Every item of clothing should have a digital life.
Fashion knows what you bought. It doesn’t know what you own.
A retailer sees its own receipts. A marketplace sees its own transactions. Nobody sees the whole picture — what’s actually in your closet, what you reach for, what you never wear, what goes with what. So the advice you get is drawn from what someone has to sell you, rather than from what you already have.
Styvica starts from the other side. It begins with what you own.
Starting with sneakers
The first question Styvica answers is a small one: which shoes I already own should I wear with this outfit?
Sneakers are a good place to begin. People own a lot of them, care about specific models, know roughly what they’re worth, and can tell immediately whether a recommendation is intelligent or not. If Styvica can’t earn trust here, it hasn’t earned the right to ask about the rest of your wardrobe.
Sneakers are the proving ground. The wardrobe is the opportunity.
Who’s building it
Garry Thaniel is the founder of Styvica. He has been collecting sneakers for more than twenty-five years, and has spent his career in the industry that sells them.
He is the former General Manager of US Fashion at eBay, and previously President and General Manager of eBay Canada and eBay’s Global General Manager of Sneakers and Streetwear, where he drove innovation, growth and unique consumer experiences. He has also served as Vice President of Corporate Partnerships at InStride, leading its retail and consumer goods sectors.
Before that he was CEO of ONA Designs International, a purveyor of fine bags and accessories for the photography, creative professional and travel markets, and held leadership roles at Sears Holdings Corporation, The Grayson Group, GS1, A.T. Kearney and Macy’s. His career began at Lord & Taylor, where he helped launch Lilly Pulitzer, Eileen Fisher, Tommy Bahama and others.
With more than twenty years as a business executive across retail and management consulting, his work has centred on balancing strategic planning with tactical execution.
He is an alumnus of Harvard Business School and Bucknell University, and remains an active member of the Bucknell University Trustee Board and the Harvard Business School Alumni Board of Directors.
The idea for Styvica came from a structural gap he kept running into: retailers and marketplaces see their own transactions, but nobody sees what a person actually owns.