Crowd Sourcing & Fashion
Crowd Sourcing & Fashion
One of Web 2.0 trends in making its way into fashion. Crowd sourcing allows entrepreneurs go directly to customers for content, funding, and distribution by using an online social media model (think Facebook, Twiter).
I just read about a new web site called Fashion Stakes that intends to use Crowd Sourcing so that users can fund up and coming fashion designers, in exchange for credits on the designer’s clothes. Since it is very hard for a newcomer to obtain funding and/or be selected by a department store buyer, this concept seems extremely helpful. For the users, it gives them the opportunity to participate in the launch of a fashion line and to have access to new designs that are still (almost) exclusive. The founders are from Harvard Business School, where this project was born.I will give you updates once the site launches (presumably within the “next weeks”).
Another fashion company taking full advantage of online Crowd Sourcing is one of my favorites online store, ModCloth.com. Its founders also double as buyers and started buying and selling vintage. Now they sell both vintage and non-vintage and they use their web site to ask users to select which merchandise they should carry on the store. Yes, that is right, the customers are actually picking the store merchandise (at least to an extent). ModCloth claims that they have a much higher sell-through rate on the merchandise users picked.
Time will tell how this plays out for the fashion industry but it is sure awesome to see Internet-savvy entrepreneurs bring Web 2.0 technology to our (Fashionistas) benefit.
What do you think?
You must be logged in to post a comment.