How Social is Online Fashion?
socialmediaweek.org
Today our very own Caroline Drucker gave a presentation at Social Media Week, an event that happens simultaneously in different locations all over the world. The theme for today’s discussion? How Social is Online Fashion? Other than us, Etsy.com, edelight.de, Glam Media and mirapodo.de presented, showing us just exactly how much the fashion industry is changing, how rapidly this change is taking place and how businesses are responding to it.
e-commerce:
Etsy.com
Etsy’s mission is to change what we buy online, specifically moving away from the mass produced and towards the handmade. Their site has over five million users worldwide and their numbers are growing daily. What’s interesting about this company is that whilst they do have several social media channels, i.e. Facebook, Twitter (they have over 1M followers) and their blog, they also focus massively on breaking the online and transforming the relationship between users from a virtual connection to a physical one. By hosting get togethers, meet-ups and providing a workspace for artists in their office in Brooklyn, Etsy have been able to create and maintain a community feel that functions on two dimensions, feeding directly into their idea of conducting a social commerce rather than an e-commerce business. They’ve just moved a small part of their operation to Berlin and we’re excited to see how and what they’ll develop here in Europe.
Social network:
Edelight.de
Edelight.de was born out of a rejection of the traditional view that the Internet is simply a place to bargain hunt, and search for products at reduced prices. Based in Germany, the founders came up with the idea of starting a site where users could recommend, discuss and rate gifts and gift ideas. What the founders quickly realized though is that people were logging on to discuss not just gifts, but products in general. Out of this grew a community of users who relish the act of participating in a discourse regarding products and who use the internet to ‘shop’ rather than ‘buy’. Cleverly, edelight responded to this by employing specialized bloggers, each experts in their own market (for example shoes, toys and fashion). Suddenly Edelight had very valuable and meaningful information for other businesses’, including market insight into their consumers and how they could tweak their brand strategy to suit their potential customers’ demands.
Advertising:
Glam Media
Reaching 61 million unique users per month, Glam Media is pioneering content dominated advertising. With their network Glam.com targeting women, Brash.com focused on men and Tinker.com connecting brands with real-time social media conversations happening on Twitter and Facebook. Glam Media have enabled brands to place advertising into incredibly targeted arenas, including aggressive methods like skinning a blog, and more subtle ones like custom created advertorials. By creating a network of fashion bloggers, Glam have developed an alternative advertising stream that demonstrates how influential the Internet can be in capturing captive audiences on a daily basis. The numbers don’t lie, and Glam Media have enough of them to impress even the largest and most powerful clients, ultimately challenging traditional print and television media as the main generators of revenue for brands.
Other articles that might interest you:
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edelight.de: Shopping is Social
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Connect the dots: Social Graphs
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Understanding the ‘Like’ Button
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Location, Location, Location
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Scream It From The…Page Margins: Facebook Advertising
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#140conf Debates “How Twitter is Changing the Fashion Industry”
Comments
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Horst Winkler
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Thomas
