Slay the winter dragon in a custom made coat
Your Personal Fashion Supply Chain
At Balodana, we are disrupting fast fashion tactics and ethos. We’re here to spoil you rotten with our approach to how clothing gets made on-demand and precisely to your body, using technology and a growing network of skilled independent designers and makers. You’ll love our high-quality clothing, unique personalized styles, and customer care team who can help you configure exactly the look you want.
What We Believe
Make women happy. (And also, save the planet.)
Overproduction hurts both planet and people.
Producing a single perfectly-fitting garment on-demand makes zero waste and fewer returns.
How We Got Here
Founder Dana Todd was frustrated with the fashion shopping experience in America, so she ultimately decided to make her own personalized supply chain and share it with the world.
Before Balodana, she noticed that mass produced garments didn’t fit well or were made poorly, and she got tired of returning clothes from online shopping. She found this to be a common complaint among women of ALL ages and body types.
As she researched “Why don’t my clothes fit?”, she realized that the garment manufacturing system itself is the issue: it’s churning out billions of garments via low-paid workforces with random sizing procedures, at volumes that exceed actual demand so that 84% of garments end up in landfills or incinerators!
Then, Dana found a designer in Europe who manufactured original designs on a made-to-measure basis at a price competitive to most US department store clothing. She was hooked! But she didn’t love the customer experience on most of those other marketplace sites and custom-clothing brands. She decided to build the perfect custom clothing journey:
Multiple brands with unique styles
A secure place to store body measurements and preferences, and update them as needed
High touch customer service and access to discuss with the designers directly
Guaranteed happiness in case there’s a problem with the garment
And we’re onto something: 1 in 5 shoppers say they have bought custom made clothes before, and nearly half say they are ready to give it a try. So, catch the trend! Let us help you “bring back the dressmaker” and reap the benefits of having unique items made just for you.
Meet Our Team
Dana Todd
Founder & CEO
Dana spent 20+ years as a marketing executive and Internet technology entrepreneur, and Balodana is her third company.
She is a “non-coding tech founder” who holds a patent for SEO software, and she once rang the bell at NASDAQ to kick off Cyber Monday. Dana proudly rocked brightly punk hair (purple, cherry red, leopard) even as a corporate Chief Marketing Officer, so it was a natural extension of her passions to launch a fashion tech startup.
Dana's favorite styles are either classic or edgy, and she loves to mix up thrifted treasures with high-end or custom made pieces. She wishes she could live in boots all year round.
Dana says: “Building Balodana has been an act of faith for me and our team, and it's been rewarding to build it and to meet people from around the world. Everywhere I go, women tell me they are ready to adopt a different way to shop for personalized style and unique fashions that fit.”
Find Dana ranting about feminist issues on Twitter and Medium.
Nisha Katti
CO-FOUNDER
Nisha is a multi-talented marketer and graphic designer from Georgia. She’s always been a huge fashion nerd. In middle school, she had outfits from Teen Vogue collaged all over her bathroom for daily style inspo (yes, pre-#OOTD).
However, she never knew fashion could be a viable career path for an Asian-American woman until she was exposed to sustainable and ethical fashion in college.
You’ll most often catch Nisha in vibrant colors paired with large jewelry. Most of what she owns is secondhand from her mother or thrifted and she’s currently working on becoming a better mender to increase the lifespan of her clothes.
Nisha says: “I'm so excited about the opportunity to fight against fast fashion, especially at a time when women are owning their impact on the environment and supporting companies who do the same. We all need to find our place in protecting our environment and mine is in the world of fashion.”
Tony Chen
Chief Technology Officer
Tony Chen has more than 20 years of software development experience, from traditional and web software, to advanced app development (mobile & web services) for eCommerce, customer service/call center and supply chain/warehouse industry.
Most recently he has been working as a lead software architect for fintech and healthcare app development projects, and has embraced fashion tech as a new frontier to tackle.
Tony has extensive experience with design and implementation of innovative ecommerce sites using the latest advanced technologies.
Over the last several years, he has helped several startup companies to build their MVP apps (healthcare and fintech) to raise close to $100 million funding from venture capital.
Advisory Board
Tom Ramunno
advisor
Co-founder and Senior Managing Partner at Pleneri. Tom is a seasoned Fortune 50 corporate and venture management executive
His career spans the world’s top consultancies (KPMG, Deloitte and Gartner) and he has held senior positions at Citicorp and Johnson & Johnson.
With 40+ years of experience, he assists organizations in addressing fundamental performance objectives: growth & innovation, business value, operating efficiency, and operational sustainability.
His venture Pleneri is a global digital platform company focused on the apparel industry encompassing three ecosystems: Design, Production and Customer.