[ad_1]
This year, in New York, Fashion Week (February 9 to 16) and Social Media Week (February 13 to 17) will converge. What you may not realize is that fashion and social media already intersect: You see, they share a deep online relationship that’s fueled by shopping.
Social shopping is the new black of online commerce, taking the place of last season’s daily deals craze. Keeping on top of the trend, Groupon, the last next big thing, bought social shopping site Mertado last month.
The designer label among the brand names is Pinterest, a site where online pinboards offer virtual window shopping. Pinterest passed the 10 million unique monthly visitors mark faster than any other site and now has 11.7 million monthly uniques, according to comScore data obtained by TechCrunch(Opens in a new window).
Yet, some in the Internet community have been dismissive of the site(Opens in a new window), even in the face of its outstanding growth. The primary reason Pinterest isn’t taken seriously is because its user base is mostly women ages 18 to 34 from the Midwest. But a Pew Internet & American Life study labeled women ages 18 to 29 “power users of social networking.” Not to mention, the latest State of Style report found women spend 40 percent more of their disposable income on clothing each month than men do.
Pinterest is far from the only site or app looking to cash in on the market for social shopping. There are 12 examples of some of the top sites in the following story. Then there are sites like Fancy(Opens in a new window), Nuji(Opens in a new window), and Playwho(Opens in a new window), which are up-and-comers, and the Pinterest knockoffs that say as much with their names, such as StylePin(Opens in a new window) and Pinspire(Opens in a new window).
1. Pinterest
The swoopy, schmoopy logo and 50s-era imagery of “pinning” hasn’t won everyone’s (namely, men’s) vote, but Pinterest shouldn’t care because it could buy an entire election with its pocketbook. The online pinboard, which lets users share and bookmark their favorite images, received $27 million from Andreessen Horowitz and is reportedly valued at $200 million. The aesthetic owes a lot to the girly phenomenon of Anthropologie blogs and Etsy shops, but Pinterest was founded by three guys: Ben Silbermann, Evan Sharp, and Paul Sciarra. While curation not consumption(Opens in a new window) is its strength, the site outdid Google+, Linked In, and YouTube combined in leading shoppers to retailers last month, according to Shareaholic. Aside from dollars, Pinterest brings companies invaluable data. WGSN, a fashion and design trend analysis and research service, tweeted from the State of Style Summit(Opens in a new window) this week, “Pinterest not just addictive, but great place to find unbelievable amount of free info on your consumer.” There’s talk that the site itself is pinning its success to sales more than it’s let on, altering links to earn affiliate dollars.
2. Snapette
Snapette shelves the categorical shopping that dominates the Web for the serendipitous experience of boutiques and style-spying passersby. The app(Opens in a new window) is an accessory to finding accessories. Users can take photos of bags and shoes they love and share them with other “Snapettes;” browse and comment on what others have posted; see what’s trending by city; find stores that stock an item; learn about sales; and follow other Snapettes (including fashion bloggers), stores, and brands. The two founders, Jinhee Anh Kim (who has a B.A. in economics from Harvard and an A.A.S. in fashion design from Parsons) and Sarah Paiji (who has a B.A. in economics from Harvard and dropped out of Harvard Business School(Opens in a new window) to found the business) got $1.3 million in spending cash from a seed round of investing in October.
3. Polyvore
In the ranks of glamorous jobs, fashion editor sits right at the top, looking down its nose at the heap below. Polyvore looks to indulge the Prada-fueled fantasies of those longing to create fashion layouts and pepper them with bon mots. More than 42 million sets—clothing, accessories, and beauty items splashed across backgrounds and text—have been created so far. In the way that Instagram’s filters make every photo look like it was snapped by a photog, templates make each Polyvore(Opens in a new window) set mag-worthy. The items are merchandised, linking followers directly to the online shops from which they can be purchased. The community extends to a style advice section where members exchange opinions. Circulation is up…and up and up at Polyvore, which attracts 13 million unique monthly visitors. The site itself has raked in $22 million in financing, the latest round of which was led by DAG Ventures with participation from Goldman Sachs, Vivo Nevo, Benchmark Capital, and Matrix Partners.
4. Fab.com
Fab.com(Opens in a new window) itself is a daily deals for the design set, but it’s broken free from its niche crowd and gone a little social with Facebook. As part of Timeline, Facebook users can share what they’ve bought—from homemade marshmallows from 240sweet to Pedrali chairs. Fab.com’s relationship with Facebook is mutual; Fab.com Founder and CEO Jason Goldberg blogged(Opens in a new window), “[M]ore than 25 percent of the sales and revenue we generated during the period [Black Friday] to Cyber Monday was from people who originally joined Fab via Facebook. Without a doubt Facebook is far and away our most important source for both new members and for ongoing engagement of our members.” Ever social, Fab.com garnered another 25 percent of sales for the period from member-to-friends email invites and Twitter shares.
5. Svpply
“Think Instapaper for products” is the apt description of Svpply given by its Co-founder and Chairman Zach Klein on his blog(Opens in a new window). Co-founder and CEO Ben Pieratt and Co-founder and former CTO Eric Jacobsen were granted the freedom to leave their freelance jobs with the help of Klein, who is also the co-founder and designer of Vimeo, and focus on developing the site. Soon after, they got $550,000 in seed-round investment led by Spark Capital and Founder Collective, along with high-profile angel investors like Foursquare Co-founder Dennis Crowley, former MySpace Co-president Jason Hirschhorn, and angel investor Ron Conway. Svpply(Opens in a new window) users post their online finds, which in turn dynamically create store pages on the site. To make it two-way participation, stores can add a Svpply button to their sites. Founded in 2009, Svpply was at the forefront of social shopping. Pieratt addresses the new competition(Opens in a new window) on his blog, giving props to Pinterest and acknowledging that Svpply is “still trying to catch up with some of their features.”
6. Wanelo
Want, need, love; that’s what Wanelo stands for. While the use of the words might not quite stack up on the Maslow hierarchy(Opens in a new window), Wanelo’s users are nevertheless passionate(Opens in a new window) about the site, where they can save their own finds from online stores and browse the ones of those they follow. Toolbar extensions for Firefox and Chrome make curation a part of navigation. Popular products get voted up for higher placement on Wanelo’s home page(Opens in a new window).
7. Stylmee
It’s not attractive imagery, but there’s no two ways about it: Stylmee is FarmVille for shopping. But unlike the unappealing and similarly handicapped Dress Barn chain of stores, Stylmee(Opens in a new window) is a conglomerate of chic online boutiques that gamifies the selling of real goods. Users of the iPad app(Opens in a new window) can open a boutique that’s the equivalent of 1,000, 2,000, or 3,000 square feet of real-world retail space; decorate it (all sales are final on this one; there’s no redecorating allowed); fill it up with fashion and décor merchandise from stores and brands that partner with Stylmee; and start selling. Once they’re open for business, the boutiques earn their owners promotional offers based on sales and Stylcash through friends and others loving their style. Stylcash buys users up the fashion capital-named levels of Stylmee and gets them upgraded promotional offers.
8. Lyst
If its name makes it sound exclusive, that’s because Lyst is. While it works like other social shopping experiences—users can set up collections, follow, and be followed—the items on their lists can only come from the fashion-oriented site’s designer and store partners. Stores and brands on the site don’t pay anything for the space, but Lyst(Opens in a new window) gets a commission for every sale made. Lyst-makers get notified when anything they’ve added goes on sale, and the runway tracking feature lets them know when an item they’ve coveted from the runway looks on Lyst has made its way to stores. TechCrunch Europe says a seed round of financing netted Lyst about $1.5 million from Accel Partners, SPA, Ventrex, and angel investors in New York and London.
9. FashnPolis
Bloggers showing off their own street style walk the Web runway every day, serving as fashion inspiration and indirectly spurring sales. FashnPolis(Opens in a new window) helps them generate revenue by letting them tag items in their photos and link them to online stores for a commission. The Portugal-based site had a round of financing of an unspecified amount from SeedCapital.
10. Sumally
If Sumally(Opens in a new window) seems like the Ffffound of social shopping, that’s because it is; Yugo Nakamura, an award-winning interactive designer, is the force behind them both. A browser extension and an app(Opens in a new window) let those trolling the Web tag what they want and what they have to create an “encyclopedia of treasured objects.” Sumally is based in Japan but its reliance on the visual and English list of categories has garnered it an international following.
11. ShopHoller
Instead of stationing one friend outside the dressing room to provide an opinion, how about a posse? That’s the point of ShopHoller, an iOS app(Opens in a new window) that lets users take a photo and turn it into a poll to share either directly with friends, on their Facebook wall, on Twitter, or to the ShopHoller community. Responses can come from iOS devices or the web.
12. OpenSky
The relationship between celebrities and shopping (a complicated equation best summed up as Kardashians = cash) is powerful. On OpenSky(Opens in a new window), the ones to follow are celebrities like Molly Sims and Tom Colicchio, who recommend products within their areas of expertise or preferences. All purchases are made under OpenSky, which holds the inventory and ships the products, and the sale price is split 50/50 between OpenSky and the influencers. Users get $25 every time a friend they recommended makes a purchase. OpenSky got a bonus of its own, with a $30 million round of funding in October led by Providence Equity Partners with participation from Highland Capital Partners, Canaan Partners, and The Raine Group.
13. Little Black Bag
While the little black bag might connote a godsend (holding all the things that make pulling off a look for an entire night out possible), in Japan, it’s luck that it brings with it. New Year’s Day is all about the “lucky bag sale” (fukubukuro) for shoppers in Japan, where they line up at stores for bags filled with discounted surprises. It’s that concept that Little Black Bag(Opens in a new window) is built on. For either a one-time purchase at $59.95 or a monthly membership at $49.95, members get a virtual bag filled with two to four fashion and beauty items from companies like Z Spoke by Zac Posen and BCBGeneration chosen for them based on a preference quiz. Once they “open” the bag online to reveal the mystery, they can trade items with other members to create a new virtual lucky bag. Depending on how happy they are with a bag, members can then ship it or skip it. Little Black Bag recently lucked out with a $2.75 million round of financing led by GRP Partners with participation from DCM and individual investors.
[ad_2]
Source link : https://www.pcmag.com/news/the-rapid-ascension-of-pinterest-and-social-shopping-sites