Today, the fashion Web site Refinery29 launched R29 Shops, a bid to enter the ever-burgeoning juggernaut of content-based commerce sites. The hundreds of chic looks that flood the site each day, often in neatly assembled slideshows of a specific place’s street style, can now go from the computer to the closet.
The site’s co-founder, Phillipe von Borries, has a bon mot to describe the new approach for Refinery: “shoppable entertainment.”
“We’ve seen a significant appetite for direct product sales and with this new iteration of commerce we have a much bigger platform to blow out these rich narrative experiences,” he told WWD.
In other words: follow the dollar, and the dollar is in online shopping.
Refinery29's old business model was based on the notion that 20 percent of profits would be generated through commerce — from the early practice of having sales on, say, Valentine’s Day — and 80 percent through the ads that take up space on the edges of the site. Von Borries and his team hope that by changing that ratio, they’ll up the profits.
R29 will be featuring collaborations with such designers as Norma Kamali, Steven Alan, and Rebecca Minkoff, available at reduced prices. There will also be recurring features: Editor’s Closet, where the Refinery29 brass show off their wardrobes and then put items up for sale, and Designer Deets, where a fashion industry vet lets buyers in on her personal tips.
The combination of copy and commerce has flourished when approached in the right way. Gilt Groupe has proven to be a success in the five years since its inception. Net-a-Porter just opened its first headquarters in New York. And things are even stronger when it comes to menswear. The Gilt brother site Park & Bond has a mutually beneficial service with GQ where editors direct readers to items for sale on the site. Esquire countered by partnering with J.C. Penny to launch CLAD, the online retailer on the magazine’s Web site.
But more on the level of R29 Shops is LifeStyle Mirror, the new venture from Emanuele Della Valle. It’s a fashion news Web site and iPad app that the founder — son of Tod’s president, Diego Della Valle — calls “a mix between a concept store and a mega-mall.” There’s a banner headline across the top of the site, bolded and capped, that screams “Shop It Now.”
Della Valle’s site made a big splash when it launched last February to reviews lauding its swift integration of social networks. Not only can you buy any item featured in one of the great-looking photographs, you can mention the purchase on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.
But what about that other form of social networking, the older one, the one where people get together in person and actaully talk? Lifestyle Mirror made that happen just last night at a party in the company’s headquarters in Chelsea. There were enough fabulous outfits in the room to support conversation about what to buy. As guests made it to a lounge area, servers walked around with jeroboams of Ruinart Champagne, and platters of sliders and truffle-soaked grilled cheese bites. In the glossy pictures on the walls, models vacuumed hotel suites in couture or frolicked in a hailstorm of popcorn in a movie theater lobby. And, at one point, Anne Hathaway swung by, her hair still buzzed from her role in “Les Miserables.”
But what was it all for? We were at the offices of an e-commerce magazine, but we weren’t sure what they were selling.
“Oh, it’s for the event space,” a LifeStyle Mirror staffer told us, gesturing at the leather chairs and wooden sidings. “It just opened.”
We wondered aloud about what it would be like to have a bar in the office.
“It’s not a real bar, you can’t buy anything here,” he said. “It’s not even stocked.”