Fashion 2.0: Pioneering stylehive

It was bound to happen.

Some of the most innovative (and forward-thinking) online fashion retailers are starting to use the Web 2.0 technologies that have been successfully used by other (non-fashion) online retailers like amazon.com.

WWD revealed today that stylehive.com will be launching web 2.0 collaborations with Gap, Shopbop, Lisa Kline, Ron Herman, Hayden-Harnett, GenArt and others in the coming days. Stylehive will be enabling online retailers to create branded hives, which can act as communities for online shoppers and which will drive traffic to the e-commerce sites. When compared to advertising rates, this is a potentially low-cost way of acquiring new customers, and then creating a relationship with them that will be facilitated by stylehive. The Business of Fashion has been eagerly anticipating moves like this, and the potential of Fashion 2.0 has been discussed in previous posts and links of the week.

It will also be interesting to see how entrenched players like Net-a-Porter, Yoox and eLuxury incorporate these kinds of features into their own sites. One could learn a lot from Macy's experience, which has added comments to its site and discovered that:

Since Macy's added reviews to its site in September, customers have been posting an average of 225 reviews a day. The comments are screened only for profanity and relevance. "We find a lot of value in customers being able to share information with each other. There is a lot of credibility in a customer to customer exchange," said a Federated spokesman
                                                                                                                                        WWD, 16 May 2006

While the stylehive and Macy's option might not be the best route for exclusive luxury and fashion brands to take, it will help to demonstrate how interactive engagement with shoppers can drive sales and increase loyalty. As Brendan Hoffman, CEO of Neiman Marcus direct told WWD, "Potentially, there's a lot of value with that, it just has to be done within the Neiman Marcus experience."

We'll be watching to see how things go and looking for the key lessons for those brands and e-tailers in the higher-end space, with more to lose in terms  of reputation and more to protect in terms of brand value.You can learn more about stylehive from their blog.