fashion

Date:   8/17/2016 4:56:47 AM ( 8 y ago)

You might call Mary Orton a problem solver par excellence. As a young investment banker at Deutsche Bank in New York three years ago, she realized there wasn’t much fashion guidance for young urban professional women. So she created a personal style blog called Memorandum that became a successful side job and creative outlet.But with followers increasingly abandoning websites for Instagram (which famously doesn’t allow links) and Pinterest, among others, she saw another opportunity: a platform built specifically for bloggers, by bloggers, that would put content front and center while giving shoppers an easy way to purchase items.

On Aug. 15, Orton and her husband, Rich Scudellari, both 28, launched Trove, an ambitious fashion content discovery app that pulls in posts and images from hundreds of style bloggers all over the world, allowing followers to find, save and shop looks in one mobile-optimized spot. The couple believe Trove has the potential to be a game changer for bloggers as well as consumers.“There are over 20,000 fashion bloggers across the world who are producing this content in a consistent, high-quality way,” Orton says. “But there’s no great way to really discover their content on a mobile social device, and no great way to shop it. So it was really taking this huge consumer need, and a blogger need, and putting them together to create a platform that addresses both.”There’s no shortage of shopping platforms and places to follow or discover bloggers, such as Mountain View’s Polyvore, and website Bloglovin,’ both of which boast 20 million users.

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But Orton and Sculledari say they are providing a centralized hub where users can find chronologically relevant results, discover new bloggers, and directly shop their featured products.Currently, bloggers use apps such as LiketoKnow.it, which emails users purchase links once they have “liked” an Instagram post, but that doesn’t help the user who is not following the blogger or who takes screen shots of images she likes on her phone but then forgets where they came from. In May, Pinterest reinstated “affiliate links” — the URL that bloggers use to receive commissions for retailers when followers buy items featured in posts. Trove allows bloggers to use, and update, their own affiliate links, without taking a cut.

Photo: TroveTrove is a new a style content app and platform for fashion bloggers founded by Memorandum blogger Mary Orton and her husband, Rich Scudellari. Screenshots from the app show the home page, the feed users can customize, an outfit post, and the closet feature that allows users to archive favorite looks. Pictured is the app’s home page.Orton and Scudellari met while living in New York and working on Wall Street, where he was part of Morgan Stanley’s Technology Investment Banking group. He moved back to his native Bay Area to work at TPG’s Growth Equity Group and then obtain an MBA at Stanford. In 2014, as he prepared to start the program, Orton moved here to join him and began working on Trove in earnest.

Meanwhile, Scudellari was able to take graduate business classes and make connections that proved advantageous for their startup, which Orton describes as a “marriage of those skill sets.”“Everybody was excited about building a mobile app and platform, but they were like, ‘What are you building it for?’” he remembers. They raised seed money from Highland Capital Partners as well as angel investors, and brought on lead developer and co-founder Ersin Akinci, who most recently had worked on video for lifestyle and fashion publications for Hearst Corp. (parent company of The Chronicle).Now, Sculledari is just as conversant as his wife about the mainstream appeal of fashion bloggers and the need for a “closet” feature to save favorite looks.“These women put an enormous effort into each post,” he says.

“Taking two to three hours to figure out exactly how they’re going to style it, taking the photographs, writing the copy, linking to all the products. ... There should be value beyond the two to three days it’s living above the fold on their website or on their Instagram.”While traditional retailers are scrambling to simultaneously appeal to digitally savvy consumers and those who still shop at stores, fashion bloggers have become an increasingly important part of the fashion ecosystem. They attend fashion shows and other high-profile events as influencers, collaborate with brands on everything from sponsored posts to their own clothing, accessory or makeup lines, and have become Internet celebrities in their own right: The Blonde Salad’s Chiara Ferragni and Song of Style’s Aimee Song were named the most influential personal style bloggers earlier this year by Fashionista.com, a website that compiles an annual list.But while the handful of big names may pull in six- or seven-figure salaries, most are not able to make their living solely from blogging, despite having thousands, even millions, of social media fans.

That’s where Trove plans to help. Its platform is essentially a publishing system that pulls in content from existing websites and re-formats it in a mobile-friendly package. “We take the link, fill out the information around it, put it into Trove,” Sculledari says.Sausalito blogger Anh Sundstrom, whose 9to5 Chic blog features professional and casual looks, is one of a number of Bay Area residents whose posts will be part of Trove’s feed.“Trove is just what its name suggests: a treasure trove of fashion content. It makes blog content easily digestible (and discoverable) for a consumer, and it’s even easier for content creators,” she said via email. “I love that I don’t have to upload my photos!”

Elevate your leisure gameBloggers will be able to sign into Trove to swap out images and peruse highly specific analytics on their posts, such as how much time users spent looking, which images they clicked through and whether they added items to their online closet.Soon, Sculledari says, Trove will be rolling out a personal notification feature that allows bloggers to contact followers who have added an item to their closet, say, if it goes on sale.Shopping isn’t the primary goal, however. “We think there’s an immense amount of value the user can have browsing the app and never shopping,” Orton says. “We really are focused on it being content first and style-centric, so that users have that one destination to go when they’re looking for Coachella inspiration, or what do I wear to this holiday party?”Or perhaps wedding fashion. The day of Trove’s launch came just days after Orton and Scudellari’s one-year wedding anniversary, prompting Orton to share throwback images on Instagram — and direct followers to Trove.It was only appropriate, considering “we really conceived of Trove together,” she says. Another problem for which there turned out to be an elegant solution.

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