Sugar Inc, the company behind a network of popular women-focused blogs that includes PopSugar, is announcing two major releases tonight that take advantage of its fashion-hungry userbase. The first, dubbed PopSugar’s CelebStyle, is positioning itself as an IMDB for style, analyzing outfits from many of television’s most popular shows. Sugar Inc is also announcing a new ShopStyle API, which gives developers access to the site’s massive database of clothing and accessories which can be used in any variety of applications. Here’s a breakdown of both announcements:
ShopStyle API
ShopStyle, which Sugar acquired a year ago, is a search engine for fashion. The site indexes clothing and accessories across thousands of brands and stores, presenting them to users in a uniformly formatted grid of thumbnails, prices, and descriptions.
Sugar had previously made this data available to partner sites like In Style and People, and is now opening it up to developers. CEO Brian Sugar says that apps using the API could easily be deployed across a variety of platforms, including webpages (like SaleHabit, which Sugar developed in a weekend), Facebook, and the iPhone.
In thirty days, the platform will also allow developers to convert clicks from the fashion items they’ve displayed into cash. Sugar says the revenue split will vary by app, and will be determined by the success rate of the app’s lead generation.
Fashion may not be most developers’ cup of tea, but the market for this kind of application is huge – expect to see a variety of fashion-based iPhone and web applications hit the market in the next few months.
PopSugar’s CelebStyle will allow users to see exactly what their favorite stars have been wearing on some of the most popular shows on TV. The site is edited by a number of Sugar employees, who will pick some of the most prominent outfits from these shows and offer links to each accessory and piece of clothing. To build and help populate the site, Sugar is leveraging the technology and partnerships behind StarBrand, which it acquired in May. Through some of these partnerships (and PR representatives), Sugar editors will have access to lists detailing exactly what the stars were wearing, so users will be assured that the items presented are authentic.
Visitors to CelebStyle will also be able to craft their own outfits using Sugar’s database of clothing, which can be added as comments beneath any article. For instance, users could put together an outfit closely mirroring a fancy get-up shown in the latest episode of Gossip Girl, but with clothes that were only a fraction of the cost.
