Disruptive Startup: An Interview with Elinor Pitt and Will Verrill, Co-Founders of Stitched

After my meeting with Luciana Carvalho Se, which you can read here, she put me in touch with Elinor Pitt, who is a co-founder of Stitched, to discuss her new startup alongside her co-founder, Will Verrill. So I want to say a big thank you to Luciana for helping to organise this!

Stitched aims to make buying curtains & blinds easy. It has developed intuitive online 3D design tools so customers can see exactly what they’re buying and sourced 140+ feel good fabrics made from environmentally friendly materials. In the future, customers will be able to automatically measure their windows using their smart phone and see how the curtains look on their windows through augmented reality (AR). It was founded in 2017 in London.

Elinor Pitt started her career as an IT analyst, first at Lehman Brothers and then Nomura before undertaking a Graduate Diploma in Interior Design at KLC School of Design. Following this, she was a senior designer at KensingtonDesign.com for 5 years before diving into the AR world.

Will Verrill started his career as a lawyer at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer for 5 years before deciding to switch up his career. He pursued an MBA at London Business School and during his time here, he interned at Microsoft Ventures, Curve, Amazon. Towards the end of his MBA, he co-founded Stitched with Elinor.

I had an extremely interesting discussion with Elinor and Will on their company, their journey and the AR industry, which you can read below!

About Stitched

Could you tell us a bit about your company?

Elinor: We currently have a website that uses WebGL, through which customers can design and view curtains and blinds in 3D. In this way, they can get a realistic view of the curtains before they purchase them. We have 140+ fabrics procured locally that customers can choose from. We are building AI and AR applications to make what has traditionally been a difficult process simple. Our launch product provides a 3D shopping experience, a first for the UK soft furnishings industry.

Why are you targeting the curtains and blinds market and how big is the market?

Will: We chose curtains and blinds as purchasing curtains and blinds has long been a painful experience for customers. In addition, the market is a little bit fusty, dusty and ripe for a facelift.

Structurally there is an established local supply chain. Over ~65% of the £1.3bn market is made-to-measure, largely due to the UK’s wonderfully non-standard windows sizes. There is also an army of small and medium sized curtain, blind and soft furnishing manufacturers up and down the country with significant capacity and experienced people and all the products can be made locally so there are low logistical costs.

What are some technological challenges Stitched is facing?

Elinor: 3D and AR interfaces are more “expensive” in terms of data and processing power than a standard catalogue style e-commerce site (using our product builder is a little bit like streaming a YouTube video), therefore everything we build has to be streamlined and as efficient as possible. However, we are excited because the further technology develops, the more “real” we can make our products on the web.

Will: We are definitely on the leading edge of innovation, the 3D and AR space is set to explode particularly with developments in hardware and mobile infrastructure such as the rollout of 5G. The things we will be able to do will be mind-blowing!

Do you have any major competitors and how do you differentiate yourself?

Will: There are a few others out there similar to us in the home furniture space such as Tylko, a fantastic shelving company, but we are the UK’s first soft furnishings business selling in 3D, and probably the first curtains and blinds business in the world (this one is harder to check!).

Currently, you are part of the London Business School incubator programme. What are your next steps since your business is now starting up — are you looking for funding?

Elinor: We just applied for the Innovate UK grant for resources to develop our visualisation and measuring applications. Innovate UK is a fantastic support to UK start-ups and technology focused businesses. The grants they offer are focused on commercialising innovative technologies.

Will: Innovate UK funds more R+D style expenditure that investors might be less willing to fund. All applications receive detailed feedback from the assessors, which proves very useful. Currently in each round, they have about £16m to give away so there is good chunk of cash available for technology focused companies looking to do new and exciting things.

About Yourself

How did you both meet?

Elinor: We met very randomly via mutual friends and were lucky to cross paths at a time, which was great for both of us.

Will: I was finishing my MBA so I basically had time to get stuck in. We spent a lot of time developing the idea together and found we worked quite well together.

How did you immerse yourself into AR?

Elinor: After I left my job in interior and home design I went on a voyage of discovery into immersive technologies that would help customers develop a more meaningful connection with the products they were buying before they were made. I found the Eventbrite and Meetup networks very useful. Attending AR, VR, and immersive events helped me build out a great network in London and the US.

At first it was slightly nerve-wracking but within a month or two, I had a full calendar of events to meet other people excited by challenges similar to the one I wanted to solve.

About the AR industry

What are you views on the AR Industry, in particular depth sensing technology, which is crucial for a business such as yours?

Elinor: We are huge believers in AR, particularly depth sensing technology. Before launching the business we carried out a tech sprint looking at the power of AR and depth sensing — we concluded that the combination of these technologies would redefine the home furnishings industry. In the last year we have really seen the big tech companies and retailers really get behind AR. We are now witnessing an arms race between Tech Giants to produce the best devices (both mobile and wearable) and best SDKs, and hot competition amongst start-ups to apply these in new and exciting ways that are actually useful for users.

Will: Elly’s absolutely right. Just look at the explosion of innovative applications following the release of ARCore (Google) and ARKit (Apple). Watch this space, it’s a very exciting time to be working with 3D and AR technologies.

Thank you very much for your time Elinor and Will. It was great getting to know Stitched and your future ambitions! Readers, I would recommend you to follow Stitched for the latest news from them.

If you work in the AR / VR sector and are really excited about the development of this space, please get in touch by replying to this post, LinkedIn or Twitter!

By Abhilash Dubbaka

Abhilash Dubbaka is currently working in Investment Banking and an investor with a passion for the Technology sector. He has a particular interest in the AR and VR sectors. If you have any comments, please contact Abhilash through LinkedIn, Twitter or reply to this post.