What is Vonga?
Vonga is a connected apparel company with a mission is to create a global community through experiences unlocked through premium clothing.
The Clothes
It starts with the clothing. Vonga is focused on clothing you can wear in your everyday life. Whether you’re relaxing at home, heading to the gym or just enjoying a night out with friends, our goal here is to provide you with clothing with timeless style and unmatched comfort. Every garment will be crafted with care and made with high quality materials, meaning that it can help you look and feel good for years to come.
The Tech
Each item we sell comes with an NFC chip embedded in the fabric, making it more than just a garment, but a ticket to earn, save and gain access to exclusive events, open only to the Vonga community. Simply scan the tag with your smart phone to claim the on-chain version of your item to unlock the benefits of the community.
The Benefits
Vonga community members will gain access to a variety of benefits via their digital items. At first, these will focus more on discounts for travel, the ability to access exclusive events hosted by Vonga and the ability to earn $APE through our partnership with Thank Ape (more to come on that in the coming weeks). Over time, we will continue to expand these benefits (with help from our community) so that the deeper you engage with the Vonga brand and community, the more you will have the opportunity to earn.
How did Vonga Start?
It Started with Chicken Wings
This whole thing started at dinner. It’s just another summer night. We had snuck out for a date (not anything fancy, just a local place down the road because we both wanted wings). At the time, she was in training to be a yoga instructor, and was super into it. We were chatting both about how I was winding down my latest venture and what her favorite yoga brands were and why. And that’s where the seed for Vonga was planted: What if there’s a brand that’s all about nailing that feel-good vibe, not just in yoga but life in general? I didn’t know what I wanted to do with that thought at first, so I reached out to James Costa at Clubhouse Archives. He said we could definitely do something when I was ready. So I packed the idea away and to let it cook some more. About 3 months later, I got the signal to take it out of the oven.
ApeFest 2023: The Inspiration I Didn’t Know I Needed
I wasn’t at ApeFest (wish I was), but a lot of my friends were. I credit one in particular though with the spark that ignited my journey building Vonga. Chris Jourdan hosts a daily show on X. I’ve been a long time listener and contributor and generally spend at least an hour most weekdays with the Coffee With Captain community. Upon returning from ApeFest in Hong Kong, he couldn’t stop raving about the experience. He talked about the instant connection with people from around the globe, all thanks to this shared passion. And it hits me – connections with others is the key, and a lot of people are missing out on creating these connecting because, well, not everyone’s into the same niche stuff, right?
That’s when it clicked. What if the everyday stuff we wear could be that common ground, like a silent high-five that says, “Yeah, I get you”? That’s the magic I wanted Vonga to bottle up – make that exclusive community feeling a lot more, well, inclusive. So I called James again and we got to work.
What this Grant Means to Me
Honestly, when I got the word that Vonga was a BBAC grant recipient, excitement didn’t begin to describe the feeling. I had bootstrapped companies before and was ready to do it again…but bootstrapping is hard, and kind of sucks. Every dollar that goes into the business is a dollar you are taking away from yourself and your family. It makes you question every decision, probably too much in my case, which leads to being afraid to take the swings you need to take in order to be successful. The BBAC grant is like putting runners in scoring position and coach letting me swing for the fences to drive them in.
Intentions for Funding
The 20K $APE from ThankApe will let us do 3 things:
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Expedite Inventory: While we’ll continue to rely on a modified pre-order model to ensure we only make clothing our community wants to buy, the funding will allow us to shorten the time between design and delivery, getting your clothing to you that much quicker.
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Expand Collection: We initially launched with only 2 items. This was partly due to wanting to spend the summer testing promotion and operations, but also partly due to costs. This funding will allow us to begin to more rapidly scale our collections and bring new design concepts to our community, helping you find garments you love.
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Promotion: While we are born in Web3, our vision is much larger. The goal for Vonga is to be worn by millions, not thousands. However, it takes a lot of effort to break through the noise in the fashion industry with such large, entrenched players. While this grant doesn’t solve for all of this, it does allow us to start to make some noise outside of our corner of the internet, and bring the benefits of building on-chain to a lot more people.
Contributions to the Ecosystem
For our initial contributions to the $APE ecosystem, we’ll be doing the following:
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Accepting $APE as payment for all Vonga orders.
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Providing a discount for anyone holding $APE (made possible by TokenProof)
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Building our on-chain platform on ApeChain (through our partners at IYK)
In the coming months, you will hear more about our ApeCoin integrations, including rewarding our community in ApeCoin as they begin to engage with our platform and events.
With Vonga, we want to bring the benefits of community we have all found in Web3 to a broader audience, by allowing people the chance to participate simply by wearing our clothes. Through this, we aim to create remarkable experiences and meaningful connections, all while helping you look and feel good.