Let me explain this from a personal point of view being a female in my twenties who likes to keep up with fashion trends yet has no time for visits to the mall. I resort to online shopping where I can browse and shop at unholy hours in the comfort of my own home, with ASOS and Taobao bookmarked as my top shopping sites. But often there’s just too much information on the web and I appreciate platforms that aggregate and facilitate fashion discovery. So while being based in Beijing, Melishuo and Mogujie are fantastic tools for fashion discovery. And here’s a startup when Pinterest meets Pic Collage for fashion built for the Asian audience: Styleprofile.me.
The Singapore-based startup positions itself as a social commerce platform that allows users to discover fashion products, make into a collage, and share them with your friends. So you can create your own outfit by selecting from over 30,000 items from over 30 online stores and dropping them onto a blank canvas. Then gather opinions from the Styleprofile community as well as your friends on your look. Running out of ideas to wear for that hot date this weekend? You can follow your friends or like-minded fashionistas and get inspired by their styles. In essence, the beauty of the Styleprofile platform lies in the “interactive nature” it provides, which is a “perfect foundation for users to discuss fashion, collaborate, and build their ideal style profile”, says co-founder Liling Ong.
Four months and nine heavyweight online fashion merchants already in partnership with Styleprofile. How?
Styleprofile was developed in February, but is already in partnership with nine heavyweight online fashion merchants such as ASOS, Shopbob, Free People, Revolve Clothing, Fashionesta, Eves Apple, Shoptiques, Forever 21, and Singer22. Upon logging in, users will be able to select any product they fancy from the online stores and create an outfit. There are also filters in place that allows users to search via product category, brand, color, and price.
To be honest, for a Singapore-based startup in its infant stages having the ability to attract online shopping sites such as UK-based ASOS and US-based Forever 21 to be on board as partners is pretty impressive. How did Liling and her team manage to do that?
We were fortunate in that most of them had signed up in [our] ‘Partnership Programs’ with us before launch. To be honest, there was not much convincing done on our part – they saw and liked our product, the design and value that we create for our users. Also we are the first website in Asia presenting fashion products to consumers in this social manner, and this was [the main reason why it] attracted the shops to partner with us as many of them have set their sights on the Asian market.
How different is Styleprofile from other sites, such as Mogujie, Melishuo, and Pinterest?
The idea of social commerce isn’t new. We have Melishuo and Mogujie from China, as well as Pinterest and Polyvore from the United States.
But the difference between the Chinese sites and Styleprofile is that the latter allows users to interact with products to create outfits on their own, says Liling.
Styleprofile allows you create looks online via our outfit builder, on top of saving products and outfits of others. You can even ‘remix’ someone else’s outfit too, if you feel you have a better way of piecing the matching the products. [More importantly,] everything you see on our website can be purchased online.
Styleprofile allows you to showcase your favorite products and outfits, acting as your own online style journal. Liling elaborates:
Users can save any product on our platform onto their profile, mix and match it with other products they like. We enable our users to share their fashion picks with their friends through various features of the platform, such as sharing, tagging a friend, and sending their outfits to Pinterest or Facebook.
We also have on board five personalities in Singapore to be our ‘Style Advisors’. Each ‘Style Advisor’ has her own unique flare and appeal to our target demographic (women aged between 16 to 35). It is a unique way where we can provide our users with first hand style advice from experts.
First mover advantage and agility as a young startup
Liling says the team is definitely mindful of existing competition, especially when Pinterest is one of the leading sites in social commerce. But Styleprofile prides itself as the only website in Asia boasting features that allows you to create looks. Over time with more traction and user acquisitions, the team hopes “to evolve into a platform which has an Asian flavour and style.” And being a small team allows them to act fast. In the next two months, Liling reveals, that the platform would be launching a new feature that enables users to send any product they fancy to their personal Styleprofile page:
This essentially allows our user to create an online wish list and promotes product discovery. The outfit builder enables each user to combine all the products that they like and create an ‘outfit’ or ‘style’ with them. This adds that extra personal touch to their profile.
Furthermore, users tend to enjoy window shopping online first, taking some time to think of a purchase and then heading back to seal the deal. By allowing our users to interact with products that they like, we are helping our users [reaffirm their purchase decisions]. All items purchased through Styleprofile are also stored in each user’s profile, so you will have a record of all your online purchases.
The site aims to be user’s “online fashion and style journal.”
How Styleprofile puts the bucks into its pockets
How the site puts money into its pretty little pocket – one method – is pretty obvious. A percentage cut between five to 15 percent (depending on the partnering store) will be collected for each transaction. Another is through special brand campaigns and the team will be exploring other revenue streams in the upcoming months.
At present the site redirects you to the online store when you want to make a purchase. But personally as an avid online shopper, it would be great if the platform does offer a one-stop checkout, where I can make all the purchases I fancy on the same platform instead of being redirected to the different shopping sites. Liling says this is something the team is aware of, and will be addressing it in future.
Filling the gap in Asia’s online fashion arena
Liling tells us that the minimum viable product (MVP) was ready around mid April, and has been going through iterations since. The idea struck them when they saw a gap in Asia’s online fashion arena, and have been doing in-depth research and understanding the users’ needs and wants.
We realized that women love communicating with their friends about their style and purchases. They also enjoy seeing how other women style themselves and this planted the seed of building a product that has a strong social element in it. We also are strongly motivated by trends in social commerce and believe that the future of e-commerce integrates a strong social element.
It is these fundamental beliefs that have molded the product into what it is today.
So, from a woman’s point of view, I have to agree with this. I find a lot of female friends on my Instagram taking selfies (self-taken shots) and including hashtags such as #ootd (outfit of the day) and #wiwt (what I wore today). Admittedly, we all have that little bit of exhibitionistic nature in us to want to share and fish for praises, which is further fueled by voyeuristic curious nature in the audience. And being on mobile platform allows us to easily take screenshots of these Instagram pictures, to send them to group chat messages, and then to discuss about it.
Besides, being in the attention age where we experience an overdose of information with merchants constantly vying for consumers’ attention, such social commerce platforms would definitely prosper, because it better facilitates fashion discovery. But eventually eventually the who survives till the very end, depends on how well you understand your users, from facilitating the discovery, to paying attention to the minor details that enhances the shopping experience, and eventually making sure it is easy to get consumers to take money out of their wallets.
The brains behind the platform: Driven by passion for building a fashion startup and network
The team comprises of three co-founders, which includes Liling Ong, Roland Felber, and Manuel Gruber. Liling hails from a clinical psychology and law background and co-founded Jasmine & Lilac, an e-commerce platform selling fashion accessories. As for Roland, he worked as a management consultant and co-founded and ran a student-run business consultancy prior. And Manuel was previously the head of mobile at DailyDeal GmbH (which was acquired by Google in 2011). The three co-founders are all bonded by a common passion: To build a fashion startup and network for users.