Veronica Lieberman
Founder of Make it Hapin
Two years ago, when Veronica Lieberman was working for Stitch Fix in Austin, Texas, she decided to buy herself some of the clothes and home decor that she was seeing on Pinterest.
What she found was that translating the pictures into actual purchases wasn’t that easy.
“It takes a really long time, and you have to really know what you’re doing when you’re searching,” she said. “What I realized, if it’s hard for me — someone with a background in e-commerce and a fashion degree — it’s got to be really hard for people who don’t have that knowledge and also don’t have that time.”
The process gave Ms. Lieberman, 31, a business idea. She just needed someone with more tech knowledge to help her launch it.
In the summer of 2018, while living in Portland, Ore., she found that person — Andrea Tucker, a web developer with a background in software product management — and the two decided to make the idea come to life.
Things accelerated further this summer when their fledgling company, Make it Hapin, was accepted into the AlphaLab tech accelerator in East Liberty.
Ms. Lieberman, who graduated from Allegheny College and has friends and family in Pittsburgh, moved to
Upper Lawrenceville in September with her husband. Ms. Tucker, meanwhile, moved to San Diego.
The company works by allowing users to submit a photo of an outfit — something that someone is wearing on the street or a picture of a celebrity from a magazine or an online photo from a site like Pinterest or Instagram.
Within 48 hours, Make it Hapin will provide a lookbook with ideas to re-create the outfit, guaranteed to be in-stock in the user’s size.
The company makes money through commissions and is exploring subscription options and sales of trend data, said Ms. Lieberman.
The company relaunched in October, and on a recent weekday, Ms. Lieberman was busy responding to users in the AlphaLab offices — more than 180 outfit requests have come in since the relaunch.
“This new model is really taking off,” she said. “We’re really excited about it.”