Event Recap: WIM Accelerator’s Social TV Event

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Hashtags, programming and monetization…oh my!

Last night Third Wave Fashion attended Women Innovate Mobile’s Social TV event at the Apple Store in SoHo. The idea was to explore the growing trend we all know as Social TV. Social TV is anything that occurs before, during or after a television program that will encourage you to watch the show on TV (aka “screen one”) and then continue programming engagement on a mobile device or tablet (aka “screen two”). These drivers tend to vary and we learned that this is a prerequisite because audiences vary, as well.

The conversation was smart, and informative — pretty remarkable! Here are all the juicy details.

Event Recap: Third Wave Fashion Teams Up With Hearst Corp, Angel Hack, and Fashion+Tech NY

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Tech and fashion are losing their restraints and teaming up fast and furious in the new year. With the first-ever hackathons on the horizon (and happening back-to-back) we’re seeing a more in-depth exploration in the thing we love most, fashion tech. Last night Third Wave Fashion had the opportunity to collaborate with Hearst, Angel Hack, and Fashion+Tech NY, to talk all things high-fashion and high-tech.

Here are all the juicy details.

Watch Out Wednesday: Olapic

With 90 million active users per month, 40 million photos per day, and 8,500 likes per second, Instagram is quickly becoming one of the most used social media channels in the world. Users are uploading pictures of their purchases, outfits, and fashion finds all the time. So, shouldn’t retailers, brands and publishers be using this new technology to their advantage? The team at Olapic (our clients) thinks so, and we couldn’t agree more. And if you attended the Hearst meetup last night, co-hosted by yours truly, you’ll know that we’re not the only ones who love what they do. Brand Strategist Samantha Lim declared them as one of her favorite startups at the moment.

Founded by Columbia Business School friends Pau Sabria, Luis Sanz and Jose de Cabo, Olapic is a social, photo crowdsourcing service that is making all this possible. The company provides e-commerce sites, brands and publishers with the tools to collect photos from their users, engage their customers and support a community built on photo sharing. Olapic not only helps companies leverage the power of Instagram, but other photo sharing sites such as Facebook and Twitter, as well. Since their launch in 2010, Olapic has grown their customer base to include clients such as the New York Giants, Lululemon, Free People, NastyGal, just to name a few.

TWF sat our clients down to get more details on the company, their plans, and the start up process.

Before Fashion Tech: The Force Behind Lyst, Hilary Peterson

British Journalist David Frost once said, “Don’t aim for success if you want it; just do what you love and believe it, and it will come naturally.” Hilary Peterson, of UK-based social shopping site, Lyst, is a living example of this. Having started her career importing Hollywood Fashion Tape to Australia, and later working in advertising, Hilary’s unique career path has led to her role as VP of Business Development for this fast-growing fashion tech company. read more »

Growing Trend: Social TV

There aren’t too many industries that are valued in the billions, let alone the tens of billions. TV broadcasting (valued in 2012 at about $60bn in 2012) is generally the same as it’s always been — streamed via cable, satellite, or antenna, and reaching massive audiences directly — but something’s changing in the way brands are engaging audiences and keeping their attention through this medium.

As audiences change over time, brands are finding that it becomes exponentially more important to change the conversation. (Especially where marketing and audience attainment goes.) Today, we’re seeing a myriad of businesses taking their online, social presence and strengthening their missions and campaigns offline, especially through TV ads. Some argue that TV ads are more important now than ever before but it’s up to marketers to strike just the right balance of traditional and experimental.

Watch Out Wednesday: Canopi.me

Fashion blogging is more popular than ever before, and with so many popping up everyday, it is almost impossible for readers to navigate and stay up to date with each and every one. That’s where Canopi comes in.

Canopi is an online community that helps bloggers get a jump-start by gaining readership early on, while providing a source for readers to discover and interact with high-quality content. Started by husband and wife team, Collin and Erin Flynn, Canopi allows bloggers to bring together their content and attract readers to share their favorite posts. Each post is scored based on the number of shares, then the post with the highest score has the opportunity to land on the site’s front page leader board.

TWF reached out to the power couple behind Canopi and asked a few questions of our own.

Social Retail Summit #4: 5 Ways Social is Shaping Retail

Everyone knows that social and shopping go hand in hand, and increasingly we’re finding that there’s so much to learn about. Brands & retailers are looking to explore the online world, while online is increasingly going offline. Things are constantly evolving, and that’s why we attended the Social Retail Summit #4 in Brooklyn, founded and moderated by retail journalist Peter Verkooijen. There were five panels featuring well-known brands as well as fashion tech startups such as Warby Parker and recently featured resale platform, Refashioner.

Here are five things essential to social retail that we took away from the summit: read more »

Businesses of the Future: ‘Career Matchmaking’ Tools

Creating that perfect path in one’s career has never been an easy feat. Often times, we start by figuring out what industry we want to work in sometime between college graduation and the two-kids-and-a-dog thing. It is a rarity to find exactly what it is we want to do early on, and it’s even more rare when a person knows exactly what it is they have to do to ensure their career continues to be amazing and fruitful. Things like company culture, poor management, and top-heavy hierarchy all cause companies to move at a glacial pace and turn off potential candidates to the idea of working in such environments. But that’s not the case in the future. No, in the future, budding careerists are able to figure out what companies are conducive to their individual needs, vice versa, and so much more. You see, in the future there are tools for this.

Luckily for you, the future is now.

Watch Out Wednesday: Refashioner

We all have items of clothing that haven’t been worn in years, but dropping them at the local thrift shop or donation site just doesn’t seem like enough. Wouldn’t it be great if there was somewhere you could learn about other people, share things about yourself and trade your unneeded garments, shoes and accessories? Well now there is.

Introducing Refashioner. read more »

7 Beauty Startups to Watch

At Third Wave Fashion, we not only track all things fashion and tech related, we found that the beauty tech space is red hot, too. Not only is it making big waves, it’s increasingly becoming more innovative — even imitating some of the business models we’ve already seen succeed in fashion tech. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and the fashion tech industry should be flattered that their sister industry is following in its footsteps.

Here are 7 beauty startups we’re watching: read more »