Nowadays, it’s impossible to imagine a New York Fashion Week season without Fashion GPS. Its groundbreaking way to manage events from RSVPs to barcoded invites and digital check-ins has changed the fashion show system, vastly improving the experience at every level. Eddie Mullon founded Fashion GPS in 2006. The CEO, who is a London native, worked in tech, fashion and music before turning his attention to pioneering new  technologies with the goal of creating “digital solutions to connect the global fashion industry.”

Here, Mullon (@eddiemullon) discusses his fashion break (fixing a computer virus at KCD), his take on the fashion crowd, and his future vision for Fashion GPS.

CFDA.com:  What triggered your decision to create and launch Fashion GPS?
Eddie Mullon: “I wasn’t at all familiar with fashion shows or designers, and had no connection to the industry at all at first. At the time, I had a company called Laptop M.D. that serviced computers. If a company had a virus, a broken hard drive, needed email accounts setup, or Linux configured, I was there to help. I’ve been doing software development and engineering since I was about 12 years old and was making video games back in the 80s, so I’ve been around computers for most of my life.
In 2002, I would distribute flyers around the neighborhood on Sunday afternoons and in a turn of fate, one of the publicists from KCD, the global public relations agency, took down my number and gave me a call. She had a virus on her computer and her IT team couldn’t resolve the problem. I’d fixed it within 10 minutes. Next thing I knew, I was fixing everyone’s machines at KCD’s offices in New York. After a while, they said, “Look, we have this wardrobe and it’s full of samples. Can you build a system to manage it and track it?” I ended up building a system that would later become Fashion GPS, and it took me a couple of weeks. It allowed them to print barcodes, scan them, and organize their samples. The rest is history.”

CFDA.com: Along the way, what have been the highlights and the low points?
E.M.: “I’ve been working in the fashion industry for over 14 years now and indeed I’ve seen and experienced the highs and lows. My most memorable high point would have to be when the team and I were working frantically all night prior to the initial launch of Fashion GPS with Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week at Lincoln Center in September 2010. Our developer was coding 24-7 and I was configuring all the hardware at the tents in the run-up to the event. With only 30 minutes before the doors opened on the first day, we finalized the set up. When the guests poured into the venue and scanned their barcodes for the first time, Fashion GPS worked like a charm and overall was a huge success.
Thankfully, there have been more highs than lows but we’ve had our fair share of difficulties to overcome. Notably, a lower point came early on in our rapid growth stage when cash flow was becoming harder and harder to maintain, a common growing pain for a technology startup like us. As is typical with entrepreneurs, I’d always believed that I could do it all on my own. It was an increasingly difficult and emotional time for me, but fortunately we were able to close our series A investment soon after and we entered our next stage of growth with the infrastructure and support we needed to continue to innovate and develop.”

CFDA.com: How do you find working with fashion people?
E.M.: “I’ve made some great friends over the years and met some of the most interesting and progressive forces in the world.  Fashion people are creative and what I do is very logical and technical so it is often considered boring! Getting the industry on board with Fashion GPS has taken some time but in general, I work very well with fashion people.”

CFDA.com: “You were a partner at CFDA’s inaugural New York Fashion Week: Men’s. How was that experience and what was your favorite show?
E.M.: “For us, being a part of the inaugural NYFW: Men’s was a truly fantastic experience. The production was impeccable and the execution was really very smooth. It was a pleasure to be the CFDA’s technology partner for the first season and we look forward to the next.”

CFDA.com: How do you see Fashion GPS evolve five years from now?
E.M.: “Over the last 13 years, I have gained an insider’s view into the needs of the agencies and designers. Ultimately the reason we are in business is to provide technology to the designer as a business partner so the designers can focus on the creative aspects of their operations. We provide the intelligence and data with this in mind. Fashion GPS will continue to evolve the platform to allow them to transform their launch to the market using forecasting and data from the industry and consumers.
With digital becoming a huge part of the fashion industry, we still need the basic process from PLM (product lifecycle management) to ERP (enterprise resource planning).  However, all of these things need to be in line with a platform that allows designers to harness data from social and industry so that we can provide a truly integrated system from concept to consumer.”