Hey, fashion tech crew 😊 Felipe here. Today’s story has been living rent free in my head for a while...

The founder

Ondrej Bagin has been playing with faces since 2002. His first hit was a virtual makeup artist that landed deals with Rossmann and L’Oréal. In 2008 he and programmer Peter Soós launched Happy Hair, where anyone could try celebrity hairstyles on their own photo. It hit around 2 million users.

They reinvested that money and, in 2014, started building a plug and play try-on any online store could use. First it was Virtooal. Today it’s Auglio. In 2016 Vít Endler, former head of Mall, came in as investor and co-owner because, in his words, it solves one of e-commerce’s big problems: returns.

The market

Buying glasses or lipstick online has always been a gamble. AR try-on fixes that, and it’s growing fast: eyewear try-on was about $1.15B in 2024, heading to $4.5B by 2030, and makeup try-on about $6.3B, heading to $18.3B (Grand View Research).

The startup

Shoppers turn on the camera and see frames, lenses or makeup on their own face, live.

Under the hood it’s seriously hard tech: real time face tracking, computer vision, auto pupillary distance for 1:1 scale, face shape detection, and even “Invisible Glasses”, which erases the glasses you’re wearing and puts the virtual ones on. Brands only need a 2D photo, and there are 500,000+ products already virtualized.

Setup is a snippet of code, because Ondrej would rather have thousands of customers than twenty big ones. In 2022 they were on 6,000+ stores across five continents, with revenue doubling three years straight. Clients include Avon, L’Oréal, YSL and Japanese eyewear chain Zoff, which saw 4x more conversions.

My take

When I dove into fashion tech, Auglio was one of my biggest inspirations. They’re not from the Valley, London or Berlin. They’re from Komárno, a small town on the Danube. And they picked one of the hardest products to get right: biometrics, computer vision, a virtual frame sitting on a real nose on any webcam, in any light. They pulled it off with real mastery.

Where you start doesn’t decide how far you go.

Get to know them

Website: auglio.com · LinkedIn · YouTube

Building something cool in fashion tech? Drop your pitch in the comments.

Hey, fashion tech crew 😊

I’m Felipe, and I’m a startup guy through and through.

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been curious and kinda obsessed with fixing everyday problems. The annoying part? Tech usually couldn’t keep up with the ideas in my head.

That itch ended up fueling my whole career.

Back in 2010, I started a digital marketing agency. Over the years we shipped 100+ e-commerce projects and helped a bunch of brands find their footing online.

It was an amazing school, but in 2019 I knew it was time for something new. I left the agency world and went all in on startups.

That’s how my fintech was born, and it took off fast. We got named a breakthrough startup and one of the top 10 fintechs in Brazil, worked with giants like Uber and iFood, and in under three years we got an acquisition offer. That was my first exit.

After the deal, I spent two years on an earnout, sticking around to hand off what I knew and help plug the company into the new group.

Along the way I started mentoring founders too. I’m a certified mentor with the Brazilian Startup Association, Techstars Startup Weekend and a few other programs.

Once the earnout wrapped, I spent some time in the US checking out incubators and hanging out with founders who’d had billion-dollar exits. Those conversations got me fired up to build something again.

Watching e-commerce explode, it was pretty clear online sales were about to pass physical stores. My partner and I spotted a huge pain point in fashion: brands with short product cycles, thin margins and brutal competition just can’t keep burning time and money to get their products online.

So we started Futuriza. We use AI to help fashion brands get killer product photos and videos, with plug-and-play modules for their online stores that boost engagement and conversion.

Now I’m kicking off a new chapter as editor of Fashion Tech Authority, the community for the people building the future of fashion.

Here you’ll meet the startups shaking up the industry, from the big names to the rising stars.

I’ll be sharing founder stories, behind-the-scenes looks at innovation and real cases of tech solving fashion’s oldest headaches.

Want your startup featured here?

Drop your pitch in the comments! Tell us who you are, what you’re building and what problem you’re solving. We’ll help get the word out.

Fashion is changing and you can feel it.

Not just in trends, but in the way people buy, choose, and connect with brands.

Post-pandemic, everything got faster, more digital… and a lot more intentional.

And even though the textile and apparel industry is huge (and honestly, a bit resistant), the shift is already happening.

FTA comes from this exact point.

From observing, questioning, and connecting what’s going on in the digital world with what still needs to happen inside fashion brands.

Here, we talk about what’s behind the scenes:

trends, supply chains, new ways of selling, startups doing things differently, and the tools reshaping the industry.

But not in a complicated way.

In a way that actually makes sense for those who are building, creating, and making decisions.

WHO IS IT FOR?

For those who love fashion but also think about it.

For those who want more than just aesthetics.

For those who understand that style and strategy can (and should) walk together.

FTA is where fashion meets technology 

but also where ideas connect.