Sukhinder Singh, CEO, Polyvore | Source: Polyvore

MOUNTAIN VIEW, United States — As the digital revolution continues to exert a powerful democratising force on the closed hierarchy of the traditional fashion system, perhaps no platform has put more power in the hands of the people than Polyvore, a social shopping site. Polyvore gives consumers the tools to mix and match their favourite fashion items, creating “sets” for others to see and shop. In this way, everyone truly is an editor, stylist and merchandiser, all in one.

With over 6 million unique visitors and 140 million pageviews per month, Polyvore’s social commerce model is significantly reshaping the way people discover and shop for fashion online. But for the Silicon Valley start-up, this may just be the beginning.

Co-founded in 2007 by former Yahoo! software engineers Pasha Sadri (creator of Yahoo! Pipes), Guangwei Yuan and Jianing Hu, Polyvore has since attracted over $8 million in funding from top-flight private equity firms Benchmark Capital and Matrix Partners. But earlier this year, Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, former president of Google’s Asia-Pacific and Latin American operations and one of the search giant’s more visible executives, took the reins as Polyvore’s chief executive officer with a mission to scale the business by attracting more users, expanding global reach and exploring new revenue streams.

BoF spoke exclusively with Ms. Singh Cassidy — who was CEO-in-Residence at venture capital firm Accel and previously co-founded Yodlee, an online financial services company — to discuss the power of social shopping, the democratisation of fashion, and her plans for the future of Polyvore.

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