In the past seven months, Fab has grown rapidly, registering 1.65 million users, who have purchased 750,000 products.

It now plans to grow even faster, with the help of this acquisition.

Both companies have a similar mission: To bring independent artists and craftsmen, who make aesthetically appealing and sometimes out-of-the ordinary items, to a large marketplace.

Fab.com does this mostly for home decor, and New York-based FashionStake does it mostly for fashion and apparel. The sites have the flavor of a Gilt Groupe, which sells high-end fashion at a discount, except they offer more undiscovered brands, at more reasonable prices.

In a blog post, Fab CEO Jason Goldberg said FashionStake co-founders Vivian Weng and Daniel Gulati will join the Fab company.

Goldberg did not disclose terms of the deal, but it’s possible that he tapped into a large cash reserve, which includes a $40 million round of capital raised last month from Andreessen Horowitz and others.

FashionStake, which launched in September 2010, has received investments from a number of players, including Battery Ventures, Forerunner Ventures and Gilt Groupe co-founder Alexis Maybank.

Last year, FashionStake acquired Moxsie, another retailer of independent fashion.

In October, the online fashion magazine attracted 4.3 million visitors, generating 40 million page views; it has 600,000 subscribers signed up for local editions in five cities nationwide.

To date, though, it has mostly monetized the company through advertising.

Co-founder Philippe von Borries said that 80 percent of the revenue this year will come from ads, and 20 percent from commerce. Next year, he hopes the ratio is closer to 40 percent from commerce.

“Content drives incredible engagement, and now that we have built such a sizable audience of women who tune in every day through email, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram — we are building exciting new opportunities to shop our content,” he said.

Today, the company is relaunching its e-commerce component, called Reserve. The site, which is separate from the editorial, will offer only a few items a day, and could be connected to the content that appears in the magazine; it is currently offering a selection of boots and handbags.

To support the launch, the company raised $4.5 million in funding this summer in a first round from Floodgate and First Round Capital.

Von Borries said the New York-based company is hiring aggressively to add to its current 49 employees, and that its revenues are on an annual run rate of $15 million. Last year, its revenues totaled $2 million.

On the site, shoppers add — or “follow” — celebrities and experts who share similar interests, to receive recommendations on the latest food, fashion, design and style.

In that way, OpenSky pushes product ideas to shoppers, somewhat in the way Twitter lets people discover information versus having to search for an answer on Google.

Caplan told me OpenSky has raised $30 million in fresh capital to continue building out the business.

The New York-based company, with offices in Los Angeles and Nashville, is only six months old and previously raised $19 million in two prior rounds.

New investor Providence Equity Partners led the financing. Existing investors Highland Capital Partners, Canaan Partners and the Raine Group also participated.

Some of the company’s talent includes celebrity chefs such as Bobby Flay and Italian food expert Lidia Bastianich, and pop culture figures like actress and reality TV star Kristin Cavallari, who will advise customers on the latest fashions.

In a recent offering, Flay, who has 164,626 followers, advised shoppers to purchase a spice bundle for $23. Fitness guru and motivation speaker Gabrielle Bernstein recommended a collapsible Hula-Hoop that’s easy to travel with.

Caplan said it’s an approach that’s really resonating with shoppers, particularly women in their 30s.

He said the company will break $1 million in sales this month and is on track for a $10 million run rate. Both order volume and revenues are growing 50 percent month over month.

The company already has 600,000 members signed up; they are now connecting to millions of shopping “experts.” It took the first 14 weeks for OpenSky to hit one million connections, 10 weeks to get its second million and three weeks to reach its third million. Customers are spending $50 on the average transaction, which is more than double Amazon’s average order of $22, Caplan said.

“This feels like such a modern way to shop, compared to the search box,” Caplan said. “There’s not a lot of soul in online shopping. We are putting the soul back into shopping.”

He added that walking into actual stores is engaging and entertaining. “I think Amazon is a fantastic company, and they have a lot of things they do really brilliantly, but I don’t think it’s the best way to shop.”

Many companies right now are challenging the original e-commerce model, and for good reason. Kleiner Perkins partner Mary Meeker noted in a report last week that e-commerce makes up 8 percent of overall commerce in the U.S. today, and continues to climb.

Caplan said the capital will be used to add more shopping verticals and experts to the site. Today, it has 75, with hundreds more coming.

As the former president of About.com, which relied on a distributed workforce to contribute answers to the site, Caplan believes he knows exactly how to get the business to click.

To make money, OpenSky is splitting the gross profit from the items sold with the experts on the site. It’s free to join as a member, and there’s a 90-day money-back guarantee. So far, it has experienced a 1 percent return rate.

“I personally love businesses where you partner with talent and create talent,” he said.

Think of it as the Netflix for fashion.

The 18-month-old company lets you rent high-end dresses and accessories for special occasions. It even gives you the prepaid envelope to send it all back when you are done–no dry cleaning necessary.

If you didn’t know better, you would have thought Rent the Runway starred in the hit movie “Bridesmaids.” That’s because there are dresses for most occasions, even a wedding that you aren’t willing to break the bank over.

Rent the Runway was founded by two Harvard Business grads, Jennifer Hyman and Jennifer Fleiss, and is announcing today that it has raised $15 million in venture capital from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. The funding follows a first round by Bain Capital Ventures and Highland Capital totaling $16 million. Aileen Lee, a partner at Kleiner Perkins, will join Runway’s board.

On the site, women browse from 25,000 dresses from 95 designers, such as Dolce and Gabbana and Vera Wang. Next, they enter a date for the event and their dress size. After that, you make a reservation, and can even get a back-up size free, so you don’t have to worry about it fitting on the big night.

Rental prices vary depending on the price of the dress. For example, a knee-length dress from Sachin + Babi rents for $125 and retails for $660. But a $2,250 peach-colored dress from Nina Ricci rents more than twice that at $300. In general, the colors and styles seem endless.

The investment will allow Rent the Runway to offer a wider selection of brands and price points. It also will go toward some of the less glamorous work, such as beefing up its back-end systems to handle future growth and pay for new warehouses outside of New York City (coming in January 2012).

If the model doesn’t already sound like the mail-order DVD rental business, the company is willing to draw the comparison itself. In a release, it said it will also be personalizing the shopping experience “using proprietary algorithms rivaling that of Netflix.”

So far, the company claims to already have more than one million members.

Part of its business proposition is also exposing women to new brands.

In that way, Fleiss, the company’s president, says the company can be used as a marketing and customer acquisition channel for its partnering brands. In a release, she said, “Ninety-eight percent of our customers are trying brands they’ve never before worn. We are introducing experiential brand marketing into the fashion industry–not just a onetime transaction–which is the power behind Rent the Runway.”

AOL will begin rolling out its plans to overhaul its panoply of content sites as early as today, a key part of its integration with the Huffington Post, sources familiar with the situation said.

AOL CEO Tim Armstrong will be sending out an internal memo on the topic soon, said sources with knowledge of the moves.

He will outline how the New York-based Internet portal, which paid $315 million to acquire the high-profile news and opinion site, will essentially close down dozens of its dedicated content sites–some being shuttered completely and others integrated with existing Huffington Post sites.

One example of the first is Politics Daily, as has been previously reported; it will no longer exist as a brand. Its staff is being integrated into the Huffington Post’s more robust political offerings.

It goes both ways, though–the Huffington Post’s travel site will be closed in favor of AOL’s stronger offering in that arena.

And still other well-known AOL brands, such as its PopEater celebrity site and its StyleList fashion and beauty site, will keep their names but no longer exist as separate destination sites. PopEater will be integrated into HuffPo’s entertainment and StyleList to its similar site.

[UPDATE: StyleList's status was shifted just this morning--it will remain a standalone brand and AOL's Shelterpop will become StyleList at Home, integrating into StyleList. Plus it will all now be called Stylist--losing the "e" and capped "L."]

The changes are causing some tension within AOL, given it is a drastic shift from relatively recent efforts to expand its portfolio of editorial sites.

In fact, some insiders are calling the recent vetting of which content sites to close and which to keep as “death panels,” a somewhat dicey reference to controversies over the Obama administration’s healthcare plan.

Also on deck for tomorrow will be letters sent out to freelancers about new plans to hire some–though not all–of them. According to several sources, AOL content head Arianna Huffington outlined the plan to editors recently, stressing the need to focus on staff-generated and more journalistically focused content.

One thing that is not happening is the appointment of a new editor-in-chief for AOL’s flagship tech news site, Engadget.

BoomTown reported on the recent departure of Engadget’s top two editors, Editor-in-Chief Josh Topolsky and Managing Editor Nilay Patel.

The news rocketed around the small echo chamber that is the tech blogosphere, which is no surprise since Engadget is one of the largest sites on the Web covering the tech sector.

In the interim, staffer Darren Murph has been appointed managing editor of Engadget. He reports to Joshua Fruhlinger, editorial director for Engadget, Switched and AOL Tech. Brad Hill is the business director for the properties.

Engadget is one of the largest in tech, with 14 million unique visitors a month. Its main competitor is Gawker’s Gizmodo. AOL also owns TechCrunch, another tech news site.

An email to AOL for comment has not yet been returned.

For Fashion Week, which kicks off Thursday at Lincoln Center, Tumblr is bringing in two dozen of the top fashion bloggers who use its site, putting them up in a hotel and sending them to myriad events, including backstage tours and a rooftop party. The plan is part of a push to raise its own profile and the profiles of its bloggers.

It’s also evidence of its sway. Tumblr’s acceptance by big-name designers is the latest sign of an increasingly cozy relationship between two strange bedfellows: the fashion and technology communities.
Luxury labels, which once shied away from e-commerce for fear of muddying their brands, are now embracing blogging and social-media tools such as Tumblr and Twitter because they provide a direct way to reach fashion-conscious consumers. The invited “Tumblrs,” as the bloggers are called, all have thousands of followers.

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The New York-based Internet company said it would “co-develop and co-produce new Web programming initially aimed at AOL’s growing women’s audience” with Endemol.

Endemol makes television shows, such as “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,” “Big Brother,” “Wipeout” and “Jerseylicious,” as well as Web series “Married On My Space 1 & 2″ and “Coupon Mom.”

AOL is working on several other content partnerships, said sources, to add to its previous ones.

AOL said the first two “built-if-sold”–meaning some big advertiser has to pony up–will be:

“Re-Dressed by America”: An interactive Web series where online users make over subjects facing a life-changing event (high school reunions, first dates, etc.) by voting on their hairstyles, fashion, accessories and more. The series will be featured on Stylelist.com and MyDaily.com.

“Mamá’s Recipe”: U.S. families compete for the best family recipes and share their secrets with the AOL audience. The series will be featured on KitchenDaily and AOL Latino.

Not exactly “The Sopranos,” but there you have it.

Here’s the full press release from AOL:

AOL INC. AND ENDEMOL USA ANNOUNCE WEB PROGRAMMING PRODUCTION PARTNERSHIP

Agreement Further Expands AOL’s Original Video Offerings

New York, NY–January 12. 2011– AOL Inc. (NYSE: AOL) and Endemol USA today announced a production agreement to co-develop and co-produce new Web programming initially aimed at AOL’s growing women’s audience, as well as at the broader AOL audience. The partnership will focus on creating premium, unscripted digital video content that will enhance the user experience by taking advantage of the real time, interactive and community nature of the Web.

“Endemol is a premiere producer of unscripted programming and their expertise in creating unique, interactive, popular shows, combined with AOL’s growing video audience will take digital production to the next level,” said David Eun, President of AOL Media & Studios. “Endemol is the latest in a string of partnerships that serve both the AOL consumers and our advertising partners.”

“We are thrilled to partner with such a successful and global leading company like AOL,” said David Goldberg, Chairman of Endemol North America. “This deal continues our growth as a leader in interactive digital entertainment, and we look forward to creating many genre-defining series with AOL.”

The first two built-if-sold series to be produced under the new agreement are:

“Re-Dressed By America”: An interactive web series where online users make over subjects facing a life-changing event (high school reunions, first dates, etc.) by voting on their hairstyles, fashion, accessories and more. The series will be featured on Stylelist.com and MyDaily.com.

“Mamá’s Recipe”: US families compete for the best family recipes and share their secrets with the AOL audience. The series will be featured on KitchenDaily (http://www.kitchendaily.com) and AOL Latino (http://latino.aol.com/).

AOL will promote each Web series throughout the AOL Network focusing on the sites and destinations relevant for each series’ demographic. Every series produced through this partnership will feature enhanced online programming, such as user voting, supplemental video clips and supporting blog content to create deeper user experiences, and opportunities for sponsors to integrate their messaging in creative and highly-engaging ways.

Endemol USA, one of the world’s leading producers of entertainment programming, will leverage its experience producing hit shows such as Emmy-award winning “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,” “Big Brother,” “Wipeout” and “Jerseylicious,” as well as the hit Web series “Married On My Space 1 & 2″ and “Coupon Mom” to create captivating Web series with AOL.

“You’ve Got…” the video series that debuted with the new AOL.com launch, generated nearly 8 million views in its first month, and featured a diverse guest list including Kelly Ripa, Barack Obama, Matt Damon and the Marines in Afghanistan. For comparison, that puts “You’ve Got…” on-pace with a top 10 Web series. Overall, video views on the new AOL.com rose more than 3X in its first month.

Yes, like a digital Heidi Klum, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo did declare that BoomTown’s outfit was “matador casual” at the start of an interview I did with him at D@CES last Friday.

The event, which we did in cooperation with the Consumer Electronics Show, was only three sessions in one afternoon. It was followed by a lovely party, all at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas.

Here’s a longish highlights video of my interview with Costolo, during which we talked about a wide range of issues facing the San Francisco microblogging service, as well as his take on my fashion choice.

But let it be said, while I did not comment on his sartorial selection at the time, as you will see below, Costolo really did pull off a very smart approximation of an Ellen DeGeneres look himself.

Here’s the highlights video of Costolo–the full video will be up in a week.

The other highlights videos at D@CES will also be posted this week, with the full videos next week: Microsoft Internet Explorer head Dean Hachamovitch on Wednesday, and Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang on Friday.

Enjoy:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110110/dces-highlights-video-twitter-ceo-dick-costolo-%c2%a1ole/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110107/ebay-augmented-reality-app-lets-you-try-it-on-before-you-buy/ http://allthingsd.com/20110107/ebay-augmented-reality-app-lets-you-try-it-on-before-you-buy/#comments Sat, 08 Jan 2011 00:46:52 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://emoney.allthingsd.com/?p=1413 One of the problems with ordering clothing online is not knowing whether it will fit or look good.

EBay has a technology fix for that using augmented reality on the mobile phone. Now you will never have to go to the mall!

The feature launched in Apple’s App Store yesterday as part of an update to eBay’s mobile app that launched five months ago.

There are two options: Try on sunglasses with “See It On” or build an outfit with “Outfit Builder.”

Here’s how it works:

With “See It On,” iPhone 4 owners can take a picture of themselves using a forward-facing camera and then pinch and zoom to fit the glasses to their face. Users can choose from a small section, including Aviator, Wayfarer or Rimless, in various colors. From there, they can search for matching listings on eBay.

For clothing, the augmented reality feature is called “Outfit Builder.” Users can designate favorite pieces of clothing with the eBay app and store them in their “Personalized Closet.” Then, they use “Outfit Builder” to mix and match items in the closet. To try the items on, the user can similarly overlay the clothes on a white canvas or a saved photo or live image (by pointing the camera toward a friend or a mirror).

Once an outfit is created, it can be saved for future reference or shared via email.

This is the first time eBay has tried using augmented reality in its apps, so it’s questionable how easy it will be to use, or how useful. It could be a fun novelty factor, which is working for other companies, like Polyvore, a start-up that allows people to create outfits online by mixing and matching fashions from all over the Web.

EBay’s mobile apps generated $2 billion in sales last year, which breaks down to 13 pieces of clothing, pairs of shoes or accessories every minute.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110107/ebay-augmented-reality-app-lets-you-try-it-on-before-you-buy/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20110106/lady-gaga126000-pasty-geeks-in-vegasboomtown-nirvana/ http://allthingsd.com/20110106/lady-gaga126000-pasty-geeks-in-vegasboomtown-nirvana/#comments Thu, 06 Jan 2011 14:24:35 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=39227

This is going to be good.

The iconic singer and performance artist Lady Gaga will be appearing at the Consumer Electronics Show later today to unveil “creations” she came up with for Polaroid.

Gaga announced last year here that she had been named the creative director of Polaroid.

As part of the collaboration that will debut her Polaroid “Grey Label” project, Gaga said a year ago that she would be coming up with “prototypes in marrying the fields of fashion/technology/photography innovation.”

Oh, goody. Fishnet stockings that can post pictures to Instagram!

I am considering going to the event–as ordered to by the shy and retiring Hollywood agent Ari Emanuel.

But it will likely be a mosh pit of nerdy dudes, so I’ll need to frontload starting at 10 am.

And you can watch it on Polaroid.com at 3:30 pm PT.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110106/lady-gaga126000-pasty-geeks-in-vegasboomtown-nirvana/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20101229/web-commerce-isnt-really-social-yet/ http://allthingsd.com/20101229/web-commerce-isnt-really-social-yet/#comments Thu, 30 Dec 2010 05:24:20 +0000 Liz Gannes http://networkeffect.allthingsd.com/?p=1731 My colleague Tricia Duryee has an excellent post up on eMoney about the big trends in e-commerce: Mobile, local and social. But when you think about massive new Web commerce businesses like Groupon and Gilt Groupe, they’re barely social at all.

Sites like Gilt are supposedly exclusive discount fashion communities, but the reality is they will take anyone who will pay. Groupon, which just got Google to say it was worth as much as $6 billion and is on the verge of an investor valuation of $4.75 billion, is a glorified email list. Sure, users must swarm a deal to activate it, but that always happens. And users can share deals with their friends on Facebook and Twitter, earning referral rewards if they buy a deal.

Hitwise researcher Bill Tancer told me via email that only 8.3 percent of Groupon traffic comes from social media referrals. That’s compared to 24 percent of Groupon traffic coming from shopping and classifieds Web pages (as in, ads) and 13 percent from email sites.

Upstream traffic from social networks as a portion of total Groupon traffic declined 83 percent from Nov. 9 to Nov. 10. Tancer said the move from social networks to email reflects the shift of Groupon visitors from early adopters to mainstream users.

The thing is, as seen particularly in the gaming business, social may have the capacity to be an incredible multiplier for any industry. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said more than once that he thinks e-commerce will be one of the next big sectors to be disrupted by companies that are built to be social from the ground up.

Linking social with commerce is tricky. Besides user reviews and accounts, which have been around forever, much of social commerce is very basic.

For example, Amazon recently launched the most minimal of minimal Facebook integrations, recommending products based on opted-in users’ public “Likes” and giving gift suggestions for friends with upcoming birthdays. The Web retailer could have gone much deeper, by, for instance, automatically connecting Amazon users to their Facebook accounts or helping users tell friends about new items they have bought.

But that would have raised privacy hackles, as with previous Facebook initiatives, such as the discontinued Facebook Beacon effort or the current Instant Personalization program.

Some retailers are trying to sell things directly on Facebook, such as Delta Air Lines tickets and JCPenney apparel. I see the point of trying to capture users on the sites where they spend all their time, but it seems a little awkward.

Not to say Facebook isn’t already developing a burgeoning business in virtual e-commerce through its gaming partners that could eventually extend to real-world goods (although the margins would be much worse).

And, yes, there are all sorts of real-world deals you can access by playing the “mayor game” on a local social service like Foursquare.

Also on the start-up front, the collage community Polyvore arranges deals and creates tools to help its two million users influence fashion designers, and indie retailer Moxsie asks its Twitter followers to help it choose what items to sell.

There are also start-ups, like Payvment and Milyoni, that provide tools for Facebook storefronts. And the purchase-sharing platforms Blippy and Swipely are social commerce taken to the extreme.

While none of those are Groupon-scale businesses, there are many playing around with the potentially explosive combination of social and commerce.

One cool example of social commerce I just saw today was in a post by E.B. Boyd at Fast Company.

Tea Collection, a boutique children’s clothing maker, used the Facebook Like button to decide which of its selection of discontinued girls’ dresses to deeply discount. When a $59 dress was chosen by user Likes, it was discounted to $10. It quickly sold out at a loss, but additional purchases by customers brought in by the sale gave the company one of its biggest overall sales days ever.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101229/web-commerce-isnt-really-social-yet/feed/ 9 http://allthingsd.com/20101221/fashion-community-strutting-user-generated-trends-down-the-cat-walk/ http://allthingsd.com/20101221/fashion-community-strutting-user-generated-trends-down-the-cat-walk/#comments Wed, 22 Dec 2010 02:58:14 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://emoney.allthingsd.com/?p=919 Fashionistas may roll their eyes at the effort, but Polyvore is trying to make designing and merchandising apparel more data driven–and presumably less arbitrary.

To do so, the online fashion community will be crunching user-generated data to roll out analytical tools for designers and retailers. Think Quantcast or Compete, but for the fashion industry.

The beta tool, called Style Analytics, will be free and openly available to anyone on Polyvore’s Web site. It’s expected to launch officially tomorrow afternoon.

The data points are coming from its community of users, who create virtual outfits–or what they call “collages” of clothing–by mixing and matching shirts, pants, dresses, shoes, skirts and accessories from around the Web.

Jess Lee, Polyvore’s co-founder and head of product management, said it will show what’s trending, so brands can make better decisions. Specifically, it shows how consumers associate your brand, for instance, with Abercrombie & Fitch or Juicy Couture.

“The fashion industry, from designing to merchandising and marketing is inefficient and not data driven,” she said. “Our goal is to open it up and make it more democratic and more data driven.”

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company has raised about $8.7 million in venture capital since 2007. Each month, its two million registered users create one million collages that generate 140 million page views.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101221/fashion-community-strutting-user-generated-trends-down-the-cat-walk/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101220/ebay-acquires-berlin-based-brands4friends-for-200-million/ http://allthingsd.com/20101220/ebay-acquires-berlin-based-brands4friends-for-200-million/#comments Mon, 20 Dec 2010 17:05:09 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://emoney.allthingsd.com/?p=856 It’s been a busy shopping season for eBay, which has made its third acquisition in as many weeks.

Today, eBay said it has acquired brands4friends, a German online retailer for $200 million in cash. Earlier this month, eBay announced the acquisitions of Milo, which keeps a database of local retailers’ inventory, and Critical Path, a mobile application development shop.

EBay expects brands4friends to strengthen its position as a leading online fashion destination in Europe. Brands4friends claims to be “Germany’s largest online shopping club,” which offers top brands at reduced prices to members through limited daily offers.

Online shopping clubs account for 20 percent of online fashion sales in Europe, according to eBay’s own research.

The 3-year-old company has about 3.5 million members and 200 employees.

As part of the deal, eBay will also assume brands4friends’ equity interests in U.K. shopping club secretsales.com and in Japan’s brands4friends.jp. The acqusition is expected to close in the first quarter, pending regulatory approval.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101220/ebay-acquires-berlin-based-brands4friends-for-200-million/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101117/a-fashion-shopping-site-google-style/ http://allthingsd.com/20101117/a-fashion-shopping-site-google-style/#comments Wed, 17 Nov 2010 18:46:08 +0000 Voices http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=32715 Judging by its new entry in the women’s fashion department, Boutiques.com, Google’s personal style is Mix ‘N’ Match Eclectic. The site blends computer geekery (visual search and algorithmic recommendations) with fashion geekery (collections curated by taste-makers) and accessorizes the outfit with social features (create your own boutique and follow others).

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101117/a-fashion-shopping-site-google-style/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20101014/sugar-inc-goes-shopping-buys-myperfectsale/ http://allthingsd.com/20101014/sugar-inc-goes-shopping-buys-myperfectsale/#comments Thu, 14 Oct 2010 19:47:17 +0000 Beth Callaghan http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=31099 Sugar Inc., the San Francisco-based, women-focused network of content sites, just keeps stretching its legs. The company announced today that it has acquired MyPerfectSale, an online shopping service for high-end fashion, which will join its ShopStyle network of shopping sites. Last month, CEO Brian Sugar spoke with Kara Swisher about a couple of other recent expansion moves–its first foray into local in June and its first foray into Facebook in July, with the launch of a shopping game called Retail Therapy.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101014/sugar-inc-goes-shopping-buys-myperfectsale/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101004/amazon-to-acquire-online-retailer-buyvip/ http://allthingsd.com/20101004/amazon-to-acquire-online-retailer-buyvip/#comments Mon, 04 Oct 2010 21:50:16 +0000 Eyk Henning http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=30636 Amazon.com Inc. has reached an agreement to buy the Spanish internet retailer BuyVip for around €70 million ($96.5 million), a person close to the matter said Monday, as the company seeks to break into premium online retail.

The deal will be announced this week, the person added. BuyVip offers overstock items from brands like Dolce & Gabbana, Louis Vuitton or Levi’s for steep discounts. The company doesn’t buy the stock itself but acts as a broker between fashion brands and consumers using its marketing and online-distribution channels. “BuyVip has huge growth potential. After sales of €60 million in 2009 the company now expects sales of over €130 million,” the person close to the sale process said.

BuyVip is owned mainly by a consortium of private-equity companies including Cipio Partners, Kennet Partners, Spanish fund Debaeque and the venture-capital arm of German media conglomerate Bertelsmann AG. Amazon ( (AMZN)) wasn’t immediately available for comment.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101004/amazon-to-acquire-online-retailer-buyvip/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100928/aol-officially-adds-5min-to-its-roster-next/ http://allthingsd.com/20100928/aol-officially-adds-5min-to-its-roster-next/#comments Tue, 28 Sep 2010 13:25:52 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=24003 Here’s the official press release announcing AOL’s acquisition of 5Min Media. Sources familiar with the transaction tell me it’s an all-cash deal at the high end of the $50 million to $65 million range I reported earlier today. So let’s call it $65 million.

That’s a nice outcome for 5Min’s team, and for its investors, who put in $13 million, including Globespan Capital Partners and Spark Capital. (I mistakenly identified Scott Kurnit as an angel investor in the company. He was not.) Interesting that AOL (AOL), which has extensive reach already, felt it needed to invest in a distribution play, but you can read CEO Tim Armstrong’s explanation below.

And perhaps someone can ask him about it if he makes another acquisition announcement in the near future.

AOL ACQUIRES 5MIN MEDIA, WEB’S LARGEST VIDEO CONTENT SYNDICATION PLATFORM

Combination of 5min Media and AOL’s Video Capabilities Creates Powerful
End-to-End Offering

New York, NY, September 28, 2010 – AOL Inc. [NYSE: AOL] today announced it has acquired 5min Media, the Web’s largest video syndication platform.* The acquisition allows AOL to significantly expand its consumer offering of contextually relevant, high-quality video across its sites, increasing the AOL Network’s appeal to advertisers and is expected to further enhance the distribution and monetization of AOL-produced original video content throughout the Web.** Deal terms were not disclosed.

“Our acquisition of 5min Media is the latest in a number of steps we have taken this year to better position AOL to capture the growing video opportunity on the Web,” said Tim Armstrong, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of AOL. “AOL is building a video ecosystem for the next decade. 5min Media is the perfect complement to our powerful video capabilities — it provides a missing piece in the AOL value chain that completes our end-to-end video offering from content creation through syndication and distribution to the consumer experience and monetization.”

“AOL and 5min Media share the same excitement about the direction our industry is taking, and our complementary video capabilities make us a compelling fit and an attractive combination for content creators and publishers,” said Ran Harnevo, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, 5min Media. “We’ve seen rapid and successful growth as an independent organization and becoming part of AOL is a natural next step. We’re confident that AOL’s organizational horsepower, combined with the vast library, audience and syndication capabilities 5min Media offers, present compelling opportunities for AOL as well as the content creators we work with and the publishers we serve.”

Leading Video Syndication Network and Library to Enhance AOL’s Properties

5min Media is the world’s leading video syndication network with a library of more than 200,000 categorized, tagged and rated videos from more than 1,000 of the world’s largest media companies and professional independent video producers. Founded in 2006 and headquartered in New York City with offices in Tel Aviv, 5min Media has been named the largest U.S. independent video property by comScore, with more than 20 million unique viewers and more than 130 million video streams (including ad and content videos) in the U.S. in August 2010. 5min Media’s growing network of 800 partner sites allows content creators to reach this audience of targeted viewers across 21 different verticals, including six verticals – Home, Food, Beauty / Fashion, Health, Travel and Pets – that lead their categories, according to comScore Video Metrix, August 2010. VideoSeed, 5min Media’s proprietary semantic technology, contextually matches the most relevant videos with a partner site’s text content to enhance the consumer experience and increase monetization rates.

AOL has already begun to integrate 5min Media’s video content on its sites through a commercial agreement executed prior to the acquisition. “With 5min Media we’ll be able to add more video inventory to our pages. Importantly, we’ll also be able to identify video content holes among our sites, tap our StudioNow capabilities to fill those needs and create a truly ‘demand informed’ video library,” Armstrong said.

Combination Completes Next Step in AOL’s Value Chain

With the addition of 5min Media, AOL will significantly increase its consumer offering in video programming and connect consumers with high-quality video. In January, AOL acquired StudioNow, the premier online platform for quality video content creation and distribution. With StudioNow, AOL has formed a fully functional platform to produce high-quality video content in a rapid, cost-effective and scalable way for both AOL as well as third-party publishers. In addition, AOL is forging exciting new partnerships to provide relevant content to specific audiences, including partnering with: The Ellen DeGeneres Show; Marlo Thomas; The Jonas Group and MGX Lab to found Cambio (www.cambio.com); and A Squared Entertainment LLC to create children’s content featuring Warren Buffett, Gisele Bündchen, Martha Stewart and the late Carl Sagan.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100928/aol-officially-adds-5min-to-its-roster-next/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20100924/exclusive-former-googler-cassidy-steps-down-as-polyvore-ceo/ http://allthingsd.com/20100924/exclusive-former-googler-cassidy-steps-down-as-polyvore-ceo/#comments Fri, 24 Sep 2010 21:54:44 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=34180

Sukhinder Singh Cassidy (pictured here), former president of Google’s Asia-Pacific and Latin American operations, is leaving her CEO job at the fashion and shopping social network Polyvore.

Co-founder Pasha Sadri, the creator of Yahoo (YHOO) Pipes, will take over from Cassidy as the company’s top exec.

According to sources, the pair had disagreed on scaling and strategic direction. The announcement was made internally at the start-up this afternoon.

The company confirmed the move (see statements below).

The registered site allows users to “mix & match products from your favorite stores” into fashion “sets” on any topic, from Haiti to the late designer Alexander McQueen.

In other words, everyone can play at being be a stylist, merchandiser or, if aspirations are high enough, presumably, the editor of Vogue magazine.

Founded in 2007, Polyvore has garnered $8.1 million in funding from Benchmark Capital, Harrison Metal and Matrix Partners. It has just over a dozen employees and is based in Mountain Vew, Calif.

Sadri said in a previous interview that Polyvore was founded to allow people to link self-expression with real-world brands and products. The odd name for the company is a combination that seems to roughly mean the devouring of many or much.

Cassidy came to Polyvore in February.

She had previously left the search giant and joined venture firm Accel Partners as a CEO-in-residence last April.

“I was at the end of my streak [at Google] and ready to take the next step and run or grow my own company,” she said at the time. “It is key for me to be stepping out and spreading my wings now.”

Singh Cassidy was one of Google’s more visible execs and one of its highest-ranking women leaders. She had been at Google (GOOG) since 2003.

Previously, she was at Yodlee–an online banking start-up, which was backed by Accel–along with stints at Amazon (AMZN) and OpenTV.

Here is a video interview I did with the pair in late July, as well as with product head Jess Lee:

Here are statements from both Sadri and Cassidy:

We are grateful to have had Sukhinder with us at Polyvore. She is an incredibly talented leader who has scaled our company with new partnerships and raised our profile in the industry. We are immensely appreciative of her contributions to Polyvore. However, at this point in time, we have different visions on how to scale the company and take advantage of the opportunities ahead of us. As a result, the Board, Sukhinder and I have reached an agreement where I will resume responsibilities as CEO, a role I had prior to Sukhinder joining. When we founded the company, we believed we could be the style site where people could connect and share their ideas. Polyvore has grown to over 7 million unique visitors a month; a fashion set being created every 3 seconds and partnerships with Nike, Lancome and others.

Sukhinder will stay on as an advisor to the company as we grow and scale.

Polyvore is an amazing company with a strong community, product and team. The company has endless opportunities ahead of it to become the destination site for fashion style. In the seven months I have been at Polyvore, I have been pleased to scale the company with revenue, marketing, partnerships and key talent. However, at this point in time the founders and I have different visions for how to scale the company further and realize these opportunities. As a result the Board, Pasha and I have agreed that I will be moving on from my current role at the company. I will continue to serve as an advisor.

I plan to take a few months off to spend with my family. I am delighted to have worked with an incredible team in an incredible market space, and wish the team all success in the years to come.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100924/exclusive-former-googler-cassidy-steps-down-as-polyvore-ceo/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20100826/gilt-groupes-susan-lyne-talks-about-fashion-local-and-not-ipo/ http://allthingsd.com/20100826/gilt-groupes-susan-lyne-talks-about-fashion-local-and-not-ipo/#comments Thu, 26 Aug 2010 21:03:10 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=32936

Yesterday, BoomTown dropped into the lower Park Avenue offices of the New York-based Gilt Groupe, the online fashion retail site.

Since 2007, the site has raised $83 million from General Atlantic and Matrix Partners, giving it a $400 million valuation and spurring interest from investment bankers who think Gilt might be a good candidate for an initial public offering.

That’s doubtful for now, given how important it is for Gilt to solidify and expand its business, even as competition increases.

But already, Gilt has built an important consumer brand online, using its funding to expand the member-based service that offers a range of well-known fashion brands and luxury goods at sample sale prices, much like the originator of the idea–France’s Vente-Privee.

To keep all the fashion moving forward, Gilt hired former Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (MSO) CEO Susan Lyne, who also was a big-time television exec at ABC, in 2008.

Along with a turbocharge of its operations as its sales grow, Gilt is also attempting to expand its offerings to travel and other experiences, via its Jetsetter site, and growing its base of local “city” sites for a range of services, such as spas.

Also on deck: More personalization for users, to better targets deals, as well as mobile versions of Gilt.

Of course, Gilt is operating in a very competitive arena, with rivals coming at the business from a number of different ways, such as Groupon, the hot discount deals start-up.

Here is the video interview I had with Lyne at Gilt’s Manhattan offices about all this and more:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100826/gilt-groupes-susan-lyne-talks-about-fashion-local-and-not-ipo/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20100730/the-polyvore-team-talks-about-user-generated-fashion-stylists-and-more/ http://allthingsd.com/20100730/the-polyvore-team-talks-about-user-generated-fashion-stylists-and-more/#comments Fri, 30 Jul 2010 14:07:10 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=31518

Earlier this week, I headed down to Mountain View, Calif., to the downtown HQ of Polyvore–the unusually named start-up aimed at the inner stylist in everyone–to talk about the economics of fashion online.

The odd name is a combination that roughly means the devouring of many or much–which at Polyvore translates into leopard prints, kitten heels or the rubber clothes of Lady Gaga.

The registered site, with six million unique monthly visitors, allows users to “mix & match products from your favorite stores” into fashion “sets” on any topic, concept or–in BoomTown’s taste-challenged case–fleece and Pumas.

You can use any soft-goods image from any Web site to do this, also adding music or other visual elements. Polyvore has already branched out into interior design and other arenas.

In February, to up the ante, the innovative fashion and shopping social network hired Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, former president of Asia-Pacific and Latin American operations for Google (GOOG).

At the time, Singh Cassidy said she was attracted to the viral, technological and global nature of the site, which was co-founded in 2007 by Pasha Sadri, the creator of Yahoo (YHOO) Pipes.

Polyvore has garnered $8.1 million in funding from Benchmark Capital, Harrison Metal and Matrix Partners.

Whether it can turn into a big money-making business–it currently has a mixed revenue plan of advertising and sponsorship and also sales lead generation–will be interesting to see.

But it is clear from the 20 million sets created so far, there is a passion to fashion that is easily tapped online.

Here’s the video of an interview I had with Singh Cassidy, Sadri and product head Jess Lee, another former Googler, along with a short tour of Polyvore’s HQ:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100730/the-polyvore-team-talks-about-user-generated-fashion-stylists-and-more/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20100628/exclusive-tyra-banks-picks-demand-as-americas-next-top-digital-business-model/ http://allthingsd.com/20100628/exclusive-tyra-banks-picks-demand-as-americas-next-top-digital-business-model/#comments Tue, 29 Jun 2010 03:00:30 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=29960

Well-known modeling icon Tyra Banks has struck a partnership with Demand Media to create a new digital brand focused on fashion and beauty.

The deal between the Santa Monica, Calif.-based online content maker and Banks’s New York beauty and entertainment company, Bankable, will include the development of a Web site, online video offerings and mobile applications.

“Their strategy, team and technology are outstanding, and the company has developed a unique method for quickly creating popular online platforms by providing visitors with exactly the kinds of content they’re looking for,” wrote Banks in an email to BoomTown tonight. “It became clear to us that Demand Media has developed something truly innovative and that they would be the perfect partner as we work to grow Bankable Digital into a significant part of our business.”

The deal with Banks is a high-profile one for Demand, which is seeking to expand its content to more premium offerings.

“This is where media is going,” said Demand CEO Richard Rosenblatt. “We’re going to link our huge amount of content and writers to her ethos around beauty inside and out.”

As part of the deal–which is not unlike the Livestrong health and fitness site created by Demand and cyclist Lance Armstrong–Banks is receiving shares in Demand, which is widely expected to file for an initial public offering in the near future.

“What Oprah did for television, we think Tyra can do for digital content in the fashion, health and beauty space,” said Joanne Bradford, who was recently hired by Demand from her job as the top advertising sales exec at Yahoo (YHOO) to turbocharge its premium advertising efforts.

This is exactly in that wheelhouse, mashing up a well-known celebrity with the vast stores of content Demand produces from its army of search-fueled freelancers.

Banks has certainly become an entertainment powerhouse since she retired from her supermodel days.

But while she is developing books too, Banks has been focused mostly on television, with her own talk show, “The Tyra Banks Show,” which just wrapped up after five years, as well as the megahit, “America’s Next Top Model.”

The most recent show she is producing is called “True Beauty” on ABC, in which good-looking contestants think they are being judged for beauty on the outside, but are actually being scored based on their kindness and other inner attributes.

Currently, Banks’s Web site is mostly promotional, although she also has a potentially large online fan base, with 1.6 million Twitter followers and an inspirational self-help image that is likely to translate well in a more interactive setting.

Whether that will bring big bucks or not is uncertain, of course. So far, Bradford said Demand has not signed up advertisers, but added that this is just the kind of site they will welcome and have been asking for.

“Advertisers are looking for new kinds of content online to be associated with,” she said. “We think Tyra has the kind of message that will attract a really engaged audience online.”

In fact, Banks said she plans to be very engaged in the creation and operation of the online destination.

“Anyone who knows me knows that, once I commit, I’m in 100 percent,” she said. “I plan to be very involved from the early design stage to the choice of videos, articles and special features, to the launch and marketing of the site.”

Here’s the official press release, and below it, the full video of Rosenblatt talking about Demand’s strategies around content, in an interview at the eighth D: All Things Digital conference earlier this month:

DM Bankable Release FINAL2

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100628/exclusive-tyra-banks-picks-demand-as-americas-next-top-digital-business-model/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100419/in-advance-of-facebooks-f8-coo-sheryl-sandberg-strikes-a-pose-in-vogue-natch/ http://allthingsd.com/20100419/in-advance-of-facebooks-f8-coo-sheryl-sandberg-strikes-a-pose-in-vogue-natch/#comments Mon, 19 Apr 2010 20:59:41 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=27095

Dressed in a bright red sheath and posed in front of a tangle of tech doodads, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg gets her Vogue moment this month.

Literally, in a prominent feature in the latest issue of the famous fashion magazine, as you can see above (click on the image to make it larger).

On Wednesday, though, Sandberg will likely be a little more geeked out at the social networking site’s big F8 developer’s event in San Francisco before an audience of mostly fashion-challenged dudes.

Until then, check out the Vogue article, titled, “What She Saw at the Revolution,” in which Sandberg is portrayed as a fast-moving power exec with a big and bustling dining room table. (It seats 14!)

Here’s an example of some of the less breathless text:

“An hour after work on a Thursday evening, she can, without a hitch, welcome 40 women into her home for dinner; just before the first guests arrive, she tucks her two pre-schoolers into bed, disappears for ten minutes, then emerges to answer the door in a sleeveless Calvin Klein dress and black Prada ankle boots.”

Well, it’s all true, as BoomTown has witnessed at the Sandberg-organized gatherings, which I have dubbed “Ladyfest.”

There are actually some fresh anecdotes in the piece, including a scene in which Sandberg and Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg hide in her basement so that her friend and former Yahoo exec, Sue Decker–who was staying at her house at the time–wouldn’t find out about her discussions to move to Facebook from Sandberg’s big job at Google (GOOG).

Also interesting: Sandberg’s husband, well-known Silicon Valley entrepreneur David Goldberg, hinting about Facebook’s revenue potential, as well as some kind of funnel drawing she does for the presumably math-challenged writer about advertising marketing spending.

Overall, like most fashion magazine profiles, it’s a big wet Chanel-lipsticked kiss, but well worth the read.

In a less fashionable arena, here are two highlight videos from an interview I did with Sandberg and Zuckerberg at the sixth D: All Things Digital conference in 2008:

[Photograph by Norman Jean Roy for "Vogue"]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100419/in-advance-of-facebooks-f8-coo-sheryl-sandberg-strikes-a-pose-in-vogue-natch/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20100416/retailer-gilt-sees-ipad-app-driving-fashion-sales/ http://allthingsd.com/20100416/retailer-gilt-sees-ipad-app-driving-fashion-sales/#comments Fri, 16 Apr 2010 10:00:22 +0000 Rachel Dodes http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=23975 Executives at Gilt Groupe, the fashion retailer known for its online-only sales of high-end items, had expected to do well with their iPad app, but they were surprised by some of the results after the device was introduced.

On April 4, a day after the device debuted, 2.4 percent of Gilt’s sales came from the iPad, a higher portion than expected, said Gilt founder and chairman Kevin Ryan and Chief Executive Susan Lyne in an interview. The company also said that although women comprise its core constituency, iPad users seem to be mostly men. Within the first 10 days, sales of men’s products drove 63 percent of iPad-generated revenue, the company said.

The free “Gilt for iPad” app, one of five that were highlighted in Apple’s (AAPL) app store, has high-resolution images of products with “pinch and zoom” technology, quick navigation, and an easy shopping cart drag-and-drop feature.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100416/retailer-gilt-sees-ipad-app-driving-fashion-sales/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100413/digital-bromance-producer-lloyd-braun-and-msns-scott-moore-talk-about-online-content-on-a-tv-set/ http://allthingsd.com/20100413/digital-bromance-producer-lloyd-braun-and-msns-scott-moore-talk-about-online-content-on-a-tv-set/#comments Tue, 13 Apr 2010 19:49:33 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=26515

Yesterday, BoomTown interviewed Hollywood producer Lloyd Braun (pictured here) onstage in Las Vegas at the National Association of Broadcasters annual confab about the future of television in the digital age.

While broadcasters finally seem to finally be embracing the fact that everything in their world is going digital and that business models are fast-changing, it’s still a long and complicated road forward.

Braun, as well as many other longtime entertainment execs, are trying to forge the gap, by trying to operate in both worlds. While his stint as the top media exec at Yahoo (YHOO) did not go so well, he kept on the rocky digital content path, even as he continued to produce more traditional fare for television.

So last week, I motored down to Long Beach to the set of a very elaborate pilot for an action drama that he is shooting for NBC called “The Cape,” to talk about television, as well the latest Web site he launched in partnership with Microsoft’s MSN.

Called “Glo,” the Web site is a highly stylized women’s lifestyle destination in partnership with magazine giant Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S.

Glo is the second dramatic site designed, created and run by the Los Angeles-based BermanBraun, which is headed by Braun and his business partner, Gail Berman.

The first was an innovative celebrity site, Wonderwall, whose consumer engagement metrics have pleased advertisers so much that MSN ordered up another one aimed at fashion, decor, relationships and beauty.

Here’s the video of an interview I did with Braun, as well as MSN U.S. head Scott Moore, in the bowels of the Queen Mary’s engine room, where “The Cape” is being shot:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100413/digital-bromance-producer-lloyd-braun-and-msns-scott-moore-talk-about-online-content-on-a-tv-set/feed/ 1