Sometimes, even the most fashionable investors can’t save a startup. Take four year-old Fashism. The New York-based online community for style lovers of all stripes, gotcash and cred from Nina Garcia, creative director of Marie Claire magazine, and actor/venture capitalist Ashton Kutcher. No matter. At the end of the month, Fashism will send its community packing.
In a memo with the subject line: “It’s so haaaaaard to say goodbyyyyyyyyyeeeee,”cofounders Brooke Moreland and Ashley Granata reported, “Although you guys are an amazing and engaged community, we have not been able to generate enough revenue to keep Fashism up and running.
In its first year, Fashism amassed 40,000 registered users online and 50,000 who accessed the site via its mobile app. Last year the user base had doubled to 80,000 devotees dedicated to posting selfies in different outfits for the community to rate “love it” or “leave it.”
Revenue was generated through sponsorships and ads, but the founders also wanted to enable more social shopping by partnering with national retailers. Fashism’s community members would be able to see clothing being tried on by others at local stores. Targeted sharing, tagging, and augmented reality was supposed to convert browsers to buyers.
Though Fashism got a $1 million infusion from Kutcher, Garcia, Demi Moore, Foursquare’s Dennis Crowley, and other venture capitalists, CEO Brooke Moreland told GigaOm the company just wasn’t able to earn enough revenue to survive. “It’s just hard to make money doing social, unless you have millions of users and, even then, it’s not always clear.”
What is clear is that fashionistas have an embarrassment of stylish riches online and via mobile. Thanks to the democratization of fashion, there is no one style bible. The proliferation of street style blogs, e-commerce retailers pushing branded fashion content, and trend spotting news feeds -each with their mini-communities of commenters, reviewers, and browsers– means that it’s become that much more challenging to grow and cultivate a cadre of loyal members who keep coming back daily.
That isn’t preventing others from trying. Tara Hunt, who wrote the book on social currency with The Whuffie Factor, launched Buyosphere, an online community for people to ask questions and get fashion advice or tips on where to buy specific items. Likewise, a group of Chicago-based fashion and tech entrepreneurs are working to launchStylePuzzle, a fashion Q&A site soon. Like brick-and-mortar retailers, each of these social startups need to find a unique way to build user loyalty –before they move on to another corner of the web.
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