LOUVE
Crafted by hand.
Designed for
endless summer.
Luxury resortwear, hand-knotted by Colombian artisans. Designed and shipped from Amsterdam.
LOUVE
Luxury resortwear, hand-knotted by Colombian artisans. Designed and shipped from Amsterdam.
01 The proposition
LOUVE makes resortwear that is knotted by hand, one piece at a time, in a workshop in Colombia. Every garment is signed by the woman who made it. We sell it at European luxury prices, direct, in runs small enough to sell out.
The craft is the product, not the story around it. Macramé cannot be industrialised: a bikini is six to ten hours of a single artisan’s work, and that is exactly why it holds a price that printed swimwear cannot.
We are raising €40,000 to fund twelve months: the launch collection and its first two reorders, the photography and the shop, and the media budget that turns a workshop into a brand. The model reaches contribution breakeven inside year one.
There is no hockey stick here. Year one is designed to break even on 250 orders and prove three numbers: landed cost, return rate, and cost per acquired customer. Everything after year one depends on those three.
03 Brand story
To be the house that made hand-knotting a luxury category, and to keep the workshop that does it running year round.
Timeless handcrafted resortwear: exceptional make, restrained design, named authorship.
Not swimwear. The five weeks a year our customer plans her whole year around.
Colombian technique passed down through generations, cut and edited for a European wardrobe.
04 What LOUVE stands for
Every garment knotted by hand. Hours per piece published on the product page.
Runs of 100 or fewer. Numbered. Never restocked in the same colourway.
Undyed and natural tones as the spine. Colour arrives as a guest, never as the collection.
Pay per piece disclosed alongside hours. Volume committed to the workshop in writing, off-season included.
Two collections a year. No mid-season drops, no discounting calendar.
Colombian artistry, European editing, one name on the label of each piece.
05 Market and customer
She is 28 to 45, professional or self-employed, with a household income that puts a €320 swimsuit inside an ordinary decision. She buys few things and researches them. She values what an object took to make over what it signals, and she books Ibiza in February.
She is not looking for swimwear. She is assembling a suitcase for a trip she has been planning since winter, and she will pay a premium for the piece in it that nobody else on the beach is wearing.
Swimwear bought online is returned at roughly a third. A published fit guide with real body measurements, a hygiene liner, and an exchange flow offered before a refund are not nice-to-haves. They are the difference between a 61% contribution margin and a 45% one, and they are budgeted in this raise.
— She looks like this
Professionals, founders and senior employees. Middle to high income.
Travel is the budget line she protects. The wardrobe follows the destination.
Few purchases, heavily researched, long ownership. Craft is a reason to buy, not a footnote.
— Where she goes
Ibiza · Saint-Tropez · Mykonos · Marbella · Capri · Amalfi Coast · Formentera · Cape Town · Dubai · Maldives · Tulum
The last four matter disproportionately: they are the November-to-February destinations, and they are how a summer brand survives its own winter.
06 The competitive set
Two of the strongest brands in this category are already Colombian, already global, and already own the words “Colombian swimwear”. Pretending otherwise is the fastest way to lose a room. LOUVE does not beat them on print, on scale or on distribution. It beats them on a technique they do not use and a claim they do not make.
Hand-knotted structure, sold at European luxury prices, with the maker named on the piece. Nobody in the list below does all three.
| Brand | Origin | Position | Bikini | Where LOUVE differs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Agua Bendita | Colombia | Print-led, hand-embellished, global wholesale | €180–260 | They own print. We own knotted structure. |
| Maaji | Colombia | Reversible, playful, mid-premium at volume | €90–150 | Machine production at scale against runs of 100. |
| Eres | France | Technical luxury, fabric engineering | €300–450 | No maker, no craft story, no origin. |
| Zimmermann | Australia | Resort inside a ready-to-wear house | €250–400 | Resort is one of their lines. It is our whole thesis. |
| Mara Hoffman | United States | Sustainability as brand policy | €200–300 | Policy at the company level, not authorship at the piece. |
07 The launch collection
The launch collection is deliberately too small to fail expensively. It is a test of the price ladder, the fit, and the return rate, sized so that a wrong answer costs €5,750 rather than a year.
Four bikini styles at €180. Premium set €210. Classic swimsuit €250. Ámbar signature swimsuit €320, made to measure.
Four designs. The highest-margin piece in the collection and the one that carries average order value.
Kaftans, linen sets, beach bags, hats and a bridal resort capsule. Accessories exist to raise attach rate, not to chase a second customer.
08 What a piece costs
One hundred units of launch inventory cost €5,750, or €57.50 a piece on average, landed in Amsterdam. Against an average retail of €251, that is a blended markup of 4.4×, and it is what makes both direct sale and, later, wholesale possible.
It is also the number that is easiest to get wrong. If true landed cost comes back at €90 instead of €57.50, markup falls to 2.8× and the wholesale phase stops existing. Nothing else in this deck survives that.
No capital is committed until the workshop returns a written quote per style, landed Rotterdam, with EU import duty and freight inside it, and states hours per piece and pay per piece. That quote replaces the table below, which is a reconstruction that reconciles to the stated €5,750 total.
| Piece | Units | Retail | Landed cost | Cost total | Retail total | Markup |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BikiniFour styles | 40 | €180 | €45 | €1,800 | €7,200 | 4.0× |
| Premium set | 10 | €210 | €55 | €550 | €2,100 | 3.8× |
| Classic swimsuit | 20 | €250 | €62 | €1,240 | €5,000 | 4.0× |
| Ámbar signatureMade to measure | 10 | €320 | €86 | €860 | €3,200 | 3.7× |
| Beach dress | 20 | €380 | €65 | €1,300 | €7,600 | 5.8× |
| Launch inventory | 100 | €251 avg | €57.50 avg | €5,750 | €25,100 | 4.4× |
A bikini at €45 landed leaves roughly €30 for artisan labour and workshop margin after cord, freight and duty. Across six to ten hours of knotting, that hourly figure is the single most important line LOUVE will ever publish, and publishing it is what makes the fair-make claim real rather than decorative.
09 Unit economics
250 orders at a €240 average order value generate €60,000 of demand. After returns, that is €40,800 of net revenue, and it is the only revenue number in this deck we treat as real.
| Line | Amount | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Gross demand | €60,000 | 250 orders × €240 average order value |
| Returns | (€19,200) | 32% of gross, the category norm for online swimwear |
| Net revenue | €40,800 | What actually lands |
| Cost of goods | (€9,343) | 22.9% of net retail, from the cost sheet |
| Shipping and packaging out | (€4,250) | 250 orders × €17 · box, dust bag, cards, carrier |
| Reverse logistics | (€960) | 80 returned orders × €12 handling |
| Payment fees | (€1,500) | 2.5% of gross, charged before the refund |
| Gross contribution | €24,747 | 61% of net revenue · €99 per order |
Return rate is held flat at 32% across all three years. A published fit guide and an exchange-before-refund flow should bring it under 28% by year three. That upside is real and it is not in any number here.
10 The ask
The earlier plan asked for €14–16,000. That number covers the launch but not the year: it funds one hundred units against a plan that needs to sell roughly two and a half times that, and it leaves nothing for the media that makes the selling happen.
€40,000 funds the launch collection and its first two reorders, the brand and the shop, the photography the category demands, and a media budget large enough to be measured. It carries the business to contribution breakeven without a second raise.
€24,747 of gross contribution against €24,000 of fixed cost. A surplus of €747. Year one is not designed to make money. It is designed to end with three proven numbers and a customer list.
Use of funds · €40,000
| Line | Amount | What it buys |
|---|---|---|
| Paid media and creator seeding | €12,000 | The only line that produces orders. Held to a €48 cost per order. |
| Brand identity and shop | €4,000 | Wordmark, packaging system, Shopify build and fit guide. |
| Photography | €3,500 | Two shoots: the collection, and the workshop. |
| Packaging tooling and first run | €2,000 | Magnetic box, dust bag, artisan card, fragrance card. |
| Legal, trademark, tools, accounting | €2,500 | EUIPO class 25 clearance and filing before anything is printed. |
| Total fixed cost, year one | €24,000 | Against €24,747 of contribution |
11 Three years
Growth comes from three levers, in this order: more orders, a higher attach rate as accessories arrive, and pop-up revenue that does not pay a customer-acquisition cost. Average order value rises from €240 to €290 because a customer buys a dress with her swimsuit, not because prices go up.
Every figure below is net of a 32% return rate. The equivalent gross-demand figures are €60K, €146K and €290K.
Net revenue · € thousands
| Year | Orders | Average order | Gross demand | Net revenue | What changes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year one | 250 | €240 | €60,000 | €40,800 | Online only. Prove cost, fit and acquisition. |
| Year two | 550 | €265 | €145,750 | €99,110 | Second collection. Three pop-ups. Accessories attach. |
| Year three | 1,000 | €290 | €290,000 | €197,200 | Selective wholesale. Winter destinations. Bridal capsule. |
12 Route to market
No phase begins until the one before it has produced its number. Wholesale in particular is a decision, not a milestone: at a 4.4× blended markup it works, and at 2.8× it does not, so the cost sheet decides whether phase three ever opens.
Shopify, shipping Europe-wide. Everything is measured here before anything else starts.
Year 1Amsterdam, Ibiza, Marbella. Physical selling at zero acquisition cost, and the fit data we cannot get online.
Year 2Selected boutiques, hotel boutiques and resorts. Opens only if landed cost holds.
Year 3Saint-Tropez, Mykonos, Cape Town, Dubai. Winter destinations do double duty.
Years 4–5Seasonality · share of net revenue by month
61% of net revenue lands between May and September. The bridal resort capsule and the Southern Hemisphere and Gulf destinations exist to make the other seven months pay the workshop.
13 The customer we keep
Acquisition is expensive and seasonal. Retention is neither. The customer relationship, not the first sale, is what turns a €48 cost per order into a business, and everything below is built to make the second order cost nothing.
The workshop, the hours, the knots. Editorial travel and styling around it, never instead of it.
Pieces placed with a small number of travel and fashion creators who actually go. Measured on cost per order, not reach.
Welcome sequence, abandoned cart, early access before public launch, size and destination on record. The one asset a competitor cannot buy.
Magnetic box, cotton dust bag, a card with the maker’s name and hours, a fragrance card. It is the only marketing spend that arrives after the sale.
14 Risks
| Risk | Why it matters | Mitigation |
|---|---|---|
| Landed cost is wrong | At €90 instead of €57.50 the markup falls to 2.8× and wholesale closes. | Written quote per style, landed Rotterdam, duty and freight inside, before any capital is committed. |
| Returns above 32% | Every point of return rate costs roughly €250 of year-one contribution. | Fit guide with real measurements, hygiene liner, exchange offered before refund, made to measure on the signature piece. |
| The name is not clear | A refused mark after launch means rebranding a brand whose only asset is its name. | EUIPO class 25 clearance and filing before the first printed piece. Budgeted in the raise. |
| Seasonality | 61% of revenue in five months starves the workshop for seven. | Bridal resort capsule for Q1, winter destinations, and a written off-season volume commitment. |
| One workshop | A single supplier is a single point of failure for the entire product. | A second workshop qualified by month six, without destabilising the first. |
| Slow start | A first collection that does not sell can take the year with it. | Launch inventory is 100 units and €5,750. The first collection is a test, sized so a wrong answer is survivable. |
15 The people
In a brand whose entire thesis is authenticity, who is behind it is not the last slide. Nobody funds a workshop relationship they cannot see, and no buyer places an order with a house that will not say who does the buying.
Founder and background, and specifically what makes this category credible for her. How the workshop was found and how long that relationship has run. Who does the buying and the merchandising. Who runs the shop day to day. Any advisor or operator already committed.
Name, background, and the one previous thing that makes this believable.
Where it is, how many artisans, how the relationship began, what has been agreed in writing.
Who ships, who answers the customer, who handles returns.
16 Before this deck ships
Per style, landed Rotterdam, duty and freight inside, with hours and pay per piece stated. Everything downstream is arithmetic on this number.
The collection and the workshop, shot properly. A house that sells handwork cannot pitch with imagery of a garment that does not exist yet.
EUIPO class 25, before a single box is printed. Cheap now, ruinous later.
Section 15, filled in. Without it this reads as a plan, not as a company.
Real body measurements against real garment measurements. It is the cheapest margin in the entire model.