The changing face of Fashion Online

As many of you would have read, I was privileged to meet with Piera and Philippe from Refinery 29 to have lunch with them on Monday and then listened to them speak at the Portable presentation held at Penthouse Mouse. They are two of the most humble and genuinely nice people I’ve met from New York to have achieved such success and yet still be so grounded and driven about what they want to do next.

Notes:
* They began (in 2005) at a time when there was a trend away from mass towards grass roots designers. Individualism was important and there was a big gap in the online publishing space for a niche fashion magazine.

* Their first version of Refinery 29 was like a department store map to the best shops in New York and offered an insiders guide to what was cool and happening at the time.

* They launched by supporting emerging talent like Alexander Wang, Opening Ceremony, Vera Cava, Rag & Bone and Erin Featherson.

* They believed and still believe that Risk is more important than experience and being flexible, organic and dynamic with their choices in both content and business strategies is what makes them successful.

* They currently have 1 million unique visitors per month with 100,000 email subscribers.

* They feel fashion has become a conversation and not a monologue and this ability to react to their subscriber’s comments has helped shape the business.

* Their top 5 inspirational sites they reference are:
Garance Dore
The Selby
The Cut
Polyvore
Lookbook.nu

* They believe there are 3 main ingredients to their content; entertainment, inspiration and information.

* They try to offer a real “mixture” of content, styling tips and information that appeals to a broad database but is still cutting edge so that they satisfy their growing database but also push their readers to try or adopt new trends.

* They monitor results closely; each team member (4 full time staff and 4 interns) gets an email from Piera each morning with stats from Google Analytics about what sections of the site were most popular, had the most click throughs and were commented on the most.

* They believe that Fashion is really just one big conversation and technology affords huge opportunity to communicate with others.

* The next 4 interesting trends in technology are:
1. Content – being true to your signature
2. Mobile – apps, e-commerce and entertainment
3. Crowd sourcing – the website Quirky
4. Location based services – FourSquare