Research: Opening the Closet of Polyvore
Polyvore, a social media platform with a focus on fashion, proves to be an exciting platform for those with even the slightest interest in fashion to take a chance with it. Founded in 2007, a trio of engineers from Yahoo, Pasha Sadri, Guangwei Yuan, and Jianing Hu, created an app to express, create, and buy outfit ideas from fashion all over the internet. A short description of what Polyvore is from the site itself is "a new way to discover and shop for things you love in fashion". This description is a simple way to summarize the innovative platform that is Polyvore.
Polyvore main use is to create "sets" of different outfit pieces (and more..) from around the web to create a look to share with others. Each set typically features an outfit, accessories, some eye candy for the set, and a relevant caption (with a title for the outfit or the occasion).
Users create and share their sets with the Polyvore community. Each user can use hashtags to itemize their set and allow it to be discovered. Creating a set is not difficult, it starts with searching for the first item you want in your set whether it be a dress, necklace, or top and then choosing the create a new set option and continuing to search and browse for items to go along with it and adding them to the set you created. Once all the items are in the set they can be toyed with meaning re-sized, replaced, and made to appeal to the eye. A simple look at how to use Polyvore is demonstrated in the infographic below.
Sadri, the founding CEO, described Polyvore as the "Legos of fashion". This analogy really allows someone who is not sure what Polyvore is to make a connection because the site is like building blocks of fashion. In recent years, the fashion site has added home decor elements to allow sets to be created to create looks for rooms much like outfits.
I think the most innovative part of Polyvore is that although creating sets is fun and visual appealing and could be used just simply for fun and to inspire, almost everything that is used in a set is able to be bought. The item whether clothes, perfumes, or furniture almost always have an external link to purchase the item. This feature of Polyvore really drives business and brands to strive to be featured on Polyvore because of its drive for business. A case study by Shopify.com proved that Polyvore had the highest order cost over many other social media platforms. This study brings Polyvore a lot of notability through out the web as a place for brands to go when dealing with eCommerce. An infographic from the study is below.
The audience of Polyvore started out being fashion forward woman but has expanded to a larger audience of creative men and women looking to be inspired, shop, and inspire others. Yahoo being the parent platform for Polyvore really provides a strong base for the app to influence others, when researching Polyvore and seeing how soon it came up in different search engines, when searching "Fashion App" it is usually the first to come up as a direct link and only things that come before it is articles which almost all feature Polyvore on lists of the best fashion apps.
Polyvore at first look would seem to be a niche platform turned app but after research and personal use of the app it is a user friendly app for anyone with any type of interest in fashion or online shopping for clothing.
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