If you’ve ever stood before a heaving wardrobe and declared, with total sincerity, that you have nothing to wear – Emma Watkinson and Charlotte Dare built a business for you.
And they arrived at it the credible way: by spending over a decade running the machine they’re now correcting. “Charlotte and I spent over a decade building an e-commerce platform for independent fashion, which scaled to over £500m in sales and over 2.5 million customers,” Emma tells The Modems, “and it was here that we saw the same problem again and again – there was so much choice online and it was getting increasingly overwhelming.”
Their answer is By The Cap: a seasonal wardrobe system of complete, ruthlessly edited looks, released as numbered drops – because, as Charlotte puts it, “instead of offering more choice, By The Cap offers better decisions”. The concept found its audience fast. Their debut drop, CAP 001, sold out “really quickly”, powered by a waitlist with built-in referral tech that let early sign-ups share for faster access – proof that the anti-scroll brand still knows exactly how the internet works.
That fluency runs deep. Emma, who started on the shopfloor in 2006, now runs her week like a systems engineer: a Friday meeting with herself, everything logged in Todoist, then handed to Claude to build her Google Calendar. “I’ve tried a whole bunch of other AI productivity hacks but this has had the biggest payoff so far,” she says. Charlotte’s stack is more analogue-adjacent – time-blocked calendars, Google Workspace and an Oura Ring she describes, perfectly, as “essentially a very chic way of being told to go to bed earlier.”
Refreshingly, their tech optimism has edges. Emma is passionate about AI tooling for founders but allergic to “the endless slop of AI generated content & fashion designed by algorithm” – while Charlotte’s plea is for less over-curation on social media, not more.
From the gadgets they can’t live without to the one fashion-tech startup idea they’d politely retire, scroll on to see how Emma and Charlotte are building fashion without the overwhelm…
The Download With… By The Cap Founders Emma & Charlotte:
The inspiration to start By The Cap…
EMMA: I started on the shopfloor in 2006 and helping women find great outfits has been the throughline throughout my career. Charlotte and I spent over a decade building an e-commerce platform for independent fashion, which scaled to over £500m in sales and over 2.5 million customers and it was here that we saw the same problem again and again – there was so much choice online and it was getting increasingly overwhelming.
CHARLOTTE: The idea for By The Cap came from feeling that online fashion had become saturated with choice, without necessarily making it any easier to find the pieces you really want to buy. We saw an opportunity to create something more considered and tightly curated – a destination that does the searching, filtering and editing for you.
The initial steps we took to bring the business idea to life…
CHARLOTTE:The first step was really defining the concept and making sure we were clear on what By The Cap was offering that didn’t already exist. From there, we started building CAP 001 – finding the right brands, choosing the pieces that worked together as a complete edit, and creating the identity and website around it.
A lot of the early stages were very hands-on. We were speaking directly to brands, working out stock, logistics, packaging and content while developing the customer experience at the same time. It was very much a case of building, testing and refining as we went.
How we’ve secured funding…
CHARLOTTE: We funded the business through a combination of our own money and support from friends and family, which gave us the foundation to get By the Cap off the ground. For us, it was about balancing investment in the product itself with everything that sits around it – the brands we wanted to buy into, the depth of stock, imagery, content, the website and the overall world of By the Cap. We had to be really selective and back the areas we felt would make the brand feel most distinctive from day one.
A turning point that significantly impacted the business was…
CHARLOTTE: Launching CAP 001 was probably the biggest turning point because it took the business from being an idea we had been working on to something real that customers could actually interact with.
Seeing people understand the concept was really validating. It gave us more confidence going into CAP 002 because we weren’t just building from our own assumptions anymore; we had real customer behaviour and feedback to learn from.
EMMA: When we started to see orders from customers in the first few days that we didn’t know personally. In the run up to launching CAP 001 (our first drop) we had been building up our waitlist and we had implemented tech to make it easy for those who signed up to share it with friends, to speed up their access. We had been quietly marketing for a few months so to get that validation on the strategy from day 1 was great and then we sold out of CAP 001 really quickly.
Emma Watkinson And Charlotte Dare, founders of By The Cap
A setback we experienced and the lessons we learned…
CHARLOTTE: I can definitely be a perfectionist. A good example was working on a private-label design earlier in my career, where I became very focused on getting every detail exactly right from the fabrication and fit to the trims and finishing. We kept refining it because I wanted the product to feel completely resolved, but in hindsight we probably pushed the process further than we needed to.
It taught me that in fashion, attention to detail is incredibly important, but so is knowing when to stop. You can keep tweaking something forever, and sometimes those final changes don’t actually make the product stronger. I’ve become much better at trusting my instinct, knowing which details will genuinely make a difference and being confident enough to sign something off and move on.
The way we stay motivated is…
CHARLOTTE: Having a co-founder you can just ‘get stuff done’ with is a massive plus. Emma and I have worked together for so many years that we have developed a short hand which makes communicating so easy.
I also think having the next CAP ahead of us helps. As soon as one launches, you’re already thinking about the next so there’s a constant sense of momentum.
The advice we’d give aspiring entrepreneurs is…
CHARLOTTE: Don’t wait until everything is perfect, because it never will be. At some point you have to put the idea into the world and let real customers tell you what works.
I also think you need to be really clear on why your business deserves to exist. There are so many brands and businesses competing for people’s attention now, so having a genuine point of difference is incredibly important.
And be prepared to do absolutely everything in the beginning. Starting a business is probably the quickest way to discover how many jobs you didn’t realise you were signing up for but that’s also how you learn the most.
The top three gadgets we can’t live without…
EMMA: iPhone, laptop & Meater
The first two are essential for work & play. My Meater is helping me on my quest to cook the perfect roast dinner.
CHARLOTTE: My iPhone, laptop and Oura Ring. The first two are obvious necessities; the Oura Ring is the slightly more glamorous one. I love having all the data on sleep, recovery and stress, although I’m not always thrilled with what it has to say. It’s essentially a very chic way of being told to go to bed earlier.
The platforms we use daily to enhance our productivity..
EMMA: Google workspace, Claude & Todoist. I log everything I need to do in todoist; I have projects for work, family, finance, health, “someday” (future ideas). I have a recurring meeting with myself every Friday where I map out everything I need to do the next week and give it all to Claude to update my google calendar, being clear on priorities, what time constraints I have, how much time each task might take, deadlines etc.
Google workspace allows me to collaborate with Charlotte and any other contributors we may be working with on creative briefs, financial modelling, project roadmaps. I have dabbled with Notion but I come back to here every time.
CHARLOTTE: Google Workspace is probably the main one. It’s not particularly exciting, but having email, documents, spreadsheets, calendar and everything else sitting within the same ecosystem makes running a small business so much easier.
A tech tip that has significantly improved life…
EMMA: Connecting Claude with my google calendar. So easy to do and I’ve tried a whole bunch of other AI productivity hacks but this has had the biggest payoff so far.
CHARLOTTE: I use my calendar as a to-do list. If it isn’t in there, there’s a very real chance it’s not happening. I time-block everything from meetings to buying to proper thinking time – slightly obsessive, but it stops the day disappearing into emails and admin.
We stay updated with the latest tech trends…
EMMA: I follow and look for social media accounts of established press, niche communities and individual creators across mostly consumer tech but I try to go as wide as possible. I’ve consciously culled a lot from my social media feed so that most of what’s there is something I can learn from.
I’m finding I’m enjoying more niche reporting across Substack & newsletters. I’m a fan of long form in general where you can go deeper into a subject.
CHARLOTTE: A mixture of reading, social media and just being curious. I probably absorb quite a lot without consciously thinking, “I’m researching technology.”
The emerging tech or we’re excited about…
EMMA: AI for so many things but there’s a lot I don’t like. I’m deeply passionate about entrepreneurship and building businesses and the tooling ecosystem is incredible for people who have an idea and want to bring it to life – I think that’s fantastic. What I don’t like is using it for content generation and generation of original ideas. The endless slop of AI generated content & fashion designed by algorithm is just taking all the fun out of it.
CHARLOTTE: AI, definitely. We’re still so early in understanding how much it could change the way small businesses operate. For me, the exciting part isn’t using AI to replace what people do; it’s using it to make a small team much more capable. Research, analysis and operational tasks can all happen so much faster, which gives founders more time to focus on the decisions that actually need human judgement.
One social media trend I wish people would stop doing…
EMMA: Nothing, I say crack on. Test new things, learn from them, change it up. Maybe we don’t need another virtual changing room startup though…
CHARLOTTE: Over-curating everything. I think social media is at its best when it feels spontaneous and gives you a genuine sense of the person or brand behind it. When every post is overly polished, overly planned or designed to look exactly like everyone else’s, it starts to lose its personality. I’d much rather see something that feels slightly imperfect but has a clear point of view.
The books, podcasts, and resources that have helped us…
EMMA: Business Books; Good to Great & The Hard Thing About Hard Things. Paul Graham’s essays. Podcasts: How I Built This, This American Life (not business related but the storytelling is phenomenal), Amy Odell’s Back Row (podcast and newsletter). Substacks: Cassandra Unchained (Remember Christian Bale’s character in The Big Short? This is the substack of the guy he portrayed.) Magasin – fantastic recommendations for hotels, restaurants, shopping guides.
CHARLOTTE: Books: Shoe Dog by Phil Knight and Let My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard. I’m obsessed with the How I Built This podcast (I listen every week religiously). I find founder stories much more useful than traditional business advice because you hear about the reality of building something. It’s also reassuring to hear how rarely businesses follow a completely linear path. There’s usually a lot of trial and error behind what eventually looks like an overnight success, and I think that’s particularly helpful to remember when you’re building something yourself.
Fashion tech we’re loving…
EMMA: Daydream – it’s an app that uses natural language search to surface product recommendations.
CHARLOTTE: The Ray-Ban Meta glasses really interest me. I like that the technology is built into something people already genuinely want to wear, rather than looking or feeling like a piece of tech.
Beauty tech we swear by…
EMMA: Incidecoder – it tells you the ingredients in a skincare/ beauty product, what ingredients do and highlights research into those ingredients.
CHARLOTTE: CurrentBody LED mask. I’m quite sceptical of beauty gadgets unless I feel like I’ll actually use them, but I love the idea of bringing technology that was traditionally only available in clinics into a really easy at-home format.
Byte-Sized Questions:
iOS or Android?
EMMA: iOS
CHARLOTTE: iOS
Earbuds or over-ear headphones?
EMMA: Over-ear headphones
CHARLOTTE: Earbuds
Text or voice notes?
EMMA: Voice notes
CHARLOTTE: Text
Phone Selfie or Proper Digi camera?
EMMA: Proper Digi camera
CHARLOTTE:Proper Digi camera
Dark mode or light mode?
EMMA: Dark mode
CHARLOTTE: Light mode
Filters or no filter?
EMMA: No filter
CHARLOTTE: No filter
Apple Pay or designer wallet?
EMMA: Designer wallet
CHARLOTTE: Apple Pay
Netflix marathon or TikTok scroll?
EMMA: Netflix marathon
CHARLOTTE: Netflix marathon
E-book or Audiobook?
EMMA: Neither! Hard copy book
CHARLOTTE: Kindle for life!
Spotify playlists or YouTube deep dives?
EMMA: Spotify playlists
CHARLOTTE: YouTube deep dives
Desktop setup or laptop on-the-go?
EMMA: Laptop on-the-go
CHARLOTTE: Laptop on-the-go
Most used emoji?
EMMA: 🚀
CHARLOTTE: 🔥
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