Feature on Newbridge House
Irish Beauty Queen Makes Data Fashionable!
Emma Waldron is no stranger to the spotlight. The former Miss Ireland has been showcasing some of our favourite brands and presenting television shows for the likes of Larry King ever since she won her title in 2010.
But now she’s hoping to turn that spotlight around with a new app — waldron.app — that helps women and men find the fashion inspirations that are right for them, while also actively promoting the spaces in which female creatives can flourish.
Which is also why the dynamic young entrepreneur has made her home in New York for the last four years. “I can’t believe it’s been four years already,” she enthuses on a call to Go Wild magazine.
“It was a strategic decision to move here; when you’re starting a business, you just have to go where you need to be. But I love it so much and for now, it’s home.” ...
“In some ways, it feels like I’ve been here longer, but then I go home and it’s like I just left.”
This is not Emma’s first entrepreneurial outing. Several years ago, after finding herself inundated with products that were not really her style, she launched an app that set out to match brands with the influencers that are right for them. Waldron.app is really an extension of that, in that it seeks to match the
fashion-conscious with the fashion content that is right for them.
“It’s essentially a single platform for shoppable personalised fashion content,” she says, giving the elevator speech before launching into an energetic explanation of how it works. Think Netflix, but for all the fashion-oriented articles, ideas and inspirations that work for you.
“I’ve been playing with the beta version. Every time you swipe this way or that, it’s like you’re training a little computer that’s learning who you are and then serving you content that you want to see. There is so much content out there now and it’s so hard to sift through it and find what’s right for you. I basically want to give people their time back.”
But it’s more than that. Emma also wants to use it as a platform that focuses on female creations, whether it’s fashion or television, film, written media, whatever.
“I want a platform where you can go to support other female content creators, watch movies and series that have female leads and producers, and just by virtue of you being on the platform, you’re helping to empower these women and helping to create more content that is female-centric. That’s the dream!”
For Emma, landing in the States came as something of a shock. “I grew up being taught that if you work hard, you can do anything and then I came here and realised that that wasn’t necessarily the case.
The stats are crazy! So, even though female companies create 60% more value for investors, they still only get 2% of venture capital funding.”
You can still hear the shock in her voice. But the woman who considers any challenge as an opportunity to show people what she’s made of, was not going to be deterred.
Suffice to say that the modelturned-entrepreneur, who recently delivered a lecture to NYU PH.D students on the application of data science in fashion, wrapped up her latest funding round with some of the biggest VC hitters on American shores, including Burch Creative Capital and Caivis Investments, cofounded by former Apple CMO John Sculley and David Steinberg.
Waldron.app will launch on IOS this April, and will also include content from Ireland, including Emma’s favourite designer, Alison Conneely of the Ardbear Peninsula in Galway, of whom she can’t get enough. “Her stuff is amazing. I’m obsessed with it,” she says.
It’s clear that no matter how much Emma has flourished in the fertile grounds of New York, a part of her will always be at home in Ireland.
One can’t escape the feeling that she’s only really just getting started Stateside though...
Photo credits: Don Nixon and Andre Grey