Trendspotting: Shop It to Me

By Angie Argabrite, Tuesday, May 1, 2012, at 9:01 am.

Molly Sims reports being in a “Santa Fe state of mind” this spring. The supermodel has curated a collection of discounted, Southwest-inspired clothing and jewelry for social shopping site Open Sky. Padma Lakshmi, Kristin Cavallari, Stacy Keibler and dozens more tastemakers have also hand-selected items for sale on the site. Known as “social shopping,” the trend is is tapping fashion royalty (see ModeWalk, Feyt and Moda Operandi) and fashion-mag bigwigs (see Motilo and Fino File) to dish out style advice and hawk merch on these startups, some of which are fizzling while others fly high. So, how to delineate between online shopping—long popular—and social shopping? It all depends on where you got your motivation to purchase an item. Did something you spied on Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest encourage you to buy? That’s social shopping, and now savvy influencers can profit from it. See StyleOwner.com—described as a cross between Pinterest and an online department store—which lets users build an online clothing boutique, pulling from more than 2,000 brands. The boutique “owner,” also known as a “stylepreneur,” then invites her social networks for a look at her picks and enjoys a 10 percent commission on sales. It’s about a person monetizing her online sphere of influence, says the site’s founder, who emphasizes that StyleOwner is a “social selling” platform, an anomaly among so many social shopping sites. One marketing software company found that of 566 online retailers, 49 percent never include a call to action in their social media messaging and that only 23 percent have used Twitter to promote a social-only deal. Marketers: Don’t miss out on this shopportunity.