Reflecting on the past to understand the present
2020 was a wild year for everyone, really caught most of us pants down causing a negative impact on businesses and lives were lost. For Klurdy Studios, things got real and as the founder, I had to make abrupt changes.
On June 4th 2020, I had to “close” the studio and make everyone (clients, colleagues, friends, mentors & relatives) believe that Klurdy is no more. Only my immediate family members knew what was going on. This decision was inspired by Michael Jordan’s documentary. There are three reasons behind this decision:
- Prior to the pandemic, Klurdy had a roster of bad clients. Those who are quick to ask for deliverables but fail to pay up and when you confront them, they play the victim and get pissed off.
- Contractors were failing.
- Haters were busy doing the thing they do best, talk trash and feel insecure.
I needed to cut off people, without using too much energy, so Klurdy went on stealth mode! The only thing left to do was to focus on our innovation, the 3D experience for fashion, even though fashion designers in Kenya rejected it because they couldn’t understand it. That’s when things got interesting.
Recruiting bandits online
I needed a fresh set of faces. The pandemic made working from home cool, so I decided to get people from Europe through the UK company. Elisa Barbosa, a fashion designer from Portugal, had reached out a few weeks before going stealth, she was willing to help. I met two folks in chat rooms, Dr Alexander Mikhalev — mad Russian scientist based in UK (that’s how he introduced himself and he has never failed) and Zinaida Korvrova, a 3D artist who has 20+ yrs experience as an art teacher, and she‘s Russian too. I opened up my “closed” studio to these folks and they came through. They are the real MVPs.
The Studio Joins Snapchat
In July, the studio got accepted into Snap’s ML Residency program, giving us access to their engineers. Our proposal was to make a custom Lens for trying on clothes virtually on their app, a feature we’ve been trying to launch in our product. As a data scientist, I learnt a lot about deploying ML on edge devices while working in a really fast-paced environment. Elisa provided the outfit sketches, Zina converted the sketches to 3D assets using ZBrush, and Alex was a great advisor. In a month’s time, we had a proof of concept but it wasn’t pretty. It was the first virtual try-on experience for full body apparel made available at snap, who later on made their own official lens a few months later. We continued working on the experience throughout the year and became an Official Lens Creator @ Snap. We also had 20+ fashion designers/brands from Europe who wanted to collaborate with us.
The New Year
2021 started with a lot of positivity, people were hopeful. In Feb, Redis Labs Inc offered us an opportunity to present one of our VR projects at RedisConf21.
In March, things started moving. We got accepted into Niantic’s early developer program giving us access to their tech, The Kenya Meteorological Department approved our request to experiment with AI in monitoring climate-change and we got verified to join Microsoft Partner Program as a Publisher.
In April, we got accepted into NVIDIA’s Inception Program, a global accelerator program for AI startups. Fritz Labs Inc accepted our request to curate tutorials on how to create ML and AR projects, now we’re a published studio.
The Present
Word got out of what we’re up to, Intel and Amazon reached out and came on-board to fill our technical debt, helping us move the ball forward. It’s a year now since we went on stealth mode and we’ve collaborated with 10+ amazing companies from Europe and US. Snap recently launched a new version (lens studio 4.0) and guess what, it has virtual try-on features for full-body fashion baked in. Witnessing them incorporating such technologies validates our product and a blessing in disguise.
Currently, we’re dealing with bugs, fix a major on-boarding issue and file for IP. This is the first time ever Klurdy has AI services running in production and I‘m eager to see what’s next.
Lessons
Some of these lessons are incorporated into the studio’s culture.
- June 4th will always be a special day, as we’ll be celebrating our own independence; being free from public opinions, ratchet clients in Kenya and unprofessional contractors. Coincidentally, June 4th is National Cognac Day and you know what that means; paaarty!
- Rocky & Creed movies made me adopt a new mindset in the last year by teaching me the concept of having heart. Therefore, all new employees will have to watch these movies as part of their on-boarding process.
- The pandemic gave me clarity: If I die, I wanna go down doing things I love and living life on my own terms. I made up my mind, Klurdy Studios is bae, till death do us part.
- Had to upgrade our branding (still a WIP), competition out there is stiff yo!
- Russians are really fearless individuals and they helped me understand what it means to know no fear. Plus their work ethic is just superb #goals.
- Our tech is way too hot to use it for fashion alone, we’ll be venturing into interior design and the music industry in the next year (Shout out to Nonini for giving the studio an opportunity to collaborate).
- It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows, faced some racism once in a while. As an entrepreneur, I’ve learned being indifferent is everything.
- Seeing haters get cocky in the beginning, then get mortified later on when they learn about our small success was bliss.
- Using prescriptive analytics to innovate on business models gets rid of those long and pointless iterations during product design. Simply put, one can engineer success.
If you’re one of those clients we had to run away from, don’t worry. It is what it is!
Happy Independence Day to my team mates
Brian Wachanga aka Washakes, Black Founder
