Women Who Inspire Us
Internet

Olivia Ongpin

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Olivia Ongpin is the co-founder and owner of fabric8, an online boutique that features quality and one-of-a-kind items by independent designers.

Ongpin comes from a background in cultural studies and publishing. She attended Stanford University, where she majored in American studies. While there, she was music editor of Release, the university's entertainment magazine, as well as an avid San Francisco club-goer and fashion-culture magazine reader.

Directly after college, Ongpin helped start On the One Jazzmopolitan magazine, an independent San Francisco-based music magazine. As senior associate editor, then editor, of the quarterly publication, Ongpin expanded the magazine's content to include pieces about independent fashion and the newly evolving Internet.

A growing interest in the Internet prompted Ongpin to expand her publishing resume to include the World Wide Web. After completing a prototype fashion Website in October 1995, she and partner Antony Quintal conceived the idea for fabric8. They partnered up with several local artisans to produce a number of technology-based fashion Websites, each under the fabric8 domain.

The fabric8 site has since grown to feature the products of over 75 independent companies from 10 North American cities and also includes editorial pieces and new media art installations. The site has received numerous awards and accolades for its design, programming and content, and has been highlighted in nearly a dozen books about the World Wide Web.

Ongpin was recently chosen as one of the Top 25 Women On the Web for 2000 by San Francisco Women On the Web and serves as nominating chair in fashion for the Webby Awards.