What happens when following the fashion herd becomes wisdom of the masses? When everyone can become his or her own fashion editor? When “citizen” journalists replace glossy magazines as oracles of fashion?
The next big thing in fashion is not a hot young designer or a new label but an online evolution driven by peer-to-peer recommendation and consumers who want what they see others are buying online – in short, a new kind of conspicuous cyber consumption.
“It’s what I call Web 3.0,” explains Dawn Bebe, managing director of the UK’s first social shopping site for women, Osoyou.com. While the Web 2.0 label is used to refer to the current interactive phase of internet development, defined by blogging, social networking and “wiki” sites built with user-generated content, Bebe believes, “The next evolution for the web is social networks that have a purpose – vertical social networks…. This is where social shopping comes in. The thing that bonds these people is shopping and fashion.”
“We believe that peer-to-peer recommendation is already essential in e-commerce because shopping is a social and emotionally driven experience,” says Malte Goesche, chief executive and co-founder of iliketotallyloveit.com, a social shopping site based in Germany and named after a phrase used by Paris Hilton. “Recommendations by friends help you to discover products you weren’t aware of and didn’t know you needed. We are trying to establish iliketotallyloveit.com as a global online forum for fashionistas, gadget lovers and collectors of oddities,” says Goesche, who has a suitably reflexive approach to the site’s development. “You should let the community decide what it wants. If the interest of our heavy users shifts into a different direction, it is for us to make the move with them and give them the freedom to change the focus of the site. At the moment, we are catering to a crowd that likes to be associated with must-have gadgets, designer retail and hipness.”
So, while Osoyou.com operates like a Facebook for fashion, allowing users to sign up, browse the offerings on its digital high street and then bookmark their wishlist items into a digital wardrobe to be “shopcasted” – shared with their friends and the site’s other users – sites such as iliketotallyloveit.com offer users a chance to build up a maven-like reputation for hunting out and recommending niche products.
“Most products are bought offline as a result of social recommendations and the need to fit into a certain group or lifestyle. In social shopping, users can discover products online by chance, and see how people whose taste they admire think about them,” explains Goesche. “This way users can stumble upon products they weren’t actually looking for and go on to recommend them to friends and become popular for their expertise. Everyone knows the mainstream products and they are bestsellers. But it’s the niche products that are hard to discover, and if you have someone to point you in the right direction, you don’t have to dig for yourself but can benefit from a peer’s social capital.”
Gordon Gould, chief executive of California-based ThisNext.com, a popular social shopping site that covers a variety of products, believes companies need to learn how to recognise and empower connoisseurs and give them an online platform for contribution to their brands. “Our view is that social shopping, by tapping into the social web, will become way bigger than advertising online and through search engines. Marketers can’t use Google to sell shoes. Buying is a visual, emotional process.”
Osoyou.com’s Dawn Bebe, who was the managing director behind the launch of the successful weekly glossy magazine Grazia, is adamant that this emotive aspect will draw more women in particular into not only shopping online, but also away from traditional media channels such as glossy magazines. Crucially, Osoyou.com offers content, such as celebrity-driven daily blogs, to keep on driving traffic back to the site.
“In the year 2020, it is widely accepted that 40 per cent of all purchases will be made online,” she says. “Women in the UK spend about 90 minutes online on average every day. When there’s a proliferation of choice and there are so many brands to choose from and so many media sources telling you what to buy, consumers look for someone or something to edit their choice. People are starting to trust friends or those they consider to be their peers. If someone recommends something to you, you’re more likely to trust that recommendation and then go on to buy it.
“Five or 10 years ago, people used to look to magazines for that kind of referral but now, peer-to-peer referral is the first option,” she adds, coining the term “me-tail”, which fuses together media and retail to create a new consumer/media product. “Women’s magazines originally started as a way to bring communities together to share experiences and hard information. The natural next service for a women’s interest magazine was to be able to buy the products featured – like a catalogue – which is not so far removed from the idea of social shopping,” she says.
Goesche of iliketotallyloveit.com considers social shopping sites the ideal platform for many types of goods, including high-end and luxury items. “Most buyers of luxury goods are trying to be known as a person of taste and connoisseurship. Some like to show their wealth and social capital, manifested in what they consume, to everyone. In order to do so they need a platform and social shopping sites can provide the platform to do so,” he says.
My-wardrobe.com, a British boutique e-commerce site that is undergoing an overhaul following recent investment, is developing an offering more akin to a department store, with anchor brands as well as maternity and kid’s wear sections.
Sarah Curran, My-wardrobe.com’s founder, says that although many upmarket fashion labels have opted for the likes of Net-a-Porter.com, a designer brand shopping site, they also realise that the e-commerce market is huge and that online consumers will demand different shopping experiences – social shopping among them.
“Not everyone enjoys the Harvey Nichols or Selfridges experience,” Ms Curran says. “You’ve got to offer the customer different online shopping experiences and brands are realising this.” There is space on the web for more than one luxury fashion site, and social shopping has great potential for growth and sharing views on products. “Brands have got to be open and ready to take on opinion. Fear of the negative should not put them off.”
