Entrepreneur aims to help bridesmaids 'Clique in Style' for wedding pics
Courtesy / Hannah Marr
Hannah Marr, a senior software developer at L.L.Bean, is the founder of Clique in Style, which aims to help brides preview color and style combinations of their bridesmaids' attire, for photography purposes.
Here comes the bride, all dressed in white ... but what are her bridesmaids wearing?
An entrepreneur in Lisbon Falls with software design and wedding-planning experience aims to help brides preview color and style combinations of bridesmaids' attire using a web application she created. It's set for launch by early August.
Clique in Style, as the startup is called, is the brainchild of Hannah Marr, a 23-year-old senior software developer at L.L.Bean Inc. and a Husson University MBA alumna. She earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Berry College outside Rome, Ga.
She started her business to help brides preview style and color combination of bridesmaids' attire before the big day to ensure successful wedding photos.
Marr traces the idea to when she planned her own wedding in 2018 though it didn't formalize until the following year. That's when she helped her best friend, Grace, plan her own wedding. To help her friend visualize different outfit options for her bridesmaids, Marr used Photoshop to play around with different possibilities.
For those who know nothing about the software program or how to edit photos, Clique in Style is a program to do just that at the click of a button, allowing users to do side-by-side color and design comparisons before the big day.
"Clique in Style is preventative because no one wants a color-matching disaster on their wedding day," Marr says. "I know how important wedding photos were to me, and my hope is that I can help other people feel confident of theirs without having any special photoshopping skills."
To get her business off the ground, she's received funding from Maine Technology Institute, guidance from some of her former professors at Husson and guidance from her SCORE mentor, Heidi Hansen.
Marr also competed in the "Greenlight Maine Collegiate Challenge" and made it to the finals of the 2021 Big Gig Pitch competition, and participated in the Propeller program for female entrepreneurs run by the CEI Women's Business Center.
Marr estimates that her startup up costs will be around $26,000, and says she's worked with a handful of clients around the country to accomplish the vision before the software is complete.
She currently has a website for purposes of gathering email addresses of potential clients, so that when the web application launches in late July or early August, she will have users ready to use the service. She's putting a lot of hours into getting the business off the ground outside her job at L.L.Bean.
"I love working for Bean but I also love Clique in Style and think it can help many people planning weddings out there," she says.
Asked how busy she expects to be this year, she notes that the wedding industry is booked and booming now that things have opened up again and pandemic-related restrictions have dropped.
"I am hopeful that we will be able to get the word out there, but I'm focused primarily on creating a phenomenal user experience," she says. "I'm OK with being small at launch and the remainder of this year until we get the software just right," she says.
Asked whether she expects to be busy this year and next given all the weddings that were postponed because of the pandemic, Marr says she is playing things by ear, adding: "I'm OK with being small at launch and the remainder of the year until we get the software just right."
She also said that she'll start public user testing as soon as the software goes live by late July or early August, "then I'll do a big marketing push in early 2022 in order to grow and help as many people as possible."
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