A fitting room is an awkward place to put a theory about the future. It has a curtain, imperfect lighting, and a person deciding whether trousers behave as promised. Yet this is where Dedy Shwartzenberg's latest business story has taken him. Edikted, the fashion brand he co-founded after leaving Adika, began online and opened its first permanent shop in New York's Soho in 2023. The customers wanted to feel the clothes. The internet had supplied the introduction; somebody still had to try on the outfit.
For a founder associated with fast-moving digital fashion, the return to shops has a pleasingly old-fashioned quality. A purchase can begin with a video and end with a hanger. Shwartzenberg has spent years working across that distance, first in Israel, then with a brand based in Los Angeles. His career offers a useful correction to the idea that knowing how people shop means knowing which screen they use. Sometimes it means noticing when they want to leave the screen behind.
The analyst in the family photograph
Fashion was already part of his family before it became his occupation. His grandmother, Shoshana Ben-Zur, designed clothes for Israeli performers and public figures, including Ofra Haza and Yardena Arazi. A 2013 family photograph puts Shwartzenberg beside her and his mother, Edna. The generational difference is visible in the business, too: Ben-Zur built her reputation through clothes, clients, and shows; her grandson was building an online shop.
That year, Adika was selling some of Ben-Zur's older pieces in its Exclusive collection. He was considering whether her name would help sell them to customers who did not necessarily know her work. Affection and merchandising occupied the same conversation. He also wanted to move further into production and expand the available size range. His admiration for his grandmother's talent was explicit, even as he described himself as no great fashion expert.
The photograph makes the usual founder origin story rather less tidy. There is a finance career here, certainly, but also a family trade. Starting an internet business could simultaneously be a departure and a return. A spreadsheet and a sewing pattern can belong to the same family album.
Two chairs, one decision
Shwartzenberg was born in Ramat Hasharon and studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, earning degrees in business and economics, then business and finance. His professional route included Elbit Systems, the Sphera hedge fund, and a hedge fund he established called Tulip. In 2011, he co-founded Adika with Adi Ronen. By the end of that year, he had left the capital markets to concentrate on the business.
He recalled a revealing change in his morning routine: his attention had shifted from a stock investment worth millions of shekels to the delivery of a relatively inexpensive parcel to Dimona. The scale had shrunk; the interest had grown. That is an unusually concrete account of changing careers. It has a destination, a customer, and a package that either arrives or fails to arrive. The glamorous part of fashion could wait for the courier.
The pop-up lesson came early
The physical shop was already in his repertoire at Adika. In May 2015, the Israeli Marketing Association selected him as its marketer of the month for a pop-up store initiative. The association described temporary shops that brought an online brand into direct contact with its customers and helped turn shopping into an event.
Customers could encounter the stock in person while the company kept the occasion alive on social media. The association connected the initiative to Adika's sale to Golf, reported at 40 million shekels. It also described a repeat-customer rate of 75 percent and 25,000 daily visitors to the website at the time. Those are historical figures for Adika, rather than measurements of Edikted.
There is a practical elegance to a pop-up. It asks the retailer to meet its audience without pretending a temporary encounter is permanent. For Shwartzenberg, the experiment became part of a longer pattern: digital attention could bring people through a real door, and the experience inside could produce more attention online.
A pair of trousers, 600 orders
Another lesson arrived through a TikTok video. In October 2019, creator Chelsea Martin wore Adika sweatpants with a pink dragon on the pockets. Within ten hours, the company sold 300 pairs to American customers. Another 300 orders followed the next day as the video reached 2.7 million views.
The company responded by building its TikTok operation, hiring two people to manage the account and influencer relationships. Shwartzenberg described the platform's close-up, informal videos as a place where viewers could see both the person dancing and what she wore. Product gifting became part of the approach. The garment could enter a video because someone liked it, with the comments helping other viewers identify it.
It is an instructive business anecdote because the purchase was attached to an ordinary detail: a pair of trousers in motion. The audience supplied the curiosity. Adika supplied an answer and a way to buy. A fashion company could learn something useful while everyone else was watching the dance.
Pairs sold in the first ten hours, followed by orders the next day, after one creator's TikTok video.
Starting again with people he knew
Shwartzenberg left Adika in 2020 amid a dispute with controlling shareholder Golf. Disagreements included the pace of American expansion. In February 2021, the parties reached a settlement and withdrew their mutual claims. By then, he and former colleagues had already launched Edikted's online store.
The new business began development in 2020 and started selling in January 2021. Its earliest public description placed young customers at the center and offered shipping across 26 countries. Shwartzenberg was starting a new company with people whose working habits he already knew. The brand name was new; the accumulated experience came along.
This is the less photogenic part of an entrepreneurial restart. A fresh website can appear overnight. A team that has worked together for years cannot. Edikted's beginning included both the visible launch and the quieter inheritance of shared knowledge about products, production, and customers.
Pink packaging, measured results
By January 2022, Edikted's hashtag had accumulated 183.6 million TikTok views. Shwartzenberg said its first month's performance indicators had exceeded expectations tenfold, without specifying those indicators. He described production as a “try and repeat” system: begin with a limited quantity, then increase production when demand supports it.
Chief marketing officer Dana Israeli described inviting creators and customers to film hauls and unboxings featuring the brand's pink packages. The wrapping gave the delivery its own visual identity. In the familiar ritual of opening a parcel, the company had found another occasion for the product to appear on a phone.
The marketing operation also involved paid distribution. A TikTok account of Edikted's 2022 Black Friday campaign describes shopping ads and a campaign involving more than 500 American creators. The reported results included TikTok generating 45 percent of site traffic and a 50 percent reduction in cost per acquisition. These belong to that particular campaign. They make the company's combination of creator content and advertising unusually tangible.
Campaign result reported by TikTok for Business. A snapshot of one shopping weekend.
A box, a video, an advertisement, a checkout: each has a job. The pink may invite the camera, but the retailer still needs the customer to complete a purchase. The numbers are a reminder that a recognizable aesthetic has an operating bill attached.
The desert and the shop floor
Shwartzenberg had written about the relationship between fashion, culture, and content before Edikted existed. In a 2018 essay, he considered Coachella as a concentrated place for discovering trends. He was interested in how a music festival's audience, clothes, imagery, and coverage gave it influence beyond the performances.
He also considered the difficulty of keeping a large event culturally fresh when quicker newcomers can capture attention. It is an apt concern for somebody selling to an audience that can find its next fascination at any moment. The festival essay shows an executive thinking about the conditions in which fashion travels: who sees it, who records it, and why other people want to participate.
The same questions fit a store designed to appear in somebody's camera roll. A retailer has merchandise to sell, but also a scene to arrange. The mirror has acquired an audience.
They wanted to touch the brand
After Soho came The Grove in Los Angeles and the Mall of America in 2024. In April 2025, Edikted announced further openings at five Simon malls. Shwartzenberg said stores generally brought in more revenue than the company's online sales within the same city, though he did not disclose the figures.
“They want to touch the brand,” he said of the customers asking for an in-person experience. Edikted gave them pink heart-shaped entrances and photo booths, alongside clothes they could handle and try on. Employees were trained to contribute to an upbeat atmosphere. The stores carried recognizable elements of the online world into a place where friends could actually stand together.
“They want to touch the brand.”Dedy Shwartzenberg, April 2025
For the person running the business, this creates a demanding double obligation. The setting should be worth visiting. The product should be worth taking home. A photogenic doorway can start the conversation, but it cannot do the fitting room's work.
Barbie gets a different job
In May 2026, another idea brought Shwartzenberg into conversation with Mattel chairman and CEO Ynon Kreiz. He wanted a Barbie collection that went beyond applying the familiar logo. He proposed imagining Barbie as a designer or fashion director, giving the character a different relationship to the clothes.
The resulting Barbie by Edikted collaboration placed a long-established cultural figure inside the brand's approach to younger shoppers. Mattel executive Natalia Premovic praised the team's understanding of how that audience lives and shops. For Shwartzenberg, the project connected product development with a character whose fashion history already stretched across generations.
There is a small joke in giving a doll a promotion. There is also a merchandising decision: an established character can offer a story, rather than merely a stamp. His grandmother's collection and Barbie's imagined new occupation sit far apart in time and audience, yet both required thought about what a familiar name could mean on a garment.
More doors to open
London joined the map in March 2026 with a shop on Carnaby Street. By October, Edikted's own store directory also listed a Bangkok location at One Bangkok. An April expansion report described further ambitions across Asia, Europe, and Latin America, including plans for Spain and Portugal in 2027. On October 9, a Las Vegas report described a first Nevada store expected that fall.
Those plans leave Shwartzenberg with the practical work that follows an appealing idea: finding places, building teams, and making a familiar experience travel. His career has moved from financial analysis to an Israeli online store, through a second founding, and into shops abroad. The unit of attention has changed along the way. A stock. A parcel. A video. A customer walking through a pink doorway.
At the end of that journey, the fitting room remains agreeably stubborn. It requires the shopper's presence and her decision. For a founder who has spent years following customers between screens and streets, that ordinary moment has become a substantial part of the business.