Lyst turns to Google Plus for backstage Hangouts with key influencers during NYFW

Social shopping site Lyst is set to host live Google Plus Hangouts backstage during New York Fashion Week this season.

The initiative will see pre-show video interviews taking place with influential editors, bloggers and the designers themselves at the venue, while seven other people invited by the platform connect in remotely and ask their own questions.

Fans will be able to watch the Hangouts as they happen live on YouTube, as well as send in questions in advance to be asked by the host.

The first one will take place tomorrow, Friday, September 7, with the Rebecca Minkoff show at 3pm. Hosted by Teen Vogue’s Eva Chen, the coverage will see interviews with Rebecca, as well as with the hair and make-up artists behind-the-scenes.

On Saturday, September 8, the Tibi show will include an interview with blogger Leandra Medine of The Man Repeller.

“Google+ is becoming a great place for people who are passionate about fashion to meet, share style tips and promote new brands. We’ve been impressed and excited by the ways Lyst is using Google+ to connect with fashion enthusiasts and build a global fan base by the hundreds of thousands,” said a Google representative.

After each of the shows, Lyst will send out the video along with a collection on the site of the favorite looks from the influencers interviewed.

Meanwhile, Lyst has also invited Nina Garcia and Olivia Palermo to broadcast their favourite looks live from the runway. This “Live Lysting” program will see them both share their top items with their followers on the platform.

As individuals add them to their own lists, they guarantee an alert will reach them as soon as that item comes into stock in any store worldwide. This runway tracking tool was launched by Lyst a year ago.

“Lyst is all about letting people craft their own fashion experience by following their favorite brands and influencers – in Nina and Oliva, we’ve got two of the industries most exciting curators for our users to follow,” said Chris Morton, CEO of Lyst.

Digital snippets: Dior, YSL, Ralph Lauren, Zara, Lyst

Some more great stories from around the web surrounding all things fashion and digital over the past week:

 

• Backstage Dior video shows one million flowers being installed at couture show (as above) [Fashionista]

• YSL launches eyeshadow palette inspired by Facebook [Kiss and Makeup]

• Ralph Lauren organises Facebook send-off for Olympic athletes [Mashable]

• Zara to open Chinese internet store in September 2012 [China Retail News]

• Social commerce platform Lyst secures $5m funding [TheNextWeb]

• KCD and Spring form partnership for global fashion communications, will help brands navigate complex new media landscape [WWD]

• Designer uses Photoshop and textile software program to knit medical images into high fashion [The Atlantic]

Lyst launches sales alerts for Pinterest

Social commerce platform, Lyst, is aiming to make Pinterest all the more useful for its users by sending out notifications whenever items on their boards go on sale.

By connecting Pinterest to their Lyst accounts, consumers will be able to receive instant sale alerts on all the products they’ve either pinned or repined from the hundreds of retailers Lyst partners with worldwide.

“Pinterest is a great way for people to save and share items they want, but until now there’s been no easy way for them to know when those items go on sale” said Lyst’s CEO, Chris Morton. “By solving this problem, we’ve made Pinterest even more useful for its users.”

Given the success of Pinterest for retailers so far, the result should help push more sales for Lyst, as well as its partners.

Read more about Lyst, here: From fashion curation to faux shopping with Lyst

#SXSW Interactive: Fashion’s greatest challenge lies in realigning production with communications

“If I were the CEO of a major fashion brand today, my focus would be on trying to compress the production cycle so it realigned with communications,” Imran Amed, founder and editor of The Business of Fashion, said at SXSW earlier this week.

Speaking on a panel called Who needs a fashion cycle? I’ve got social media, he explained that we’re at the beginning of a seismic change in the way consumers communicate with each other, make decisions, and ultimately purchase.  It’s only by changing the operational side of what we do, he said, that we’re going to be able to catch up.

As we all know, the internet has revolutionised this industry. Where once fashion shows were private trade events, now they’re more consumer facing than ever before, highlighted Michelle Sadlier, global digital communications consultant for Karla Otto International, and moderator of the session.

Designer collections used to only be seen by the public when they hit shop floors six months later – or the pages of the magazines just before. Now they’re viewable in real-time. The likes of Twitter and Instagram, not to mention bloggers and live-streams, mean consumers have the same level of access, at exactly the same time, as those invited to the catwalk presentations.

The issue of course, is that the operational side of the process is still the same. Rather than speeding up alongside, production has remained a lengthy and complicated system. The user is subsequently seeing something online, that isn’t available to buy for a further four to six months.

This gap, said Chris Morton, founder and CEO of fashion discovery site Lyst, means brands are missing out on capturing that “intent to purchase at the point of inspiration”.

He referenced a handful of companies attempting to address this: Burberry’s Runway to Reality initiative – where viewers can shop straight from the catwalk for delivery in just eight weeks – for example, as well as start-up Moda Operandi, which offers a similar solution across a variety of brand names.

Lyst itself launched a Runway Tracking service last September, which at least reminds consumers of the items they liked, by sending them a notification once they’re available to buy.

Amed however, said while each of these ideas is attempting to work around the issues, they’re not actually solving the problem. This is the industry’s biggest challenge, he added, and there’s no easy solution.

One of his suggestions was to create two separate events around the shows. One small and quiet for trade to see the season ahead, and the other a big, all-out affair for consumers, timed so it’s in sync with the actual season. So in other words, shifting the position of the fashion show as we know it today, so it sits at the end of the cycle rather than the beginning.

Of course to do so, would mean skipping a season, something Natalie Massanet, founder of Net-a-Porter, first suggested to Amed in an interview in 2010. No mean feat to pull off…

Which takes us back full circle to the very first line of this post. At the end of the day the company that masters how to realign the production cycle with the communications one, will be the one that finds success. And the likeliest way of achieving that right now, is by focusing first on compressing operations.

Watch this space.

#SXSW Interactive: a new must on the fashion calendar

I have just returned from the most incredible week at SXSW Interactive, where speakers varied from Al Gore and Sean Parker, to Ray Kurweil, Biz Stone and Dennis Crowley.

I’m in the midst of finishing off a piece on the key thoughts and ideas from the week – to be published elsewhere [UPDATE: if you're interested please email me for a copy].

In the meantime, I wanted to write one very short and simple blogpost that says, if you’re a fashion brand aiming to achieve anything along the lines of digital success, you need to go next year.

SXSW is the place to hear industry leaders (aforementioned and more) give expert insights; it’s the place to learn about new innovations and source fresh inspirations; and it’s the place where trends and directions for the tech world break.

But more importantly, it’s the hottest place to network with anyone and everyone also working in this space. Serendipity as Mashable calls it here. From meeting new start-ups and coordinating with established platforms, to swapping ideas with those from your own industry, it’s the perfect playing ground for getting your head both in the game and ahead of the curve.

And if that isn’t convincing enough, it speaks volumes to see which brands are already doing it. There this year were teams from Burberry, Victoria’s Secret, Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, DKNY, Neiman Marcus, Bergdorfs, Net-a-Porter and Moda Operandi… not to mention fashion-specific platforms including Lyst and publications from The Business of Fashion and WGSN, to Fashion’s Collective.

It was undoubtedly one of the most valuable experiences of my career to date.

I hope to see you there in 2013!

Digital snippets: #NYFW, Vogue, Oscar de la Renta, Bergdorf Goodman, Ted Baker, Topman, Lyst

Some more great stories from around the web surrounding all things fashion and digital over the past week:

• How fashion bloggers gain access to New York Fashion Week [Mashable]

• Vogue collaborates with online luxury retailer Moda Operandi to offer SS12 designer collections straight off the runway [PR Newswire]

• Oscar de la Renta launches community-driven Tumblr page ahead of #NYFW show [WWD]

• Bergdorf Goodman invites footwear obsessives to share pics via Instagram for Shoes About Town campaign [5th/58th]

• Ted Baker preps m-commerce amid digital push [New Media Age]

• Topman enters Facebook-commerce with new storefront on fan page [Media Week]

• Lyst launches Runway Tracking, enabling users to tag favourite items ready for notification as they hit store [Mashable]

Lyst.com rolls out new features to up sharing and discovery rates

Fashion curation site Lyst has introduced a number of new features including comments and Verified Accounts.

There are also new widgets, such as a follow button and embeddable collection, profile or product tools for use across the web.

The move comes in a bid to increase sharing and discovery rates for users, fitting in with a wider strategy to make online shopping easier and more engaging.

“These new features are part of Lyst’s mission to improve the way people share and discover fashion online,” said CEO Chris Morton. “We’re excited by the early impact they are already having on sales and growth.”

Read more about Lyst, here: From fashion curation to faux shopping with Lyst

BoF: From fashion curation to faux shopping with Lyst

There was an interesting post on The Business of Fashion last week which looked at the rise of a new generation of niche social curation sites.

Included were the likes of virtual pinboard Pinterest (love) and “Tumblr meets Amazon” platform Svpply (need to learn more about). The focus however was on Lyst. “Fashion has emerged as one of the most popular categories on these sites and even sparked specialist services,” writes the BoF’s managing editor, Vikram Alexei Kansara.

Accordingly, inspired by the likes of Last.fm and Pandora, Lyst is designed to enable the discovery of fashion online.

“Right now it’s hard to [do this]” said Lyst’s CEO Chris Morton. “The space is becoming increasingly fragmented: every day there are new online retailers, designers and blogs, making it even harder to sift through all the noise.”

Users can create their own lists of content as well as following those of their favourite designers or stylists.

The site also works with retailers in real-time, adding products or inventory as it becomes available. As a result, the service in effect is based around driving sales, therefore equally beneficial for the brand to get involved.

What I loved about this article however is the idea of “faux shopping” in fashion. “This is when a user goes to a site like Net-a-Porter, puts together an amazing shopping cart, but instead of checking out, just sighs wistfully and closes the browser. We were conscious that users were effectively creating rich content and expressing their style, but then destroying it afterwards. With Lyst, we wanted to build a service where users could keep those items for as long as they liked and share their style,” said Morton.

Read the full piece, here: Fashion 2.0 | Social Curation Start-ups Target Fashion Industry