Comments on: Fashion 2.0 | StyleHop’s fantasy fashion

By: David Reinke

David Reinke — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 14:53:58 +0000

To Caricouture. Ahhh…I understand now. No rudeness implied. What I am is a passionate business person that has spent my entire working career attempting to understand women and meet their needs with innovative products. I believe to thrive in this business it requires both the business/marketing type and creatives and designers. When you have both and mutual respect, you get magic. Each one by itself can only work for so long. I represent 1/2 of the equation and have a profound respect for the other half and what can be created when the two work together….it’s why I’m in this industry. If I was only in it to make money, trust me there are easier ways :)

By: Caricouture

Caricouture — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 04:55:10 +0000

David – hi again and thanks for taking the time to reply to my earlier post. Without meaning to be rude, I suppose what I’m really wondering when I mention credibility is whether you personally are passionate about women’s fashion and style or whether you are just hopping on a bandwagon here.

By: Youri Margarine

Youri Margarine — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 04:13:39 +0000

There’s an article talking about your site on a french blog about fashion, just thought I would share it: http://monbodrapo.wordpress.com/2008/03/10/web-20-au-volant-mode-au-tournant/

By: Vikram Alexei Kansara

Vikram Alexei Kansara — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 15:09:57 +0000

Excellent discussion. For this target, I think it’s less about attracting existing fashion mavens – and more about facilitating the emergence of new mavens from within the community by providing a platform for these “emergent editors” to earn status and get noticed for showing off their personal style and brand allegiances.

By: David Reinke

David Reinke — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 19:33:10 +0000

To Caricouture: Thanks for the feedback. We are working on look/feel of site….we know we have some work to do there. Regarding opinion leaders, I think your question is great…Where does credibility stem from? One of the things that gave me confidence to start this business was a very simple survey I conducted with 100 women online (not scientific by any means, I know). The question I asked was this: If you were on the web shopping for apparel and looking at a specific style, which would you tend to trust more, a review from a major fashion critic or user reviews from other consumers. 90 of the 100 women said they would tend to trust the user reviews more. That said, managing through the clutter and confusion is a real issue. Our solution is to give users the ability to filter who ranks their styles. Rather than depending on an editor at Vogue, at StyleHop women will be able to see a list of styles highly ranked by people just like them. These people may be similar in age, geography, brand preference, store preference or style rankings. The insight is that regular women are never going to run into the editor at Vogue but they will run into lots of other women like them. By giving women a list of styles that are “pre-approved” by their peer group, StyleHop significantly lowers the fashion risk for a woman buying clothes.

By: Caricouture

Caricouture — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 14:29:42 +0000

Sorry to be a naysayer, but I’m not sure that this concept will work. Peer reviews tend to work best on items that have an objective function – i.e. does this printer print well etc. Style is so subjective that it’s really hard to reach consensus on what exactly looks good, which is why people rely on key opinion leaders in the first place. How will you ensure you aren’t merely adding to the clutter and confusion, rather than cutting through it as you hope to do, and where does your “credibility” stem from? I think Conde Nast’s UK site, http://www.stylefinder.com, aims to do something similar and is quite effective because its editors “referee” public opinion and the site has the status of being from the same media family as Vogue etc. Also, have you road tested your logo and brand? If I hadn’t read the article, I’d have guessed you were a swimwear brand, based on the blue colours and the wave motif. Image is everything in this game! Just some candid feedback, but I do honestly wish you every success with this venture!!

By: David Reinke

David Reinke — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 15:18:59 +0000

LL – Great comments! Yes – I do think StyleHop will appeal more to women who enjoy “safe shopping” as you suggest. The big question is what percent of women fall in that category. My hunch is well over 90%. Even most fashionistas tend to dress pretty narrowly within a trend range from my own observations. The key to making the site successful will be giving women an individualized experience and creating functionality that quickly allows them to identify the subset of styles that match their preferences. In my mind, once we scale up, the loyal Barney’s shopper and loyal Abercrombie & Fitch shopper will never see each other or even influence each other….because they will both choose not to with their filtering preferences. Yes, we will have to listen and learn to make sure we accomodate mavens on the site. I think some of your recommendations are great. The only area where I think we may disagree on is whether fashion mavens want to help out others or not. Personally, I think the site has great potential for all the fashionistas out there to extend their personal reach and enhance their personal branding as fashion elite. Of course, there will always be some that turn up their noses….but those folks are pretty far outside our target anyway.

By: David Reinke

David Reinke — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 15:00:11 +0000

To Dahlia. There are many sites out there like StyleHive trying to make fashion social networking work. I think if you talk to them privately, most will admit it has been a very tough road trying to get traction. The biggest problem I see is that these sites operate like a bazaar….you don’t really know how to shop them and they have lots of classifications of product but very little depth within each classification. It’s a real treasure hunt. While some folks really enjoy the thrill of the chase, we are building a much more straightforward shopping experience. If you want to look at tops, go here and we’ll give you straight-forward tools to edit down from the thousands available. How do you want to look at tops? You want to see the top ranked tops in NYC? In the Village? Okay, here you go. As far as I can tell filtered ranking functionality doesn’t exist on these other sites.

By: LL

LL — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 22:13:38 +0000

Interesting concept. I think it will appeal to the majority of women who enjoy “safe shopping.” Essentially, the review feature grants solo buyers the experience of shopping with a large group of friends; it offers validation. There is, however, a difference between a CNET review on a cell phone and a review for a cocktail dress. It’ll be interesting to see if women can offer general enough feedback to help large swaths of women, but yet specific enough to be of real use. Furthermore, can a dress be considered five-stars for all body types? I do wonder, however, if and how this “democratized” fashion and mavens can coexist on the same site. Mavens are, by definition, VIPs. They don’t necessarily want to help out the average Ohio State student. I like the idea of having fashion quizzes to identify those with true blue knowledge. If you can create some type of different access/functionality for them, a way to work your way up to being considered a maven, I think that’s the key to attracting and maintaining them. Later on, perhaps sponsor a contest where one maven gets selected to go to Fashion Week and offer a write-up on what she would buy for Retailer X? Or maybe have an Ask A Maven feature or something for unsure purchasers? I also like your idea of certain mavens having a specific following for their personal style, so maybe allow them to publish lookbooks (a la Style.com)? Good luck to you!

By: Dahlia

Dahlia — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 22:02:59 +0000

I’m sorry in pointing out the competition, but to what I gather, your site will be much like StyleHive.com except you’ll be able to filter the styles and crowds to your own liking, is this correct?