Company

Name: Curio 

Location: Los Angeles, California

Founded: 2017

Founder(s): Lena Khouri and Christine Outram

Website: https://www.curioxo.com/ 

Social Media Following: 1,570 followers on Instagram, 70 followers on LinkedIn, 39 followers on Twitter, and 81 likes on Facebook

Industry – Fashion E-commerce

Size: $102.8B in 2018 (US) (Source: Statista)

Projections: $138.7B by 2022 (US) (Source: Statista)

Introduction

Curio, an LA-based startup founded in 2017 by Lena Khouri and Christine Outram, is aimed at providing a platform to boutiques and other small retailers to be discovered and sell their products online. A privately held company, Curio is targeted at bringing to customers a potential “154,000 quality boutiques in the U.S. with over 35 million untapped products in their inventory”. 

The Product

Curio is available as an app as well as a web platform. The app curates “high style clothing & gifts from local boutiques and delivers them to your door in under two hours.” Curio partners with local boutiques to help them sell their products – unique clothing and gifts – online. Targeted at “last-minute shoppers, travelers, and stylish people on-the-go”, the app aims to compete with the big names like Amazon by the way of community building, convenience for the customer, and curation of products.

They started their service from Los Angeles in May 2018 with 15 boutiques and will be expanding to New York and San Francisco in 2019. The company has a target of reaching 50 US cities in the next 5 years, including San Diego, Orange County, and Austin. The app allows users to lookup local boutiques like Galerie.LA and Reservoir and select the products they want. With the option of instant delivery – under two hours in some cases – the app is trying to incentivize customers to use its platforms.

One exciting feature of the product is the in-house stylist Audrey, a shop-by-chat service, that serves as a personal assistant for the shoppers. Other features also include in-store pickup in addition to home delivery. The products are targeted at both men and women and range largely from $50 to $200. 

Origin and Founding Team

Curio was started by Lena Khouri and Christine Outram. Khouri, a “marketing maven”, and Outram, a “tech guru”, met at an ad agency and bonded over their “shared passion to use business to make a positive impact in the world“. According to Khouri, Curio’s idea was born as a “last-minute shopping emergency”. She was flying out for a wedding the next day and had to buy a generic dress from a local mall because it was too late to shop online. On her way home, she stumbled upon something she liked. This led her to think that with technology, it should be easy for her to find a nearby boutique online and buy from there. This led to the start of Curio, a platform for boutiques in the city and with instant delivery as early as within two hours.

Khouri is an alumna of the California State University-Fullerton. She began her career with Creative Artists Agency in 2012 before moving to Deutsch in 2014.At Deutsch, she started the Deutsch Good initiative, a philanthropic venture. In 2017, she left Deutsch to start Curio, where she is currently heading business development, brand partnerships, and community building.
Outram is a technology graduate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Best known for her invention, an electric bike called the Copenhagen Wheel which was named by Time Magazine as the top invention of the year 2014, she started her career with Re:Imagine where she served as its Smart Cities Director. She went on to work with PurpleGas, Deutsch, DogVacay, Veritas Prep, and Everydae where she is its current COO. She co-founded Curio along with Khouri in a bid to further increase convenience for consumers through positive products.