The Polyvore Team Talks About User-Generated Fashion Stylists and More!
Earlier this week, I headed down to Mountain View, Calif., to the downtown HQ of Polyvore–the unusually named start-up aimed at the inner stylist in everyone–to talk about the economics of fashion online.
The odd name is a combination that roughly means the devouring of many or much–which at Polyvore translates into leopard prints, kitten heels or the rubber clothes of Lady Gaga.
The registered site, with six million unique monthly visitors, allows users to "mix & match products from your favorite stores" into fashion "sets" on any topic, concept or–in BoomTown's taste-challenged case–fleece and Pumas.
You can use any soft-goods image from any Web site to do this, also adding music or other visual elements. Polyvore has already branched out into interior design and other arenas.
In February, to up the ante, the innovative fashion and shopping social network hired Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, former president of Asia-Pacific and Latin American operations for Google (GOOG).
At the time, Singh Cassidy said she was attracted to the viral, technological and global nature of the site, which was co-founded in 2007 by Pasha Sadri, the creator of Yahoo (YHOO) Pipes.
Polyvore has garnered $8.1 million in funding from Benchmark Capital, Harrison Metal and Matrix Partners.
Whether it can turn into a big money-making business–it currently has a mixed revenue plan of advertising and sponsorship and also sales lead generation–will be interesting to see.
But it is clear from the 20 million sets created so far, there is a passion to fashion that is easily tapped online.