Athena Studio is leveraging AI to improve how fashion brands develop products. The Luxembourg-based company is now one of six startups selected for the 2025 New York Fashion Tech Lab focused on women-led, B2B, emerging technology startups.
Luxinnovation
Imagine a virtual assistant for creative fashion design teams who improves efficiency, accelerates time-to-market and reduces costs and lead times. Athena Studio’s mission is to help creative teams in the fashion industry focus on product over process, and they are building athena, an AI fashion product development assistant.
The founder and CEO Heidi van Dyck shares that her passion for fashion and data, technology skills, and her experience at McKinsey & Company, where she worked with major fashion brands, led her on a unique business path to solve challenges fashion brands face.
“In my interactions with fashion brands, I realised the whole process of product development—so not just design but the entire testing and fabric selection and collection development-- even in multibillion dollar companies is still very old school in the sense that the data is just in Excel sheets and there is no visibility whatsoever. This is very inefficient, and brands are missing out on opportunities to both improve cost efficiency and sustainability impact,” she explains.
After quitting her job, she created Athena Studio to make the product development process in fashion more data-driven while respecting the creativity at the core of it.
Ms van Dyck points out two major challenges she encountered in the early days. First, the long sales processes for big companies could be quite challenging from a commercial standpoint. “They could easily go up to two years, which is really long," she notes. Second, finding tech experts interested in a fashion startup is not always easy. "Initially, it took us a very long time to convince good tech talents to join a fashion related startup, because it is not the industry that a lot of talents in the tech world would think of as a next challenge." Recently, Arnaud Hillen, a former Software Engineer at Google, joined as co-founder. He brings deep technical expertise in machine learning and AI, an important addition Ms van Dyck believes will help in the growth of the company.
Despite the early difficulties, she highlights the need for founders to be mentally strong and rooted in their vision. “As a founder, you have to prove yourself and the company that you're building, and this is sometimes a very slow process.” Looking back, she recalls a key moment in every startup’s journey: “When you send your first invoice! It is a sign of real progress.”
Athena Studio is now working to expand in the US market, which is large and important for fashion. Being selected for the New York Fashion Tech Lab is a major achievement as the programme will further connect them with leading US fashion brands. "We are one of the six startups selected by New York Fashion Tech Lab. And that is fantastic."
Starting a company in Luxembourg was also helpful. The company was part of the Fit 4 Start acceleration programme, which provided important support and connections. "Fit 4 Start was a no brainer," Heidi says. "It was an entry ticket, not only within the programme, but also outside. So it opens doors."
As Athena Studio grows, Ms van Dyck shares that having a diverse team and different viewpoints are important for new ideas and success. "My cofounder and I make up a diverse co-founding team. We have different styles and personalities, and I think that in itself, is already a plus for the people that we attract, which will by default be a mix of profiles."
For new entrepreneurs in tech and fashion, she offers practical advice. “Understand the technology you work with, learn about AI, play with all these tools but also make sure that you don't just blindly play with it.” She recommends having technical skills on the founding team in addition to other core attributes. "If you want to start a tech startup, at least one of the two founders should be technical. I really believe that. You don't have to be able to code, but at least you need to be able to understand the key drivers of certain decisions or have high-level knowledge on how the technology would be built.”
Inspired by female leaders like Sarah Blakely, inventor of shapewear brand Spanx, and Melanie Perkins, CEO of Canva, Ms van Dyck encourages women founders to confidently pursue their goals. "We should see and use any perceived disadvantages to our advantage and not be limited or too focused on this," she states, urging women to "just do it" if they have a passion.
In the short term, the goal of Athena Studio is to be a leader when it comes to using technology to improve fashion product development. “AI is moving fast, and we are building specialised AI agents for the fashion industry. I think in the next three to five years a lot of old software systems that were used by big fashion companies are going to be replaced by newer, and much better software solutions that are more intuitive and conversational. Our goal is to be a part of this revolution,” she concludes.
