPG Capital and Anthos Capital where she focused on growth equity investments in the technology and retail sectors.

What inspired you all to create this company?
What I found as a young professional was that I could never find that perfect work bag. I want to connect more directly with women and empower them with a bag that does it all.

What distinguishes your company and product in the market?
Our bags are not only luxurious and beautiful they are also thoughtfully designed to fit the lifestyle of the modern women.

Diana Ra was born and raised in Brazil and then moved to the US with her Korean parents when she was 10yrs old. After earning her bachelors in fashion design from Otis college of art and design, she worked as a designer for Arden B, Lucky Brand and Patterson J. Kincaid, until in 2015, she met with Shawn Azad to partner on dRA clothing.

What inspired you all to create this company?
There was a time when I used to hear “resort line” and thought of chic caftans in Santorini. Over the last few years though, I feel like “resort wear” began sounding dated and a little missy. But I don’t think people are traveling less. If anything, I think people are traveling so much more. Maybe they’re not all going to Santorini but a quick weekend in Ojai or a few days in Palm Springs… traveling has become more accessible and inclusive…. and I think that’s what dRA is about. Every dRA collection has been rooted in the idea of travel. Our collection titles “Biarritz”, “Todos Santos”, “Laurel” etc… they’re all locations I found inspiration in and the pieces were a reflection of my time there. dRA is aspirational but accessible.

What distinguishes your company and product in the market?
dRA’s team is small and diverse and together, our experiences and cultures create a special and unique brand. Diana is korean but born in Brazil so the direction of each collection is a mix of tailoring and bohemian. Vlada is Russian and as our associate designer, she brings elements of her culture into each collection. Shawn is our president and Diana’s partner. He is 1/4 Indian and 3/4 Persian. His father has been in the textile business for 40+ years so dRA uses his connections in India for a lot of its production. The list goes on.

Harpreet Singh Rai is the chief executive officer of Oura and a member of its board. His purpose is to be part of a team that is committed to improving the well-being of others. Under his leadership, Oura has grown to a team of nearly 100 employees and has launched its Generation 2 ring, shipping over 100,000 units to 90 different countries. He is responsible for Oura’s vision and strategy and guides decisions that ensure the organization’s financial health.

Before Oura, Rai was a portfolio manager who led the technology, media and telecom portfolio at Eminence Capital for 9nine years. He began his career working in Morgan Stanley’s merger and acquisitions group. Rai studied electrical engineering at the University of Michigan.

What inspired you all to create this company?

Oura is a health intelligence platform helping people listen to the body’s signals, analyze those signals and provide actionable insights. We were founded on the principle that your health is unique to you and requires long term measurement and personalization.

Oura is using data to reconnect people with their body and providing a comprehensive, long term view of their health via personalized insights. Giving consumers more control over, and insight into, their health is the future and Oura is leading the way.

What distinguishes your company and product in the market?

Oura stands in opposition to the trends dominating the wellness and wearable technology categories. 

Wellness, because its commercialization of people’s dependency on external solutions and the belief that health starts outside of us. Wearable technology, because of the industry’s favoring of narrow, binary indicators like “steps” over more holistic, longer term tracking and the sequestering of user data. 

Oura is using data to reconnect people with their body and providing a comprehensive, long term view of their health via personalized insights. Giving consumers more control over, and insight into, their health is the future and Oura is leading the way.

Jack Jia is an American entrepreneur. Jia is known for founding and leading Musely (formerly Trusper), an online platform to provide skincare medical treatments through technology, as its chief executive officer since its launch in November 2017. He also founded Baynote, a Recommender system, in November 2004. He was also the founding chief technology officer and Senior VP of Interwoven (Nasdaq: IWOV), where he sponsored a noted BMW Z3 recruiting campaign covered by national and international news organizations. Jia is also a partner and advisor for GSR Ventures, a multi-billion technology venture capital firm, since its inception in 2005. He is an advisory board member for Santa Clara University, and the President of HYSTA, a premier non-profit organization for promoting entrepreneurship.

What inspired you all to create this company?
Deliver health and healthy living to every woman and man in the world via content and prescription medication.

What distinguishes your company and product in the market?
Musely provides skincare medical treatments through technology. It enables the best dermatologists to deliver medical treatments online for both skin conditions and skincare using the Rx medication.”

I split time between Los Angeles and Shenzhen as the CEO of Italic.com. Previously, I was an archetypical tech founder—as an early Thiel Fellow & college dropout, I founded Fountain.com and went through YC S15. I also cofounded Blemish, the holding company behind the cult favorite brand, Not Pot, with Kati. Before starting companies, I cut my teeth on product & ops jobs in SF & Chicago while occasionally investing in startups (but have since stopped).

What inspired you all to create this company?
I come from a family with a long history in manufacturing. Having worked in the industry since a young age, I realized the inefficiencies and unfairness that the existing model of retail offered both manufacturers and consumers. After years of speaking with manufacturers, I started Italic as a means to democratize access to luxury goods.

What distinguishes your company and product in the market?
We sell unbranded luxury goods (think handbag from same factory as Celine but 1/3 the price). By removing brands, we’re able to offer dramatically lower prices to consumers, pay our manufacturers a fairly, and create a more sustainable supply chain.

When introduced in 2017, Judge Khanna and Saif Ghobash immediately recognized their creative synergy, and have since then dreamed of reshaping the landscape for luxury eyewear. With Ghobash hailing from Dubai, and Khanna based in New York City, the two creators had very different visions as to where their respective creative paths were initially headed. Upon graduating from Parsons, Khanna built a luxury womenswear collection, dressing prestigious and elite New York woman. During his tenure as a womenswear designer, Khanna felt there was an opportunity to create a bigger splash in the luxury accessory space. Ghobash has served as lead inspiration behind the recent collection, having the ability to appreciate and understand luxury, while also having an eye for recognizing humor and edge within Khanna’s unique style. Initially as friends, and now business partners, Ghobash and Khanna plan to shift the perspective on the eyewear industry.

What inspired you all to create this company?
After a failed business venture, I was inspired to create a cutting edge product built on the idea of humor and luxury. “Don’t cry over spilt milk and live in the moment,” was my motto in life.

What distinguishes your company and product in the market?
SpiltMilk evokes humor, luxury and sensuality. Handmade in Japan, using combination of malleable titanium and metal, each pair has nosepads and temples that can be adjusted to fit any face perfectly.

Justin Schneider is the founder and originator of the concept for W&S shoes. As a track and field athlete for Notre Dame, Justin became accustomed to what the performance in a shoe actually means.

Upon graduation, he began working for Adidas, designing shoes for athletes using the latest performance technology. It was during this time that he had a conversation with a friend that would trigger Justin to drop everything and focus on a new concept, attempting to solve a problem that was far too common in the businessman’s world. Instead of forcing yourself to wear uncomfortable dress shoes all day, or switching to sneakers in-between, why not just mold the best of each together to form a superior product, killing two birds with one stone. With the idea finalized, it was time to prove the concept.

Using an old pair of traditionally constructed dress shoes, Justin put together a rough prototype before heading to Mexico, where the first W&S samples were born. To truly test if he had succeeded in his efforts, Justin laced up for a 5K and completed the race in under 20 mins — blister free and convinced the world was ready for a fresh start in defining what the modern dress shoe is. Thus, W&S was born.

What inspired you all to create this company?
I ran the decathlon at Notre Dame with the idea that this was the perfect sport to allow me to do a little bit of everything. After school, I worked at Adidas as a footwear designer where the mentality was to design better products for athletes who want to win. Coupling these two together prepared me for the challenge of both starting Wolf & Shepherd a versatile brand that takes all the comfort and innovation of a running shoe and combines this with the tradition, craftsmanship and luxury found in premium dress shoes. That’s classic style, athletic fit. Innovation and tradition.

That being said, it doesn’t hurt to have a mom who was a concert pianist, father as a business owner and the youngest of three kids who went off to do big things.

What distinguishes your company and product in the market?
We are the first mover in digitally native brands to introduce Hybrids: a fusion of premium fashion and athletic innovation. Starting with dress shoes we’ve made as comfortable as your favorite runnings shoes our products don’t compromise on quality, comfort and style. Now you can have a shoe that feels as good as it looks.

Melissa Mash is CEO and cofounder of Dagne Dover, overseeing business development and retail partnerships. A graduate of NYU and The Wharton School of Business, Melissa was previously at Coach where she saw an immense opportunity for a high-quality brand with a unique design, at a compelling price point. That brand became Dagne Dover. Making sure Dagne Dover continues to be an example of positive leadership and work culture is a strong focus for Melissa.

Deepa is co-founder and COO of Dagne Dover, overseeing day-to-day operations and strategic planning, spanning from supply chain management to inventory and logistics. Previously with Club Monaco and Lehman Brothers, Deepa’s analytical industry insights have made her a key contributor in driving Dagne Dover’s growth since the company’s inception. A graduate of John Hopkins University and The Wharton School of Business, Deepa is also a 2015 Forbes 30 under 30.

What inspired you all to create this company?
In 2009, while I was working for Coach, I had the opportunity to lead the turnaround and manage its first store in London. The store was at Heathrow Terminal 5 — a super posh British Airways exclusive

What distinguishes your company and product in the market?
Our brand has received a lot of attention throughout the past 6.5 years in business — notably because of the strength of our product and how we connect with our customers digitally. During the first”

Ming Zhao

Ming Zhao is the co-founder and CEO of PROVEN Skincare, a technology-powered personalized skincare company. She is an immigrant, a third-generation entrepreneur, and a mother whose daughter is the same age as her startup. Prior to founding PROVEN, Ming was a private equity investor where she frequently worked 80-hour weeks, wreaking havoc on her skin and soul, leading her to pursue personalized skincare. She resides in San Francisco and has a MBA from Harvard.

Amy Yuan

Dr. Yuan has a master’s degree in Computer Science, a post-doctorate degree in Computational Physics from USC and a Ph.D in Material Science from Stanford. She is also a world record holder for the largest computational simulation in science using a supercomputer. Before founding PROVEN, Dr. Yuan lead data and computational science teams at F100 companies and another leading data startup. In her spare time, she likes to grow vegetables.

What inspired you all to create this company?
Proven evolved from a personal mission to solve my own skin frustrations to the world’s most personalized skincare.

Years ago, I had a soul-sucking, 14-hour-a-day, private equity job. My skin became dull, sallow and made me look much older than my age. Panicked, I spent time and money on skincare products, but nothing worked.It wasn’t until I had personalized skincare products made for me that I saw real results.

Similarly, my co-founder, Amy Yuan, had a skin condition that wouldn’t go away. Being a Computational Physicist, she built for herself an AI-powered database that found all the scientific literature regarding the condition and solved the issue on her own.

PROVEN is the amalgamation of these two epiphanies – personalization and data. Amy’s initial database, augmented with dermatology experts from Stanford, turned into the world’s largest skin database: The Skin Genome Project™, which won MIT’s AI Technology of the Year award in 2018. It simplifies and optimizes people’s lives by creating formulations that fit them.

The beauty industry is not only decades behind technologically, but also only creates products for middle-aged Caucasian females living in Los Angeles or New York, leaving the rest of us woefully underserved. PROVEN is bringing cutting-edge technology and inclusive products to help everyone have good skin for life.

What distinguishes your company and product in the market?
PROVEN is a completely new approach to skincare and consumer products. We analyze more than 47 factors about a person – not just their skin type, but also their heritage, style of life, stage of life, and locality, down to the hardness of the water in their municipality, and the amount they fly. With this richness of data, we then use data to create highly personalized and effective skincare formulas that address customers’ specific needs.

Our database, the Skin Genome ProjectTM, is the largest database of its kind, and has won numerous AI award including from MIT, Nvidia and Stanford for the sophisticated algorithms that power it. The database analyzed more than 20 million consumer testimonials, 4000 scientific journal articles, on over 20,000 ingredients and 100,000 products. It is the first time that evidence-based science is being applied into the skincare and beauty industry.

PROVEN’s proprietary personalized skincare products are formulated in collaboration with the Stanford Center for Aesthetic Dermatology under the guidance of an award-winning Stanford cosmetic formulator, and are clean, non-toxic and made in the USA.

Not only that, PROVEN’s products evolve with people as the seasons change, as the seasons in their lives change. When women get pregnant, when men change the way they shave their faces or when someone moves from San Francisco to Paris, PROVEN’s products self-update to account for your changing needs – something that no other skincare line is able to do. And we’re just getting started. We’ve already created the AI databases to create personalized products in other consumer categories to create an empire of personalized consumer brands.

Phillip Lim was born in Thailand in 1973 to Chinese immigrants who later fled to Southern California to escape Cambodia’s civil war, where his mother found work as a seamstress and his father became a professional poker player. While his mother clearly had an early influence on his ethos, Lim didn’t fantasize of being a designer. Instead he studied finance for three years at California State University of Long Beach, but soon found himself switching to a degree in home economics.

Phillip Lim debuted his eponymous brand, 3.1 Phillip Lim, in the fall of 2005, with business partner and friend, Wen Zhou, bucking the ostentatious runway trends of the time. His line of youthfully elegant wardrobe classics with a twist, was an instant sensation and adored by critics, fashion editors and customers alike. Widespread recognition of Lim’s talent and accolades quickly followed, including the 2006 Fashion Group International Women’s Designer ‘Rising Star’ Award, the 2007 CFDA Swarovski Award in Womenswear, the 2012 CFDA Swarovski Award in Menswear, and the 2013 CFDA Award for Accessories Designer of the Year.

After nearly fifteen years in business, Lim as creative director and co-founder of 3.1 Phillip Lim, finds himself at the helm of a pioneering modern luxury brand, designing women’s, men’s, accessories, and footwear – making him one of the most talented and successful young designers today.

Wen Zhou serves as President and CEO of 3.1 Phillip Lim, the company she co-founded together with Phillip Lim in 2005. Zhou spent her childhood in Ningbo, China, and arrived in New York City at the age of 12, settling with her family in Chinatown. She spoke no English, but possessed a challenger spirit, a love of fashion handed down from her mother – a seamstress – and an entrepreneurial drive to succeed, all of which informed her future success as a business leader and entrepreneur.

By the age of 26, she had founded a fabric selling company and an offshore clothing production company. Later, through a fateful meeting in Paris, Zhou met Phillip Lim, who was himself prepared for his next design endeavor. The two went on to form a partnership, and in the Fall of 2005, launched 3.1 Phillip Lim. They were both 31 years old at the time. As the brand looks ahead to its 15-year anniversary in 2020, their partnership remains one of the most fruitful and successful ones in American fashion. The company’s vision of cool, easy, chic wardrobe essentials for today’s global citizen has become synonymous with an understated modern luxury, while reflecting the brand’s and founders’ core values in all aspects of the business. A commitment to social values and sustainability has become increasingly important to the brand narrative, both as a way of connecting with customers and creating long lasting positive impact industry-wide. The brand’s ethos of ‘sustainable balance’ stems from the belief that sustainability is about balance, not perfection, and nthat in taking small steps, we can all reduce our environmental impact while sustaining creativity and humanity in our workplace.

As President and CEO, Zhou has grown 3.1 Phillip Lim into a global fashion brand offering womenswear, menswear, footwear and accessories. She has been recognized for her leadership and business acumen in such publications as The Business of Fashion, WWD, Vogue, and several international titles.

In 2019, she launched i-see, an online platform that seeks to create a community to unite and inspire Asian American women like herself. Zhou is proud to serve on the Board of Directors for the Nest organization, New Yorkers for Children and Apex for Youth.

She juggles the roles of CEO, business partner and friend, with her most important job – being a mother to her two children, Ming and Zen.

What inspired you all to create this company?

“When we first started 3.1 Phillip Lim, we didn’t have a lot of means, but we had desire. Our philosophy was built on making the most beautiful clothes we could make – clothes that were accessible to me, to my colleagues, and to my peers. It was this idea of young professionals – we were going places, we were doing things, we were on the move. And we wanted clothes that answered that call.” —Phillip Lim

What distinguishes your company and product in the market?

The 3.1 Phillip Lim brand was built on accessible luxury and playful curiosity, and continues to define the space it pioneered with its ‘cool, easy, chic’ wardrobe for the modern global citizen.

PRABAL GURUNG LAUNCHED HIS EPONYMOUS COLLECTION IN FEBRUARY 2009 WITH A PHILOSOPHY ENCOMPASSING MODERN LUXURY, INDELIBLE STYLE AND AN ASTUTE SENSE OF GLAMOUR.

Gurung was born in Singapore and raised in Kathmandu, Nepal. After beginning his design career in New Delhi, he moved to New York to finish his studies at Parsons The New School for Design. Upon graduating, Gurung spent two years with Cynthia Rowley’s design and production teams. Soon after, he was appointed design director at the iconic Bill Blass, a post he held for five years until launching his own collection, PRABAL GURUNG.

A focus on quality and innovation has placed Gurung at the forefront of American fashion with designs worn by leading ladies including First Lady Michelle Obama and The Duchess of Cambridge, to name a few. Notable accolades include the 2010 Ecco Domani Fashion Fund Award, 2010 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund runner up, USA Network’s Character Approved Award recipient in 2011, named goodwill ambassador of Maiti Nepal, a finalist of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award, recipient of the 2011 CFDA Swarovski Award for Womenswear and was honored in 2015 with the inaugural Creativity Award from The Drawing Center. Gurung was the official 2013 designer collaborator for Target, launched a product collaboration with MAC Cosmetics in 2014, collaborated on a collection with TOMS to support Shikshya Foundation Nepal in 2016, launched a capsule with Lane Bryant in February 2017 and was named the Global Creative Director of Tasaki in September 2017. In November 2019, Gurung was named the first ever Honorary Designer of the National Portrait Gallery Celebration at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, and published his first coffee table book.

Prabal Gurung chooses to manufacture in New York city to uphold standards of quality while supporting the local community. With over 80% of the collection made in New York, Prabal Gurung is committed to sustaining domestic employment and income. The brand recognizes the importance of domestic production, particularly in respect to the quality of the finished product and helps to bring this awareness to an international audience.

What inspired you all to create this company?
Prabal Gurung launched his eponymous collection in February 2009 with a philosophy encompassing modern luxury, indelible style and an astute sense of glamour.

What distinguishes your company and product in the market?
Prabal Gurung chooses to manufacture in New York city to uphold standards of quality while supporting the local community. With over 80% of the collection made in New York, Prabal Gurung is committed to sustaining domestic employment and income. The brand recognizes the importance of domestic production, particularly in respect to the quality of the finished product, and helps to bring this awareness to an international audience.

Elle is a Filipino American born in California. Elle graduated from The University of California, Santa Cruz with a degree in Marine Biology and fulfilled her dreams working on the Big Island of Hawaii in Education and Conservation in Marine Mammals. In 2014, Elle’s path changed, she moved to Los Angeles to help care for her family. In 2017, after four years of sewing and upcycling clothes, Elle started Elle Rali and her journey in Fashion Design.

What inspired you all to create this company?
What inspired me to start this company is the love I have for our environment and the possibility that I can make a difference in one of the biggest polluting industries in the world, Fashion.With a degree in Marine Biology and working with marine mammals and ocean conservation, I realized how unconscious we were in our daily decisions in consumerism and how it affects our envirionment.My mother growing up used to sew a lot, and I used to reconstruct a lot of my clothes back then.About 7 years ago, my mother bought me a sewing machine and I learned how to make clothing from fabric we had around the house; curtains, bedsheets, unwanted clothing.I feel in love with the idea of repurposing and knowing that it was possible to make items look fresh and cool with what we already had. I continued to push the boundaries in fashion with recreating style that was multifunctional, gender neutral, and environmentally responsible.ELLERALI is a fashion brand with a mission to Recreate The Created by upcycling fabric to reduce textile waste.Clothes last a life time, why not continue to use it.Upcycling never looked so fly.

What distinguishes your company and product in the market?
What distinguishes ELLERALI products in the market right now is that it’s unique, fresh, one solution to our environmental crisis, and it looks good!DIY, handmade items, upcycling.. are all terms that if you google it, looks crafty.ELLERALI is here to show you that upcycling never looked so fly, and that fashion can be sustainable, repurposed, multi-funtional, zero waste, gender neutral, and fun all together! By recreating what our earth already has, we are able to reduce the amount of resources and energy to create a new item by scratch.It takes 700 gallons of water to produce 1 cotton t-shirt.Let’s save that water, and recreate from what we already have.

What distinguishes ELLERALI as a company are our values in recreating from what we already have.When I decided to start a fashion brand, I wanted to make sure my vision and passion for our environment was the forefront of it all.I wanted to create with a purpose.I always say that sustainability is my passion and fashion is the medium I decided to use.Being a Marine Biologist first, is what has grounded me to those values.

Ray Li and Mark Zheng are the partners behind Sene. Ray hails from NYC and previously ran global rebrands for tech and CPG companies. Mark hails from Michigan and previously built valuation models for healthcare companies.

What inspired you all to create this company?
If Theory and a custom tailor had a baby, you would have Sene. The origin of the company began with the difficulty of finding well designed quality pieces that fit well. As Asian American males, we found that many of the brands that we loved for their design were simply too big in their cuts. This is the result of the industry standard that the ideal cut of clothing is made for a six foot tall caucasian male.

The idea was not to just focus on dress shirts and wool suits which were traditionally custom-made in the apparel industry. We wanted to bring custom-tailoring to everyday clothing to follow the cultural shift towards casual workwear.

In addition, the shopping experience for custom-tailored clothing was difficult. Who has time to go get their measurements done? We created the SmartFit Quiz: a short quiz that extrapolates your measurements based on a series of qualitative questions.

No more ill-fitting clothing. No more low-quality pieces. No more difficulty in shopping. That’s Sene.

What distinguishes your company and product in the market?

There are numerous factors that separate our company from the market:

Brand aesthetic is number one. With a focus on quality Japanese materials, our design is centered around minimalism and functionality.

Our product is sourced from materials that provide functionality to the consumer. Flexible and stretchy, the fabrics all move with you to fit your lifestyle on the go.

The cherry on top of all the design and functional product is that it is custom-made from scratch for you. With the ease of the SmartFit Quiz, consumers receive an incredible fitting piece made uniquely for them.

On the supply chain side, our turnaround time is one of the best from production through delivery: 3 weeks. In addition, we have a 60 Day Fit Guarantee that covers alterations, remakes, exchanges, and returns! This allows consumers to feel totally confident and risk-free about the custom process.

Robert Sha is the founder of Capsule®, a lifestyle brand focused on elevating the design of products we use every day. His distinct design approach to traditional leathercraft has added a refreshing perspective to an otherwise conventional industry. Prior to Capsule, he was a strategic management consultant for companies including Apple and Walmart. Born to immigrant parents, Robert is a second-generation entrepreneur and lives in Los Angeles, CA with his wife and two kids.

What inspired you all to create this company?
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a fanatic about my personal carry items. So much so that over the years I’ve amassed an unusually large collection of wallets and bags – each holding potential, but ultimately failing to satisfy my needs.

Unable to find what I was looking for, I started crafting my own solutions for personal use. It was through my own heuristic experimentation that I finally started to encounter designs that satiated me. Over time, friends and colleagues became curious with my prototypes, inquiring where they might be able to pick one up for themselves. It was only after our first successful crowdfunding effort where we gained 2,400+ customers and pre-sold 3,200 wallets in under 30 days that I realized my point of view could resonate with a larger audience.

I started Capsule to challenge the design of products we use everyday. We launched with our signature Minimalist™ wallet with this simple guiding principle and have grown to become a discerning brand of high-quality carry essentials.

What distinguishes your company and product in the market?

At Capsule, we care deeply about the everyday carry experience. Few match our rigor for merging forward-thinking functionality with the rich tradition of leather-crafting.

We take a zero-based design approach to blend unique innovations with time-tested luxury craftsmanship for the perfect complement of utility and style. Though our original ideas have generated a horde of imitators, none have been able to replicate the sophistication or quality of our designs. If we can’t introduce a new and fresh perspective on a tired design, we won’t.

Our flagship product, the Minimalist™, was awarded dual US patents for both utility and design for its CashStrap™ feature.

And finally as a point of pride, we manage to do all of this at a notably accessible price point.

Born in New York and raised in New Jersey, Ryan is a 24 year old Chinese American entrepreneur. His parents immigrated from Malaysia in their late teens and started a family in America. Ryan graduated from Florida State University in 2017 and loves nothing more than solving big problems in the world.

What inspired you all to create this company?
650+ million Asians worldwide can’t fully enjoy a drink because of “Asian glow” (red face, hot, and nauseous). We’re helping people enjoy life – first dates, weddings, you name it – more.

What distinguishes your company and product in the market?
The first patch developed to help people enjoy their drinks in a scientifically sound and healthy manner. Our vitamins & antioxidants help break down alcohol’s byproducts that cause the flush.

Ryan is Cofounder and CEO at Rooted. Prior to that he was an investment banker turned product leader, developing joyful technology to help people date, watch films, and listen to music at companies like Sony Music and Samsung. The only 30 under 30 he’ll get anytime soon is on a boneless wings deal at Popeyes. His parents still wonder why he left a cushy job to sell plants.

Kay is the Creative Director and Cofounder at Rooted NYC. Prior to that he was an art director at some of the world’s most influential ad agencies such as droga5, 72andSunny, and Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. He’s worked on everything from Samsung to Pizza Hut and everything in-between. When he is not working, he is usually outdoors either climbing or surfing. To this day, his parents still don’t know what he does for a living.

What inspired you all to create this company?
We believe a connection to nature makes you healthier and happier. We’re building the garden center of the future so that plants can be affordable, accessible, and enjoyable for all.

What distinguishes your company and product in the market?
We’re a technology platform that connects wholesale garden centers to consumers, which doesn’t exist. Others selling plants are traditional DTC (The Sill) or big-box distributors (Home Depot).

Sarah Paiji Yoo is a serial retail entrepreneur and C-level executive passionate about building meaningful and innovative consumer brands. Most recently a Partner at LAUNCH, she launched and operated several consumer brands including M.Gemi, Rockets of Awesome and Follain. She was previously co-founder and CEO of Snapette, which was sold to leading e-commerce platform Pricegrabber in 2013. Sarah attended Harvard College and Harvard Business school, and has contributed to The Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, Forbes, Time, InStyle and Glamour.

What inspired you all to create this company?

When Sarah became a new mom, she was horrified to learn how many microplastics were in the water she was using to make baby formula. It was then that she decided to cut back on her own plastic consumption, but realized that she just didn’t have any choice as a consumer. So many of our everyday products such as window cleaner, toothpaste and laundry detergent, all come packaged in just one way – single-use plastic. So she founded Blueland the first D2C brand that’s re-imagining a range of everyday products without any wasteful single-use plastic packaging and transforming traditional products into innovative formats that are more efficient and more effective.  Starting with cleaning products – items traditionally sold in disposable plastic bottles, we can eliminate over 100 billion single-use plastic bottles in the US alone because our cleaners live in 100% reusable bottles. And to make the biggest impact possible we’ve focused on making it easy for people to make the right choice with products that are effective, money-saving and convenient.

What distinguishes your company and product in the market? 

There is nothing on the market that checks all the boxes of being effective, non-toxic, affordable, convenient and free of single-use plastic. To date, most consumers have assumed (and rightly so) that eco-friendly products translates to an experience that means more work, more money for something that doesn’t work. We’ve flipped all these assumptions on their head.

Our cleaning sprays (multi-surface, glass / mirror, and bathroom cleaner) are sold in beautiful, reusable Forever Bottles and nickel-sized cleaning tablets in paper, compostable wrappers as part of an easy-to-use refill system. Our first-of-its-kind tablet cleaners are also:

• 300x lighter, 200x smaller, and 30x cheaper to ship than traditional cleaners while still outperforming leading comparable brands as tested by an independent third party.
• Proprietary formulations, with 12 patents pending, and developed entirely in-house in our own lab in Montana.
• The first and only cleaning spray to receive a Platinum rating across both bottle and formulation from Cradle to Cradle, the world’s most comprehensive product assessment program . We’re proud to be bringing this level of innovation to a category that has been selling conventional liquid, often toxic, cleaning products in disposable plastic packaging for almost 80 years.

Stephen Chen is the founder and CEO of Scanwell Health. With over 20 years of experience in diagnostics, Stephen’s current focus is making healthcare more accessible through smartphone-enabled, at-home testing. Stephen also founded Petnostics, which offers at-home urine test products for pets, and pitched it on Shark Tank, receiving a deal from Kevin O’Leary and Lori Grenier. Stephen attended the University of Michigan and Harvard Business School. He currently resides in Orange County with his wife and son.

What inspired you all to create this company?
Founded by Stephen Chen, Scanwell was created with the belief that everyone should have access to quality, proactive healthcare. By creating smartphone-enabled, cost effective diagnostics, we’re able to deliver on our vision of making at-home testing available to millions of people and changing the way we diagnose and treat infections and monitor chronic diseases. Most importantly, we feel that there is a huge opportunity for smartphone technology to transform health care in rural and developing areas in the U.S. and internationally, where infrastructure for care is limited. The company is working to further advance its technology to address major public health issues like malaria and other infectious diseases.

What distinguishes your company and product in the market?
Our flagship product is the first and only FDA cleared over-the-counter urine testing app and test kit for urinary tract infections (UTIs). We have a number of additional diagnostic tests in the pipeline, ranging from strep throat to blood tests for monitoring chronic disease. Scanwell tests are more convenient and cost effective than traditional diagnostics; smartphone-enabled testing allows results to be delivered immediately, and eliminates the need for additional hardware.

Tanya Zhang was an art director in advertising for brands like H&M, Nissan, and McDonald’s. She became the first brand hire at a tech startup before consulting for financial services at EY. Wesley Kang was an analyst at Citi and conducted financial analyses for commercial and corporate lending. He then became a financial analyst at e-commerce startup Vroom. In 2018, they both founded Nimble Made to strive for size inclusion and AAPI representation in fashion.

What inspired you all to create this company?
I remember my immigrant father saying, ‘American dress shirts don’t fit me.” My Asian friends had the same issue of where the industry “slim fit” was still too large so I created an actually slim fit.

What distinguishes your company and product in the market?
We have unique, actually-slim sizes for our dress shirts with a trimmed shirt & sleeve length, chest & back/shoulder. As Asian-American founders, our products are inspired by our Asian culture.”

Founders names: Kevin and Terrence Kim. Two Korean-American brother’s born and raised in the U.S. and have been living in Asia for the past 10 years. We do not have a fashion education (degrees in Finance and English Rhetoric), but have been so inspired by our heritage after coming to Korea that spawned the idea for a Korean inspired lifestyle brand. We strive to spread cultural awareness of both our Korean and American identities through product and media contents.

What inspired you all to create this company?
To discover more about our heritage and re-interpret and share both traditional and modern Korean cultural elements with a global audience through product and media.

What distinguishes your company and product in the market?
We believe we are the leading fashion and lifestyle brand globally that draws influences from different elements of Korean culture. We are based in Seoul, but our brand is carried in over 25 cities.

Founder of the venerable fashion and lifestyle blog BagSnob in 2005, Tina is an avant-garde, early adopter of professional blogging whose expressive narratives and provocative musings have charmed millions. Considered an architect in the establishment of influencer marketing, Tina helped define the art of content creation, organic messaging and pioneered the business of brand partnerships. Her genuine voice and world-class know-how are idolized. Her breadth of beauty and skincare knowledge and her ability to put luxury in the scope of all walks has secured her rank and solidified her sway as a mega influencer in the beauty, fashion, travel and lifestyle arena. With over 1.5 million engaged followers across multiple social channels, Tina effortlessly drives awareness and conversion. Her pervasive influence is coveted by the design elite and her keen eye for curating the best of the best has earned BagSnob iconic status in the world of luxury. Tina’s content includes lifestyle, travel, beauty, and trend forecasting. She has worked as a brand ambassador, consultant, designer, and stylist, collaborating with luxury fashion and beauty brands. She lives in Dallas with her husband and son.

What inspired you all to create this company?
Fifteen years ago, I started Bagsnob, a blog about handbags that enabled a global conversation about health and wellness, beauty, and loving the skin you’re in.

My family raised me with the belief that feeding beauty from within gave you good skin. Everything we ate had a purpose. We fed our skin from the inside out. The importance of one’s outward appearance had little to do with vanity and everything to do with pride and self-love. I understood the importance of clean, healthy skin, and that true beauty emanates from within.

I’m obsessed with skincare. I’ve been an ambassador for some of the world’s most luxurious skincare brands. Testing and reviewing products became a central feature on the blog. For years I was dedicated to a complicated 13-step routine, and over time it became too much. I needed a safe and more sustainable solution. Coincidently, we were all saying this. After a year of working with the best medical grade lab in Italy, I developed U Beauty, high-performance skincare, simplified.

What distinguishes your company and product in the market?
Founded on the belief that simplicity is the height of sophistication, U Beauty mindfully creates elegant formulas that deliver transformative results. U Beauty’s Resurfacing Compound is engineered to visibly resurface, refine, hydrate, brighten and tighten the skin’s appearance without irritation. Featuring a patent-pending SIREN Capsule Technology, U Beauty delivers key actives to damaged areas of skin without affecting healthy skin. When healthy skin cells can maintain their natural integrity side effects like peeling, redness, and sensitivity are avoided. Smoother, brighter, and revitalized skin begin to emerge within only 3-6 days. Pores diminish, skin brightens as dark spots, fine lines, and wrinkles fade. A CLEAN, CRUELTY-FREE, Non—GMO, VEGAN formula – safe for use on all skin types and even around the eyes.

The U Beauty SIREN capsule features a patent-pending process of encapsulation. SIREN capsules are skin-like molecules suspended in a nourishing formula base. Once inside the skin matrix, SIRENS lure damage-causing free radicals away from healthy skin cells like a magnet. Preferring the SIREN’s penetrable exterior, the free radicals attack, piercing the SIREN membrane to trigger the release of U Beauty’s proprietary complex. The complex neutralizes the free radicals, stops the spread of damage, while simultaneously optimizing skin’s own collagen, elastin, and hyaluronic acids. By keeping key actives localized to damaged areas and away from healthy skin, we accomplish quicker results and avoid irritation.