Jim,

http://www.helptobusiness.com

Has the industry/fashion-online-blog-world defined quality content? Aren’t our readers, subscribers molding that definition for us to some degree?

We’re doing really well, but I think it’s based on quality of content. We haven’t bought any advertising and I certainly don’t have the infrastructure of glam and we’ve taken no funding.

I too was at AOL for many years (ashley who are you??) overseeing women’s content and I have to say there’s a lot of crap media buys. I always say — it’s not the impressions, but who you impress (stole that from Corante).

Patricia — you and I should talk about some cross-promo.

The $150M valuation gives them $1.5M valuation for 1 out of 1 million Internet users. In another word, each US woman (or man) daily visitor to the site is valued at about $10,000 (at least a few thousand dollars).

An unusually high growth rate must have been assumed to make the numbers right. (I am not predicting whether Glam can achieve that kind of growth rate or not.)

The site is glamorously designed. But its content, at least at the first look, is also highly and obviously commercialized.

@ ABC I think the Marie Claire deal might be important because they are taking content /traffic away from iVillage/NBC- so iVillage’s loss and Glam’s gain

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I’d love to see real innovation come into fashion and especially into shopping – right now, all I see are a lot of people doing what’s already in place, so it’ll be really great to see some new ideas that fill holes in what online fashion needs. How exciting!

As far as VC goes, investors want a stable place to put their money with people who can prove they’ve got knowledge, experience, maturity, etc to give them a return – if fashion can provide this, the VCs will come.

Find a young woman who has a balance of passion for technology AND fashion…and you’ll find someone who can come up with a hell of an idea.”

I would say that is very sound advice indeed. Except that in a few months most of us won’t want the money anymore.

“If VCs want an innovative idea in fashion, they should wait a few months. I have a feeling that there will be a couple of companies on the rise that will target th
s very niche and lucrative market. “

BTW Glam feels like they are doing it right to me. Why? Take a look at all the print magazines we all read- InStyle, Vogue, Marie Claire, Domino. Their websites are LAME. Yet they have so many advertisers- last September Vogue was thicker than the BIBLE!!! So if the geeks that watch YouTube all day or whatever feel $1.6B buyout by Google for a site that does not even make their own content and has zero revenue is justified and iVillage sold to NBC for $700 million, then I think Glam will certainly do better than them.

When we plan our media spending, we look at both visitors and impressions- specially impressions in which our client’s ad’s perform. When we buy Glam- they have 3.8 million uniques and i think about 100 million high performing page views- the Glam.com part as far as i can see on comScore is 1 million and their network in 1.8 million- but when we buy inventory- glam.com page views are 60 million or so- 60-70%, and the network only 30 million. So as a media planner, glam is 60-65% of my spend with the top brand $ clients with very high CPM’s and their network is a great service for me, because i can supplement the reach with someone else managing the campaigns. Very similar to what we do with Google for Text Ads- when we buy Google- we get about 30% on Google and 60-70% on Google’s network.

When I was at AOL Steve Case said- it’s the subscription Stupid- in this case It’s the CPM’s stupid. Do the math- as a media buyer in an agency- at $20-$200 (clickz says) eCPM’s, Glam sounds like a $100’s million revenue company. I wonder why did the did such a big raise then, may be they see something like YouTube or Google did early when they raised more money than they needed- but it does sound odd. e-commerce, a big deal like Google-AOL, or buying Digg you think?

here is an interesting comparison:
http://www.goog...ll&date=all

and another:
http://www.alex...e.com+style.com

In terms of technology and applying it into fashion, I agree with Patricia that its hard to get into the fashion arena if you can’t think like a woman. However, just because you’re in the fashion arena does not mean you can easily create a sustainable web 2.0 application – you have to understand technology, trends, what works and what doesn’t. You also need to have the passion to search vigourously to see what your competitors are doing. In addition, getting a bunch of women to testdrive your application and report bugs + suggestions? Good luck with that. A majority of ‘women shoppers’ don’t enjoy beta testing.

Age is also a big player — it’s hard to get the 20 something crowd to use your site if you’re not in that age group…you can’t think like them…know what’s hot and what’s not. Heck, I’m in my 20’s and if I find out that a fashion site was made by some 35 year old who is trying to be hip and cool in fashion, that site is suddenly so very unappealing. That’s another problem – finding a spokesperson if you’re not in that age group.

Find a young woman who has a balance of passion for technology AND fashion…and you’ll find someone who can come up with a hell of an idea. Or better yet, assemble a team made of women who knows fashion combined with women who knows tech. I’d rather work with a tech person who has SOME love for fashion or knows a woman’s mentality than a man any day on a fashion innovation.

If VCs want an innovative idea in fashion, they should wait a few months. I have a feeling that there will be a couple of companies on the rise that will target this very niche and lucrative market.