Update: Here’s a post from the Google Retail Blog.
The NYTimes got the scoop on Boutiques.com, which just went live. This is a Like.com inspired site. Google purchased Like.com over the summer.
From the About us page:
Boutiques.com is a personalized shopping experience, brought to you by Google, that lets you find and discover fashion goods through a collection of boutiques curated by taste-makers — celebrities, stylists, designers, and fashion bloggers. Boutiques uses visual technology to help fashionistas discover and shop their look and creates the opportunity for designers to showcase their collections and latest inspirations online.
Boutiques.com is built on technology developed by our team of fashion experts who work with engineers to “teach” our computer systems to understand various patterns, pairings, and genre definitions. When signed into your account, Boutiques.com learns about your style and preferences and in turn, provides you better results and recommendations over time. Ultimately, Boutiques.com will provide shoppers with a much richer and interactive shopping experience and help drive traffic to retailers’ websites.
The NYTimes’ article was pretty in depth, so if you want a review, go there.
My comment:
-Shopping search for hard products that normalize/sku up is pretty standard and works OK. Shopping search for soft goods like clothing is more difficult, and the shopping engines have not really offered a compelling reason for consumers to shop for apparel and accessories on their sites. That’s where Like.com and its experimental sites Covet and Couturious came into play. Visual search can be a much more attractive way to browse soft goods.
Other shopping search sites like ShopStyle (mentioned in the NYTimes article) and Polyvore have gained a following among fashionistas. They’ve basically created a 21st century lookbook. And that’s where a company like Pixazza comes around and tags every picture out there so you can buy the look you want immediately. Why should you have to change your habit and search for the right ensemble when you can just buy the celebrity look you love? And the smart fashion retailers realize this. Go to Amazon’s Shopbop, and you can checkout a slew of Lookbooks and ‘Get the Look’ immediately.
-No word of how Boutiques.com might be integrated into Google Shopping.
Brian,
You should check out ThingLink.com. It’s very similar to Pixazza. The guys who started it were the Jaiku guys who, if you remember, were early Twitter competitors and were bought out by Google.
There’s also TheFancy.com which has similar functionality.
Best,
Rob