Shopping for fashion on the web can be an overwhelming experience. Not only can you find an unlimited amount of clothing on the e-commerce sites of retailers like Nordstroms and Saks.com, but there are also plethora of web-based sites that offer deals for fashion, including Bluefly, Zappos and ShopBop. I love snagging great deals on designer and high-end clothes but simply don’t have the time to peruse all of these sites to find sales for clothes that are in my size and fit my style.
The folks who brought us Riya and visual shopping search engine Like.com have launched Covet.com, a site that acts as a free virtual personal shopper and pseudo stylist for users. Covet will first determine your style based on your responses to a series of photos and outfits worn by celebrities. I found myself choosing between a Chanel-clad Anna Wintour or a leggings-clad Lindsay Lohan. Covet also determines your clothing preference by letting users choose between images that could represent varying types of style (the Eiffel Tower vs. the Golden Gate Bridge, Beer vs. Champagne).
After a series of these decisions, Covet ask you to specify your shoe and clothing sizes and then gives you a profile based on your choices. Style categories vary from edgy urban to sporty eclectic to couture glam, which you can change if Covet gets it wrong. You can also edit your style to filter suggestions by desired (or hated) brands, colors, and styles you prefer when it comes to clothing, shoes and accessories.
Once your style is established, Covet will send you either daily or weekly emails with clothing and shoes found over thousands of online merchants that fit your style and are available in your size. Emails will include two sections of recommendations: those that are on sale and new but full-priced arrivals. If you click on the item in the email, you will be led to a Covet landing page, where you can then click to buy the item directly from the retailer. Covet’s co-founder Munjal Shah says that the site will soon let users indicate if the suggested items fit their style, and Covet will use this knowledge to make more accurate suggestions in the future.
Covet crawls the sites of more than 5,000 retailers and uses the same image recognition technology to group together similar products as Like.com. Covet’s business model is also similar to that of Like.com; Covet makes money on a pay-per-click basis. Each time a user clicks to a retailer’s site, Covet takes a small cut. The same model has proved to be lucrative for Like.com, showing steady revenue growth for a young startup. The company, which launched in 2006, reached a $1 million annual run rate within a year and hit a $20 million revenue run rate last year. Shah says that Like.com’s current run rate is well over $20 million in revenue.
Covet’s main competition is ShopItToMe.com, another personalized shopping service on the web. ShopItToMe requires you to filter desired results solely by brand and size whereas Covet creates a profile based on style, color, brand, fit and size. Both are useful for online personal shopping but Covet’s style analysis adds an interesting twist to service. I do think that daily emails about available products could get a little spammy but both services let you choose to receive the alert emails once or twice a week instead of every day.
I signed up for Covet. For the most part it was fun, but there are a few BUTS
1. no Contact Us, which doesn’t enable valuable feedback from users
2. At the very beginning of the process you are not asked to choose location. So this might actually be for the USA only. It will be very disappointing for as someone outside the US to learn i spent all this time and energy (it’s a long process) for nothing.
3. During the “learning your personal style” process you get a long series of two celebrity photos to choose from which is your style. There is no Skip button, in case both don’t match, and no indication how far you are into the process.
4. A few minor bugs: some of the photos don’t upload, so you’re forced to choose the one you see, and the FB connect doesn’t work.
All in all it’s good fun, and i hope it works. It does, of course, resemble a lot existing solutions, like the fantastic shopittome.com
This is a cool concept. I cannot stand seeing Serena Williams in my “learning my personal style” process. I have a feeling I skewed input based on avoiding anything Serena.
There are definitely specific cuts and silhouettes that flatter me more than others, and I think Covet does try to work toward this the art of “balance” in fashion (not just color).
I always wanted online shopping mall.
Very cool site! I usually use blogs to search for fashion ideas, I’m mad about watches and found this one today http://www.thisistime.com It’s a pity that covet doesn’t have a men’s section
Use your mobile to see time, not wristwatch. U seem to be in 1990s.
What are you, fifteen?
that reminds me that using celebrities can be annoying, as opposing to using real people supplied by street fashion blog for example. Celebrities carry an emotional connection which isn’t always beneficiary
daria
http://www.senseofashion.com
The much needed product right now, especially since it is recession time. Sorry I couldn’t help but be a bit sarcastic.
Actually, this product makes a lot of sense in a recession since it is concentrating on sale items.
There is no mention in this article of this being a women’s only website. Thank you for wasting my time. Please stop assuming that only women enjoy fashion. Thanks.
You may want to try http://www.shopittome.com which has mens, womens and children’s clothing.
Agreed!
http://www.SavvyCircle.com takes a different approach to shopping. Instead of trying to suggest items to users, it lets them window shop and tell it what they like then lets them know when it goes on sale. At least then the emails you get are for things you actually wanted.
One giant YAWN….
Really cool domain name!
500 Servlet Exception
She puts the lotion on the skin, or she gets the hose again..
1.They copied the profiles schtick from http://www.shopstyle.com
2.They copied the name from http://www.i-covet.com
3.They copied the alerts from http://www.shopittome.com (which they are probably in business with judging by the registration process)
4.They created a crappy app that crashed my (firefox 3.0) browser 3 times.
5. They will spam your email contacts.
6. It such a clever idea, that only the people who designed it will have the patience to fill out these mind wrecking profiles. I wouldn’t be surprised if the people who were hired to do the profiling work turned out to be the same psychologists that did the freelnce work for the CIA waterboarding prisoners.
You suck. Good luck
Someone sounds a little bitter.
I think covet can be a cool little service. I just signed up and didn’t encounter any crashes. It was easy and went smooth for me.
Hi,
Covet is definitely not in business with Shop It To Me, in fact they are competitors, although Shop It To Me has proven to be a far superior service that is miles ahead with its technology.
Lots of shopittome.com employees on this thread. They must be worried about a little competition.
I was excited about this and actual enjoyed doing the profile info, which went smoothly. They were even pretty close on defining my style. But I got my first e-mail from them today and there is practically nothing in it that I’d ever consider buying, regardless of price. There are a ton of brands that I haven’t heard of or actually hate – definitely not the style they picked for me.
In the profile process, there was a place to click on brands that I don’t like (so that I wouldn’t receive e-mails about them). I thought this was smart. But the brands that came up in my e-mail didn’t even appear on that list – or I would have eliminated them! It seems like the site really wants to use the e-mails to promote retailers with whom they have affiliate deals. Makes sense for them, but it means I don’t want their irrelevant e-mails.
The weird thing is, this is a new service yet there’s no place in the e-mail to click and give this type of feedback. Seems like yet another fashion algorithm site that doesn’t work.
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