Company Founder to Recieve Award from President Obama

77 Pieces™ set to change the way the world shops for clothes

Wellington – 14 October 2011 – Joe Teran will receive a Presidential early career award at the White House from President Obama on Friday 14 October. The award is the latest accolade in his stellar career and comes while 77 Pieces, a company he founded with Academy Award winner Sebastian Marino, is developing a unique, patent pending technology that will revolutionize how clothes are sold – both online and in stores.

77 Pieces launches officially in Q1 2012. The service will be free to end-users.

“This award is even more special to me at this juncture of my career as Sebastian and I are building 77 Pieces with the aim of addressing the fundamental limitations of fashion commerce,” said Joe Teran, a world expert in simulating the behavior of materials such as fabrics, hailed as one of the ‘20 Best Brains Under 40 in Science’ by Discover magazine in 2008. “Imagine how much fun it will be to shop for clothes with impunity, because you know they will be the right fit,” he added.

“77 Pieces can show customers how clothes will drape and fit their body photo-realistically, without needing to try them on. Customers can do this by either using a web-browser or a smart phone at home or in a store, potentially even before the clothes are manufactured,” said CEO Sebastian Marino, 2002 recipient of an Academy Award (Science & Technology) for inventing software that simulates the motion of clothing, musculoskeletal structures, skin and hair.

“We are marrying high-end feature film production and cutting-edge academic research,” said Teran. “Fashion e-commerce lacks an integral emotional connection today, people don’t get to see how they would look in the clothes displayed in an online catalogue. That’s where we come in; we use a combination of cutting-edge art and science to breathe new life into the shopping experience, whether it’s online or in-store. For the customer it becomes one of ease and enjoyment without any guess work.”

Marino said: “New Zealand was a natural choice as our headquarters due to the world-class creative talent and technical know-how available here. It is exciting growing our international business from our offices here. An inspiring aspect of what we’re doing is that it’s equally, if not more beneficial to smaller labels as it is for large brands. We hear boutique designers all the time talking about breaking into new markets. If a brand wants to sell in New York, for instance, we can put them there tomorrow. Not just on a dead two-dimensional web page, we can communicate a meaningful brand experience with the ability for customers to try things on and get excited about buying. There are no borders in the solutions we have developed for the industry.

“Conservative estimates have the size of the US apparel market alone at US$193 billion in 2010, with an estimated 8 to 9 percent of those transactions from online sales. It is frequently speculated that the online shopping share could rise to as high as 30 percent in the coming years. However, the reality is that this is an incredibly difficult problem, both technologically as well as artistically. No amount of wishful thinking or Photoshop is going to align fashion with the 21st century online marketplace. 77 Pieces has the expertise and track record of innovation that it’ll take to revolutionize the industry and bridge the technology gap.”

About the Presidential early career awards: The Presidential early career awards embody the high priority the Obama Administration places on producing outstanding scientists and engineers to advance the Nation’s goals, tackle grand challenges, and contribute to the American economy. Sixteen Federal departments and agencies join together annually to nominate the most meritorious scientists and engineers whose early accomplishments show the greatest promise for assuring America’s preeminence in science and engineering and contributing to the awarding agencies' missions.

Read more at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/09/26/president-obama-honors-outstanding-early-career-scientists

About 77 Pieces™: Founded in May 2010, 77 Pieces is a world’s first innovative technology company marrying high-end feature film production and cutting-edge academic research. The company has developed a patent pending technology that enables fashion customers to see how garments will fit photo-realistically without needing to try them on, either using a web-browser or a smart phone – at home or in a store – even before the clothes are manufactured. 77 Pieces leverages technology to put customers into the universe of brand’s creative direction, delivering a new contextual user/shopping/play/engagement experience. The company’s software solutions run on a broad spectrum of web-browsers, smart-phones, tablet computers (iPads) as well as Mac OSX.

The founders of 77 Pieces are Sebastian Marino, Academy Award winning visual effects artist/researcher, and Joseph Teran, Presidential Award winning professor of mathematics at UCLA. 77 Pieces currently has development offices in Wellington and Auckland, New Zealand and Los Angeles, USA. The company has raised NZ$750k in seed capital from angel investors. http://www.77-Pieces.com

About clothing: Garments for our ‘Ichabod’ shoot provided kindly by Starfish – Sustainable Fashion From New Zealand.

ENDS

© Scoop Media