StyleFeeder: Personal Shopping Engine

StyleFeeder offers personalized shopping recommendations to over 1.5 million users each month. The site was created for fashion-conscious shoppers interested in hearing about new products. StyleFeeder connects users to emerging trends, not only in the clothing and accessories categories, but also electronics, books, music, even sports and pets. According to InStyle Magazine, “If you just bought the perfect party dress and now need a clutch to match, go to StyleFeeder.com where you can get advice from like-minded buyers.”

The registration process for StyleFeeder is similar to other social shopping sites who offer personalized recommendations. Users sign up, then rate a variety of products on a 5 star scale. Afterwards, users receive a "Style Feed" of suggested items. The Style Feed can be turned into a widget, added to users' Facebook profiles, or simply shared with friends. My StyleFeed included items as disparate as pink, fake fur-lined head phones, Mediterranean patterned bath tiles, and gray sandals with ruffles, all of which I would consider buying. In addition to the Style Feed, users are also matched with "Style Twins" to enhance the product search and discovery process.



StyleFeeder has been lauded for their unique collaborative filtering technology. "The software creates a giant matrix or spreadsheet of items and their relationships. Then it looks for patterns among those who rate items similarly. The basic idea is that if two people like product X and one of them also likes product Y, then they probably both like product Y,” says Women's Wear Daily.

With over 5 million monthly pageviews, a weekly newsletter, and a popular Facebook application, StyeFeeder has successfully carved out a niche in the crowded social shopping space.

Retailers Add Social Media Capabilities to Shopping Sites

A recent eMarketer report revealed the site features and functions retailers planned to add to their sites. A variety of social media functions made the list, including plans to build communities, add customer ratings and reviews, and even blogs. The most popular social media function on the retailers' list, however, was personalized product recommendations.


Peer recommendations are common on social shopping sites, such as Polyvore and StyleHop. Says senior eMarketer analyst Jeffrey Grau:"There are situations where peer recommendations provide more meaningful results. Take for example a woman who has just moved to Manhattan and needs help choosing and purchasing appropriate business attire. An automated recommendation system would be challenged to find suitable suggestions based on her historical shopping data. A better source of apparel advice would be other professionals working in New York.”

And the benefits of peer recommendations are not limited to customers. “Retailers like personalized product recommendations because they create cross-sell and upsell opportunities,” says Mr. Grau. “They also cite long-term benefits such as a higher degree of customer engagement and loyalty.”

Social Shopping Site Polyvore Turns Two

Polyvore, the social shopping site where users mix and match items to create collages (dubbed "sets"), celebrated its second birthday last week. Polyvore certainly has a lot to celebrate. In the past year, the site grew from about 500,000 unique visitors per month to 2.5 million unique visitors per month, an increase of 400%. They also crossed the 100 million monthly page views mark a few weeks ago, making them one of the largest user-generated fashion sites on the Web.

Polyvore's success lies in its simple drag and drop tool that encourages users to put together looks, not just endorse individual items. The community is encouraged to use their creativity to create aesthetically pleasing arrangements of items. And the quality of clothing on Polyvore is significantly higher than most other social shopping sites. Popular products include Marc Jacobs' dresses and Chanel handbags. One Polyvore user claims it is "like crack for fashionistas…In addition to the shopping euphoria of it all, Polyvore also fuses fashion with social media. Once you create your favorite look, you can publish your fashion matches by color or brand for others in the network to see. It’s very addicting creating fashion masterpieces and shopping all in one spot.”

Polyvore is part game, part art, and all fashion. With its unique offering in a crowded space, it's no wonder Polyvore is a popular destination for fashionistas. Happy Birthday Polyvore- wishing you many happy returns.

Stylehop Provides Fashion Shopping Engine with Consumer Ratings

At Stylehop, fashion conscious women can shop, rate items of clothing, play games, and earn points that they can use as rebates to their purchases. The idea behind Stylehop is that the most valuable and relevant fashion advice for a woman does not come from New York, LA or celebrities, but from a woman’s fashion peers. Their goal is to become the Zagat of fashion- a shopping engine with robust, filterable consumer ratings.



Stylehop could have easily created a boring, Amazon-like ratings engine. Instead, they created fun, addictive, lightweight social games and quizzes to drive engagement and build the foundation for a robust, ratings-based shopping engine. The games prompt women to provide a five-star rating for each item presented, creating the star ranking data that feeds StyleHop’s shopping engine and allowing it to generate a substantial amount of ratings for a variety of items. Another catalyst to drive engagement is the points system, where women are rewarded for activities like reviewing styles, filling out their profile, etc. The points can be used towards rebates on items purchased through the site. Additionally, Stylehop allows results to be filterable not only by brand and product attributes but also by whom you want providing your five-star rankings.

Closet Couture Lets Users Organize their Closets Online

Closet Couture is a new fashion-focused community that takes social shopping to a new level. Users can not only create and view one another’s wish lists, pulling items from each other, but also upload photograph items from their own “real” closets. Users can create their own “Dressing Rooms” with their clothing photos, creating packing lists and photo albums. Merchants can also create profiles, uploading items from their boutiques and including pricing information in a way that is not only unobtrusive but offers real value to the consumers on the site.

In addition to the “My Closet” tool, Closet Couture offers forums, a style blog, and an extensive list of stylists and other fashion service providers. Closet Couture is off to a great start, but I would have liked to see the ability to share packing lists with friends, vote on other users’ looks, and create outfits for friends- functionalities that would allow users to take advantage of the collective style consciousness. Overall, though, the site provides a unique and relevant social networking community in the crowded fashion space.