Polyvore

Polyvore
Web address polyvore.com
Available in English
Launched February 1, 2007
Alexa rank
 Increase 1440[1]

Polyvore is a community powered social commerce website. Members curate products into a shared product index and use them to create image collages called "Sets". Active Polyvore communities exist in the areas of fashion, interior design, and artistic expression. As of May 2014, Polyvore received 20 million monthly unique visitors.[2][3]

Headquartered in the Silicon Valley, Polyvore is funded by Benchmark Capital, Matrix Partners, DAG Ventures, Goldman Sachs, and Vivi Nevo (NV Investments).[4] Polyvore also opened an office in New York City in August 2012[5]

History

Polyvore started as a prototype developed by Pasha Sadri in August 2006. Jianing Hu and Guangwei Yuen joined Sadri to form the founding team to work on launching Polyvore. The team bootstrapped toward the launch of the first version of the website, which occurred in February 2007[6]—Polyvore Inc. was formed in August of the same year. The company closed its US$2.5 million series A funding from Benchmark, Harrison Metal, Reid Hoffman, and Nirav Tolia in December 2007.[4]

In its first year of creation, Jess Lee, an early Polyvore fan and user, emailed Sadri with a set of product suggestions.[7] Sadri explained in 2013: "The email was unlike any feedback we’d ever gotten ... It was a two-page-long analysis, detailing ‘this is broken, we can fix it this way.’" Following an informal meeting, Sadri invited Lee to join the company, which she did in March 2008—Lee was later recognized as an honorary co-founder of the company.[4][2]

In August 2009, Polyvore reached four million unique visitors, 150 million pageviews a month, and received US$5.6 million in series B funding led by Matrix Partners, alongside previous investors Benchmark Capital and Harrison Metal Capital.[8]

The New Yorker profiled Polyvore in March 2010, calling it a “fashion democracy” and a “world of virtual Anna Wintours”. At the time, Polyvore received 6.6 million unique visitors.[9]

Polyvore reached profitability in 2011 with GigaOm quoting “Polyvore’s product-first strategy seems to be paying off: an eighth of Polyvore’s audience comes back to the site more than 100 times per month.”[10] That same year, Polyvore was featured in Entrepreneur Magazine’s 100 Most Brilliant Companies of 2011[11] and Time Magazine’s 50 Best Websites of 2011.[12]

Polyvore closed on a US$14 million Series C funding round,[13] bringing its total VC backing to $22 million in January 2012. Shortly afterward in February, Polyvore partnered with CoverGirl to launch "Polyvore Live", a live-streamed fashion show during Mercedes Benz Fashion Week, that showcased the collections of four alumni from the Fashion Institute of Technology, including Ven Budhu, who later appeared on Project Runway.[14] That same year, Polyvore was selected for Fast Company’s 50 Most Innovative Companies of 2012.[15]

In August 2012, Polyvore opened its first-ever New York office in SoHo. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg issued a personal welcome to Polyvore stating, “By opening an office here, Polyvore is joining the growing group of tech companies who recognize that the benefits of being in New York City are irresistible, regardless of where a startup began.”[3] In November of the same year, the company launched its inaugural iOS app and, at the same time, the TechCrunch online publication associated Polyvore's website with a 19 million monthly unique visitor count.[16]

In July 2013, Lee was profiled as the Polyvore CEO in a Wired online article that described her as an "obsessive user" prior to her recruitment. Lee explained to the publication, “Influencers in fashion right now are a cliquey club in New York that’s very hard to get into,” and asked, "Can we shape the actual trends that happen?"[2]

In May 2014, the company launched its first Android app at a time when it was identified as receiving 20 million unique visitors per month. By the time of the Android app launch, over three million members had downloaded the Polyvore iPhone app.[17]

Data

Between August 2009 and May 2014, the number of monthly unique visitors increased from 4 million to 20 million.[8][2]

References

  1. ↑ "Polyvore.com - Alexa web traffic". Alexa Internet. 2 March 2012. Retrieved 2 March 2012.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Tate, Ryan (25 July 2013). "How One Startup Found Success by Making an Obsessive User Its CEO". Wired (website). Retrieved 30 August 2014.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Taylor, Colleen. "Fashion-Focused Startup Polyvore, 17M Monthly Uniques Strong, Opens Up NYC Office". TechCrunch. Retrieved 10 August 2012.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 "Polyvore Company Profile". Crunchbase. Retrieved 17 October 2012.
  5. ↑ Taylor, Colleen. "Fashion-Focused Startup Polyvore, 17M Monthly Uniques Strong, Opens Up NYC Office". TechCrunch.
  6. ↑ "Company Overview of Polyvore, Inc.". Bloomberg Businessweek.
  7. ↑ Lee, Jess (23 March 2008). "Why Polyvore?". Retrieved 23 March 2008.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Siegler, MG (18 August 2009). "Polyvore Looks Stylin' In This New $5.6 Million Round Of Funding". TechCrunch. Retrieved 18 August 2009.
  9. ↑ Jacobs, Alexandra (29 March 2010). "Fashion Democracy". The New Yorker. Retrieved 29 March 2010.
  10. ↑ Taylor, Colleen. "Now Profitable, Polyvore strikes a pose as top fashion site". GigaOm. Retrieved 9 June 2011.
  11. ↑ Wang, Jennifer. "How Polyvore Became a Trend-Setter in Social Shopping". Entrepreneur. Retrieved 24 May 2011.
  12. ↑ McCracken, Harry (16 August 2011). "The 50 Best Websites of 2011". Time. Retrieved 16 August 2011.
  13. ↑ Rao, Leena. "Virtual Styling And Fashion Community Polyvore Raises $14M From DAG Ventures, Goldman Sachs And Others". TechCrunch. Retrieved 23 January 2012.
  14. ↑ "Polyvore Live Presented By Covergirl". Polyvore.
  15. ↑ Schomer, Stephanie. "For Turning Everyone Into A Fashion Editor". Fast Company. Retrieved 8 February 2012.
  16. ↑ Colleen Taylor (27 November 2012). "Style Site Polyvore Debuts Its First Ever iPhone App, Touts Cash Flow Positive Operations". TechCrunch. AOL, Inc. Retrieved 31 August 2014.
  17. ↑ Sarah Perez (9 May 2014). "Style-Focused Community And Shopping Service Polyvore Arrives On Android". TechCrunch. AOL, Inc. Retrieved 31 August 2014.

Further reading

External links