Alison Loehnis, NET-A-PORTER’s VP of Sales and Marketing, says: “We are extremely excited to be launching our iPad app. With it we are giving our customers the amazing opportunity to shop through the NET-A-PORTER magazine in a new and innovative way with the ability to interact with the product while on the go.”

With the NET-A-PORTER magazine app, users can:

• Shop complete looks direct from the glossy shoots in NET-A-PORTER’s magazine
• Watch exclusive video content including runway shows and interviews with the world’s leading designers
• View exquisite, high quality images of items
• Share product suggestions with family and friends
• Feedback about their shopping experience
• Read it, watch it, shop it, wherever you are!

NET-A-PORTER.COM will also be offering a selection of iPad cases from brand partners including Burberry, Bottega Veneta, Gucci and Marc by Marc Jacobs. Available to download free from Apple’s App Store

When Bluefly’s addictive online social community, Closet Confessions launched in April, figure skater Johnny Weir uploaded his closet. Now,  I must say they only thing I know about figure skating comes from infamous Tanya Hardy/Nancy Kerrigan situation and the fact I wanted to be Moira Kelley in The Cutting Edge.

But apparently, there’s something more to figure skaters than knee bashing and creating cool movies. YouTube videos and live tweeting has come to yet another industry. According to Kelly Cutrone of People’s Revolution, Weir’s diehard fans and style fiends alike watched his Confessions video nearly 200,000 times! His “kittens”, the term he loving uses to describe his fans and twitter stalkers, sent him almost 1000 tweets, as part of an exclusive Twitterview hosted by Bluefly as part of the project.

Kittens, Monsters – what will the Internet infamous think of next to call all aspiring Julia Allisons of the Internet?

Now, Weir is getting even closer to his fans. Starting today, just for uploading a picture on BlueflyClosetConfessions.com of their most outrageous piece of clothing or accessor (we smell inspiration from Diesel’s STUPID campaign), the lucky fan Johnny chooses will win a $500 Bluefly splurge and a virtual styling session with Johnny himself!

With style as big as his talent, Weir believes “nothing is ever enough” when it comes to personal style and indeed he proves it in his Closet Confession. Treating his fans to a virtual tour of the color-coded fur and ROYGBIV “tree” of Balenciaga bags that line his closet, Johnny invites viewers to indulge in his favorite purchases: among them a fur and python trapper hat, a Chanel suit, and scores of superstar shades.

“People’s closets give us a window into their passions and personalities; when you see Johnny’s Closet you immediately know this is a person who is meticulous about the way he handles himself and his things, and that he is no shrinking violet,” Bradford Matson, Bluefly CMO says.

Johnny’s Closet Confession, the eighth in the Bluefly series, extends the video program’s wildly successful streak. Since its launch in April 2010, over 100,000 viewers have watched Closet Confessions a million times.

“We’re focused on creating a community for our fashionphile customers to share and find style inspiration and we’re thrilled that they’re doing just that on Closet Confessions,” Melissa Payner, Bluefly CEO says.

From a marketing standpoint, we love Payner’s and Matson’s vision. From a consumer standpoint, we’re geeking out over the continued success of confessions. Visit BlueflyClosetConfessions.com to enter for your chance to win a Bluefly hook-up.

Check out Singh’s very helpful slideshow presentation of ideas on how brands can reach out to online and mobile fans:

Register Online

“Sense of Fashion is the only commerce driven, online marketplace that gives fashion a multi-tiered selling and social networking platform.” – Daria Shualy, CEO, Sense of Fashion

What Is Sense OF Fashion?

Sense of Fashion gathers people with in-depth knowledge of fashion – retailers, designers, stylists and bloggers – and places them into one digital community. It is the one true marketplace where designers, professionals and consumers can shop, sell and discover trends on an international level.

Fashion and shopping have become extremely social. Fashion trendsetters upload photos of their outfits, create videos and write blogs about their latest shopping finds. At the same time, aspiring fashion designers are finding cost effective ways to launch their lines by marketing them directly to consumers via social mediums. Sense of Fashion was designed to connect all these social interactions.

Sense of Fashion integrates the digital facets of fashion into a dynamic, constantly evolving community, allowing site users to speak to their target audiences in one core location on the web.  This means that through Sense of Fashion, retailers and international boutiques can set up online shops to create international consumer distribution channels, and fashion designers from all over the world can show, sell and market their designs. Sense of Fashion gives aspiring designers the chance to be discovered and the means to grow their lines.

Furthermore, trendsetters and emerging taste makers can upload photos of their outfits and showcase their unique  style personality; bloggers and citizen journalists can develop international audiences by showcasing their latest street trends in the regions where they live; shoppers can buy unique, original designers and hard to find vintage items, and stylists,photographers and models can build online portfolios and expand their professional network.

And it’s all on one site.

“The amount of information on the Internet has caused online fashion communities to become fragmented.  Social websites that are designed to help connect designers, retailers, bloggers and trendsetters to each other are now doing the opposite,” says Daria Shualy. “In fact, these communities further separate their members into segmented groups that have no direct relationship to the audiences and people they are looking to connect with online.”

What Are The Benefits Of Participating In  The Sense of Fashion Community?

For Retailers & Boutiques, Sense of Fashion Is A Selling Channel

Sense of Fashion offers new consumer and retail distribution channels, helping retailers and boutiques target more stylishly aware customers seeking to buy non-commercial apparel and accessories.  Since 60.7% of Sense of Fashion sellers sell outside of their countries, SOF’s marketplace enables the building of international clienteles.  And since the site offers more than shops and is a vast network of fashion lovers and commentators, retailers can seek out a diverse group of fashion industry professionals and consumers.

“We’re the only site dedicated to fashion designers—their struggles and insights, and the cultivation of their following…Ours is the only site whose focus is exploring fashion trends that inherently support an online community.” – Yael Givon, Cofounder and Director of Product Marketing

For Fashion Designers, Sense of Fashion Is An International Portfolio

Sense of Fashion aims to increase awareness of talented, emerging fashion designers. For fashion designers and lables, having a presence on Sense of Fashion increases the likelihood of designers being discovered and seen in an international setting.  Fashion designers can use the Sense of Fashion community as an online portfolio to generate consumer and retailer awareness of their product lines, get feedback on their collections and hear advice on how to refine product lines.

Style Bloggers & Trendsetters Can Use Sense of Fashion To Build Their Personal Brands

Sense of Fashion helps fashion and style bloggers further establish and build their personal brands as citizen journalists in a community of like-minded friends. Sense of Fashion helps promote fashion forward trendsetters showcase their individuality and creativity in the way they wear clothing and accessories.

Sense of Fashion offers bloggers a way to show their authority as digitally savvy fashion trendsetters and offers a knowledgeable, globally minded fashion community who can provide constructive and thoughtful opinions on member photos.

Moreover, Sense of Fashion has brand ambassadors — trained, established stylists who offer constructive, expert advice– and can help trendsetters establish their expertise.

Photographers, Models and Stylists Can Use Sense Of Fashion To Be Discovered

Photographers, models and fashion stylists from around the world are using Sense of Fashion to show their talents.  The site offers photographers and models a way to network in a more streamlined fashion than other sites like Model Mayhem and show off their talents to global audiences.

Daria Shualy says it best when she says:

“As the popularity of online shopping grows, it’s simply harder for sellers to stand out.  In carefully developing our site, we recognized the need for a practical marketplace for fashion desgierns that combines e-commerce and social networking…and community building.”

Want to find out what the site has to offer? Try Sense of Fashion for yourself. You can also follow them Twitter @SenseOFashion or Facebook.

At least, that’s what I thought the agenda would be.  The interview, however, turned into an amazing full blown commentary on multi-channel and social marketing. Marta offered some amazing insights on how the small brand was growing under it’s large parent, Crate & Barrel.

Whether you’re an interior or fashion designer, interior retailer or fashion retailers, this offers valuable insights for all.

Macala Wright: CB2 entered the online space a little less than seven years ago. It launched its website in 2004, the catalog in 2005 and its m-commerce site in December 2009. The brand has slowly opened stores all over the US and now internationally, as well. What’s been your experience in all these different mediums?

Marta Calle: It’s actually been something quite amazing. We’ve found that customers who are loyal to the brand actually shop across all four mediums – the catalogs, the stores, online and via their mobile devices. The combination of the four has increase the dollars spent by customers over all three outlets.

MW: It seems that mobile, e-commerce, catalog and store sales are dependent on one another. How has this effected the way you market CB2 to customers through these channels?

MC: With CB2, we make sure we curate our customers’ experiences across all our communication channels. Customer experience is key for us as a brand. We ensure that transition from online-to-offline is as seamless as possible. The settings we create in the catalogs are translated to the web, from the website and catalog, and we take painstaking care to bring those settings to life in the stores.

MW:  CB2 brand standards are at the core of everything it does.  Tell me about them.

MC: Well, to start, the perfect example would be The Standard Hotels and some of the boutiques on Melrose and Robertson here in Los Angeles. There are no frills. CB2 is the same way, we opt for no frills in order to create focused, streamlined live/work spaces. We’d rather capture  your attention in small detail of an accent piece, the curve of a table or the lines of a desk instead of filling a room with too many distracting elements.

MW: CB2 designs are relevant to the color palettes and styles what people want now, how does the brand manage to maintain a competitive edge over it’s competition.

MC: CB2’s relevancy to its customers is found in the way the brand aligns itself with modern design.  And by modern, I don’t mean retro modern; I mean real time modern.  The term “modern” is always changing,  I’m always asking myself, “What’s modern now?”  We try to understand the changing meanings of “modern” and focus on real-time trends and what customers want now.  CB2 is moving towards real time relevancy without turning into the “fast fashion” style retailer.

MW: Dwell on Design is about creating sustainable living and work environments. CB2 has taken that concept and translated it into the physical location of the stores it opens.  Tell me about blending CB2 into “on brand” community environments.

MC: We feel the places where we open CB2 locations have to be places that our customers live in, as well as work in. They have to “local” for the people that live in them, meaning their centrally located. Our locations in West Hollywood, Santa Monica and SoHo are walkable; you don’t have to get into your care and drive 30+ miles to get to them. The same goes for our locations that we’re opening right now in Toronto; it’s located on Queens Street. The only other two large retailers there are Adidas and and Nike. All the other retailers around these stores are independent stores. All three retailers aim to support the local business, not compete with them.We think there needs to be a balance between big and small retail.

MW: CB2 carries its philosophies through to its philanthropic projects.  Tell me about that.

Our philosophy is “Cherish the Home”. When we open a store in a certain neighborhood, the staff picks a local charity to support that focuses on food and shelter; we donate a percentage of that store’s sales to that charity.

Also, on an opening day, we offer 15% customer purchases in exchange for customers bringing seven cans of food to donate to food banks. In Chicago one month,  CB2 donated 10,000 pounds of food in a span of two weeks. The entire food donation that month from other companies that supported the charity that same month was 10,000 pounds.

Beyond supporting groups that offer food and shelter, we donate returned furniture and things we can’t resell to the Watts House Project, and we partner with Creativity Explored in San Francisco.

Creativity Explored is a nonprofit visual arts center where artists with developmental disabilities create, exhibit and sell art. We use their artists’ works in our rugs, wall decor and accessories that we produce with our collections. The artists are paid for their work. So the next time you buy your accent pillow or a rug and before you would have wondered about the designer, you know where it came from!

MW: When it comes to shopping online, where do you go?

MC: Net-A-Porter. The way they merchandise their products just grabs you, drags you in and forces you to buy that Alexander Wang bag. I love the digital content as well. Shame on them for being so good!

MW: What’s in store for CB2 in the next year?

You are going to see a lot more technology in the stores, further bridging online-to-offline experiences. You’re also going to see enhanced functionalities on the website; without giving away too much, you’ll be able to mix and match your home on the site before you even come into the store.

Marta Calle On Social Media

What Gilt does for fashion, Gilt Home does for decor. As part of the Dwell on Design show, Gilt Groupe and Gilt Home has brought show attendees an amazing offer for the 2010 conference – they’ve extended it to the rest of web too! Complete the registration form to sign up and be entered to win a $1,500 credit to the Los Angeles Ligne Roset store (Grand Prize) and a $1,000 credit to shop on Gilt Home (Second Place Prize)!

The New York Times reported on the Facebook app’s functionality:

“The app is called the Merona My Look Maker and is aimed at women ages 35 and up. The goal is to give them a chance to virtually try on, and try out, Merona fashions. A twist is that the merchandise that can be played with on the app is changed constantly to reflect the Merona merchandise that is in Target stores. The looks can be shared with Facebook friends and computer users can also be connected to the Target Web site  with a ’shop it now’ feature if they like the looks enough to consider buying the merchandise”.

What We Think: Merona My Look Maker was developed and produced by AKQA. A huge fan of AKQA’s work, we give the Target app an A+ simply based on the face that they did it. No, just kidding.

The Facebook app is functional, but it lacks jewelry accessories! Every woman I know shops at Target for cheap accessories if she can’t bring herself to shop at Forever 21 or H&M for them! Where is the jewelry, in even a limited selection?

Marketing/Merchandising Insights: We hope that Target is using this social exercise to gain marketing/product insight from the app. Target did a good job of incorporating a certain selection of items to create outfits. Of the 200+ sets created, they should be paying attention to the silhouettes of the items that are most commonly used in set creation;  the women in their target demographic clearly prefer figure flattering shapes and cuts and are are more likely to purchase them.

Also, there are two merchandising trends that stand out to us that we’d expect to find in the targeted demographic. When it comes to consumers who shop mass market contemporary, I’ve always found that they want the whole matching set: earrings, necklace, bracelet, handbag and shoes. The sets created through the Facebook app show that:

1.  The majority of the shoppers using the Merona app sets don’t deviate from matching the handbag to their shoes. Consumers who purchase Merona apparel/accessories coordinate accessories with their outfits, so accessories are crucial to the Merona app in order to create outfits shoppers would really wear.

2. While some of the Merona sets are interesting and a bit more trendy, the theme of matching shoes to bags extends into matching the shoes to the color of the cardigan, pants, shirt or all of the above. These women love “one color stories”. Again, it’s  a shame not to have jewelry incorporated into this. We think the one color trend would have continued into the jewelry selection and believe that consumers who  made purchases through the Facebook app would buy more items on Target’s website.

Overall, will this app and social exercise make us consider sweater choices from Target? Maybe. Will we give up Barney’s cashmere for Merona cotton blends?  Probably not.

This means that you can make draft versions of your tweets, as well as just having a convenient place to jot down ideas.  It’s also easy to schedule, unschedule and delete future tweets that you may or may not want to post.

Have multiple Twitter accounts?  That’s certainly no issue for Birdhouse, which makes organization simple and easy to understand — letting you organize your tweets by rating, if you want to, so that you can prioritize.

If you want to get a preview of what the Birdhouse app is like, watch this humorous video by Sandwich Dynamics (the makers of Birdhouse):

Follow Birdhouse on Twitter @birdhouseapp.

Buy the Birdhouse app at the iTunes store for $1.99.

Users can get rewards and recommendations based off of the udorsements they make, and brands and businesses get free links based off the udorsements displayed.

About a dozen major brands have signed on to Udorse, including fashion brands Armani Exchange and American Apparel; Udorse will launch with an iPhone app, a Javascript plug-in for blogs, and Facebook and Twitter apps. Unfortunately, Udorse tags can’t be displayed on the actual Facebook photo-sharing app; it needs its own app that’s built on the Facebook platform.

Udorse users can earn an affiliate cut of endorsements and either opt to have them delivered through PayPal or donated to a charity.

“I really loved it,” Marissa Mayer said, “I always said that this would be one of the primary ways that social networks make money.”

But not all the judges were sold. “I do think it’s a little weird, like if you and I were friends, so that you could get paid so that I could look like you and dress like you,” Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh said, though he also complimented Udorse CEO Geoffrey Lewis on his energetic presentation. “If tomorrow you and I were wearing the same outfit because I saw you wearing it on Facebook, that’d be just creepy.”

“Is there an anti-product placement foundation that I could donate the money to?” Andreessen joked.