A selection of fashion sites and tools that allow you to collect your favorite products and brands
Robin Good's insight:
If you look at the industry in which content curation tools and services have had the most leeway so far, that would be positively fashion, and, in my impression, by a good margin over the rapidly growing education/learning sector.
The fashion industry has embraced digital curation wholeheartedly more than any other sector so far, because of its strong visual element (the same one that has popularized the curation concept thanks to tools like Pinterest), and thanks to the natural inclination that fashion customers have for picking, collecting and sharing their unique preferences and combinations.
In this visual collection I have brought together the most interesting examples of curation at work in the world of fashion. Tools, services, communities, brands and products, all working together to filter, aggregate, pick and create relevant "selections" for the infinite number of tribes out there.
Carrie Whitehead, Product Manager at Zappos Labs writes about curation in the online retail shopping space, while providig some very useful examples of companies already using it effectively.
She writes: "The largest online retailer, Amazon.com has a vision to be the ‘Earth’s Biggest Selection.’ But is this vast selection too overwhelming for shoppers? A search for ‘black dress’ in Clothing & Accessories on Amazon.com brings back 65,529 results! For consumers, this large number of choices can lead to confusion, exhaustion and dissatisfied purchases, or worse, no purchase at all."
...Zappos recently launched Glance, a shopping experience allowing users to discover the most exciting products from Zappos through curated collections...
...Niche retailers such as Warby Parker (retro-inspired eyewear) and Frank & Oak (quality menswear) are providing a boutique experience with a price tag that’s accessible.
...Social shopping site OpenSky taps celebrities and influencers to select the products they love. Fancy, a social photo site similar to Pinterest, puts curation in the hands of the community."
"If you think about it, fashion may actually be THE industry that started the curation trend – we just didn’t know it at the time. How could we? “Curation” is a relatively new term, but it’s finding its way into other realms; you hear about content curation, music curation – all meaning that in some way, these industries are personalizing their offer according to your individual wants, needs and likes."
Absolutely a huge trend. Recent NRF show in NYC, curated commerce was very popular topic. Not only are brands and websites positioning themselves, newcomer companies are starting to prepare platforms to facilitate the creation of curated commerce. For example, Dell unveiled a special curated commerce project that will provide the platform for others to enable curated commerce on their website.
Fashion SKU curation is the solution to reduce consumer anxiety: A search for ‘black dress’ in Clothing & Accessories on Amazon.com brings back 65,529 results! For consumers, this large number of choices can lead to confusion, exhaustion and dissatisfied purchases, or worse, no purchase at all."
Robin Good: American Express has just unveiled a series of new partnerships designed to support a number of online curated fashion shopping platforms.
The goal for American Express is the one of exposing and promoting the benefits of a shopping experience that takes consumers from inspiration and discovery to purchase and finally to social sharing.
These the three new partnerships in place:
1) In partnership with The Fancy, American Express has created a first-of-its kind brand channel curated by tastemakers and fashion industry insiders that will feature an offer exclusively for American Express Cardmembers®. American Express will be working with influencers including Prabal Gurung, Susie Lau of Style Bubble, Kelly Framel of The Glamourai, Jane Aldridge of Sea of Shoes, Jenné Lombardo and others to Fancy products that they love and enable shoppers to purchase the merchandise directly from The Fancy.
2) American Express has partnered with Harper’s BAZAAR as they prepare to launch ShopBAZAAR, the first true editorial-to-commerce online store. ShopBAZAAR is a breakthrough online store, enabling readers to move from the inspiration of seeing desirable items in the magazine’s pages to effortlessly acquiring them in a fully integrated experience, directed in its entirety by the editors of Harper’s BAZAAR.
3) My Lucky is a new platform designed to provide users with the opportunity to Shop, Sticker, Share and Buy seamlessly on myluckyshops.com with American Express. The first-to-market technology created by Lucky magazine allows consumers to socially shop with ease. Lucky’s beloved sticker system, a favorite of magazine readers, helps users categorize and curate their purchases. My Lucky will allow users to digitally sticker the products they love and shop from MyLuckyShops with a layer of editorial curation.
Robin Good: Featuring the likes of fashion blogger Susie Bubble, filmmaker Gia Coppola, Evan Oresten from Cool Hunting and Carrie Scott of SHOWStudio to Philippe Von Borries (co-founder of Refinery29), Chris Corrado (Director of Capsule), Warren Fu (music video director for artists including Mark Ronson and The Strokes) and Soraya Darabi (founder of Foodspotting), Curators Conference will take place in a few weeks at the Walter Reade Theatre, Lincoln Center in New Yok City.
Here some more details: "...during New York Fashion Week on the 5th September , online channel Portable is presenting The Curators Conference, a day long event featuring the leading international curators and creatives across fashion, film, music, design and technology.
The event aims to, 'explore the many worlds where curation and creativity intersect with modern culture', hoping to inspire audiences and foster industry innovation."
From the official site: "A day-long conference featuring the leading curators and creators of culture across fashion, film, music, interiors and design."
Robin Good: Wisemarkit is a new web service which allows anyone to create a personal online boutique and to stock it with his/her favorite items while earning a commission on those actually sold. These items need not be from you, though they can, but can be brought in from Amazon or ShopSense to populate your boutique even if you are not a designer.
From the official site:
a) Open a shop in 60 seconds
b) Fill it with products you believe in
c) Share across your network
d) Make commission off what you sell
Mashable reports: "Individuals don’t need to own the stock to put it in their shop and make a commission on the sale,” Salah says. “Etsy is all user-generated products. So, if I make a desk, I can sell it on Etsy.
In Wisemarkit, I can sell the desk without owning the desk.
...Members can curate products from Amazon and ShopSense, which aggregates products from online retail destinations including NET-A-PORTER, Shopbop and Neiman Marcus."
To be noticed, is the curation attitude that pervades this online shopping strategy.
”Currently, Wisemarkit users are limited to 10 Wisemarks — recommendations on the platform.
...Only 10 products show up in your main shop at a time. Older items remain in your stock room and commission can still be earned on referrals.
For example, I might have a shop of swimsuits, as the winter approaches I change my shop into a winter coats store. The swimsuits go into my stock room,” Salah says. “The following season I might dip back into my stockroom and Wisemark the swimsuits again, and now the winter coats are in my stockroom.” (Source: Mashable)
Robin Good: Here are five fashion curation apps that can help you to create a visua inventory of your wardrobe, while helping you find new "combinations" and new cool products you want to buy.
Excerpted from article: "To learn more about the importance of curation in today’s fashion industry, here are three emerging fashion startups in New York City and Los Angeles.
Material Wrld is a New York City fashion startup founded by eager entrepreneurs Jie Zheng and Rie Yano.
“In Manhattan, we all have really small closets so we see this as an option to refresh your wardrobe...”. Material Wrld focuses on fashion bloggers, creative professionals, and style enthusiasts spanning college students, young professionals and new moms. “The ideal Material Wrld user is already showing off their style online through their blog, Instagram, Twitter, and other sites/apps,” says Rie.
This NYC fashion startup has been bringing high-end, exclusive fashion to the masses. Inspired by sites like 20×200, Of a Kind combines storytelling and exclusivity to launch 3 new items in limited editions each week.
When asked how the founders stay abreast of fashion trends, they cites 3 sources: The Business of Fashion newsletter, a daily roundup of everything happening in the fashion space; Uncommon Update, which curates news from the luxury, interactive, and media industries; and the EDITD blog, which pulls together a ton of data from the fashion industry.
The super cool site Closet Rich features amazing curated vintage finds from the closet rich fortunates in Hollywood. The former fashion PR rep and Zoe Report staffer now goes into her Closet Rich clients’ homes — the majority of which work in the fashion and entertainment space as designers, editors, actresses, etc. — and digs through their racks for re-sellable items like dresses, shoes, bags and more.
“It’s very curated; I don’t want site visitors to have to shuffle through junk or nonsense,” says Elizabeth. “I love really interesting pieces, dresses or jackets with a wow factor but basics also sell really well.” The items that don’t end up on her site are donated to various charities...."
Monogram is a web and mobile publishing app which allows you to curate your own fashion magazine by writing your own content and being able to "sprinkle" it with highly relevant shoppable fashion items that can be sold directly through your pages.
In fact, Monogram provides an integrated search facility that makes it easy to find shoppable fashion items to clip (even as you write) and add them to your own magazine.
From the Techcrunch review: "Monogram provides a full web editing tool suite, which will allow bloggers to publish and share their favorite fashions with others. Bloggers can create posts, or full “magazines,” of all their favorite content, which readers can browse or subscribe to.
Each post provides shoppable links to products either featured in, or similar to, the clothes and accessories that are being shown off on the page.
...
Rather than having to scour the web for the items they want to add, and putting in affiliate links, the Monogram platform provides an integrated search functionality within the platform, which scours the web for the products bloggers wish to share."
"...[the company is] working on figuring out an affiliate model so that they can get paid for the products that are sold thanks to their magazines."
Therese, thank you for your feedback. The unique selling point of Monogram is that it has an integrated seach engine that allows you to easily integrate sellable fashion items on your magazine. There are only a handful of services doing this and therefore I think it is not in any way a duplicate of the many other personal/expression and sharing platforms out there.
Yes Therese, I agree. I am actually glad that Monogram and other small startups are not refraining from attempting to innovate in this apparently crowded space, as I am convinced that there is still plenty of space for many new companies, unless each one of them wants to be the new Pinterest. If they specialize and work on niche audiences and specific use cases I think they may indeed provide a useful service for many. And in the end if they do not try what better suggestion do you have for them? :-)
Robin Good: Kathleen Jordan, a principal in Gensler’s New York office, undertook an investigation into the future of the department store by speaking with industry leaders, visiting successful examples around the world, and reading a lot of articles.
The result of her investigation has helped her paint a new vision for how retail chanins and department stores could regain the competitive advantages they once held.
She writes: "Department stores have unprecedented power to select and curate their selection of products, demand exclusives from designers, and drive the creation of new products. Stores like Macy’s, Target, and H&M are leveraging this power to create unique offerings and experiences."
"Successful product curation requires walking the line between delivering what the customer wants and delivering what the customer doesn’t-yet-know she wants.
What if your store provided a “living laboratory,” defined as:
-> a space where customers can see new exclusives and product synergies, be exposed to new designers or trends,
-> where they can provide direct feedback on site utilizing technology enhanced experiences,
-> and then see the space respond to their input and preferences in real time.
That sort of engagement puts the customer in charge but with opportunities to insert unexpected offerings, delight and surprise the customer, and drive repeat store traffic."
Robin Good: Well researched and resourceful article by Amalia Agathou on key trends and technologies that are transforming the fashion industry.
One such new key transforming factor is "curation" and the many ways it's being used to help individuals find, share and endorse the products they like the most.
"Curated commerce: A growing number of fashion sites at the affordable end of the market work with influential bloggers, stylists and celebrities to sell products via e-shops with an editorial feel."
A few examples:
"1) London-based Stylistpick, offers consumers a “personalized showroom” full of products selected by well-known stylists.
Sites that used mechanism for personalized curation, like Google’s Boutiques.com, haven’t caught on so far, partly because in order for a successful recommendation system to work effectively it needs significant volumes of user data, and shopping preferences in fashion change extremely quickly.
Maybe a hybrid shopping site that uses recommendation engines along with shopping assistance by professional stylists is the next step."
The article looks also into other key factors influencing big changes sweeping the fashion industry, such as video, mobile apps, crowdsourcing and more.
Robin Good: Boutine is a women cloting and fashion platform allowing you to create custom collections and to earn commissions on the items sold through it.
From Techcrunch: "Sourcing items from a variety of indie designers, over half of whom are international, Boutine organizes and presents the pieces in a drag-and-drop interface where women can create looks using tops, bottoms, dresses, handbags, jewelry and other accessories.
Of some 300 signups from designers, Boutine curated the selection down to just 75 designers, with help from a team of experts from the fashion industry.
...
In addition to the mix-and-matching Boutine allows, users can also add their own Instagram photos to their collections (as the outfits or outfit groups are called). This allows them to start with a photo of something they already own, then find other items to match with it.
For example, you could find a necklace to complement a date-night dress, or some new jeans to go with a shirt you love. When collections are complete, they can be shared to all the usual places – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or even blogs via embed codes or a WordPress plugin.
...
According to the site FAQ, Boutine charges a 20% commission on products sold, and Stylists (that’s you) would receive a 10% commission for putting the look together.
Boutine collects the total commission and distributes the appropriate amount to the Boutique Owner, meaning the bloggers, stylists, and fashion enthusiast who are the active participants building collections on the site."
Robin Good: If you are looking for a good example of a web magazine using curation to create value for its readers while creating revenue, check out FEYT.
The minimalist publication curates fashion "themes" by providing original short-format content accompanied by human-curated sets of fashion items that fit the topic and which nicely complement each other.
The items showcased come from third-party fashion providers and Feyt makes a revenue/commision on each item sold, just like a classic affiliate would.
From Fashionista: "Feyt is a personal styling website, founded by fashion industry insiders, combining algorithmic technology and human curation to recommend designer fashion to high end customers based on their personal taste and style, monetizing these customers via global ecommerce affiliates.
In-house fashion experts score and rate seasonal fashion and style across a broad range of criteria and characteristics, rooted in individual style versus the more common approach of simple visual imagery."
Robin Good: StyleBook is a fashion and glamour curation platform allowing you to easily create rich illustrated stylebooks.
StyleBook looks on the surface like most other visual boards, allowing you to easily follow other users, and to select and repin images to your stylebooks.
From Techcrunch: "To use StyleSaint in its current form, log in with Facebook or Twitter and create an account, once logged on, you can choose from over 55K “tear sheet” images from which to create your own Stylebook, once you’ve got more than ten tear sheets loaded, you can hit the “Create Stylebooks” link in the top right and StyleSaint will automatically import, then publish, the last ten sheets you’ve torn. Alternatively you can drag-and-drop the tears to create a custom stylebook. Click on “Create” to publish to the site.
In addition the resulting books are Facebookable, tweetable and embeddable, the embeddable stylebooks function as an overlay on embedded sites, preventing traffic re-direction.
The most compelling thing about StyleSaint is that co-founders Brian Garrett and Allison Beal eventually want to use the collective data from the style booking activity to come up with its own line of clothing. “StyleSaint is the only company editorializing the phenomenon of image discovery and curation and combining it with a manufacturing, vertical eTailer ecommerce model...”
From the article: "What retailers need to understand is that there is no direct path to online consumer sales.
Consumers desire to broadcast and share their lives, and their web behaviors therefore strike out on a non-linear path to purchase.
The whole concept of social commerce is now realizing that every platform and network is a potential lead for an online sale.
Social discovery platforms are developing cult followings because they allow users to establish their authority in a certain subject area and to showcase their ability to create inspirational collections of products, items and even destinations.
Simple self-expression through the curation of products should be considered every retailer’s dream.
As a retailer, all you have to do is supply images and ideas in a way that’s accessible to the online user/consumer and sparks their desire to do all this work for you.
In one swift addition to a consumer “pin, post or add,” retailers can build brand awareness, increase online engagement and create direct links to product pages that lead to purchase conversions.
...
The future of e-commerce, search, social marketing are now tied to consumers attempting to curate experiences that represent their personalities."
Find also in this excellent article by Macala Wright thirteen product curation sites reviewed.
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This is a great link to find everything you need to dress your best.