With the economy sinking, clothing is just one of the many luxuries Americans are cutting from their budgets. But one web biz is trying to keep luxury clothing affordable.
Founded in January, Regent's Secret is based on a new e-commerce business model originating from France. The online outlet is invitation-only, and prices on high-end designers are between 50 to 70 percent off retail prices. How are the prices so low? Designer overstock is privately sold online via Regent's Secret before being sent to outlets. CEO Rich Cusick argues that the recession doesn’t dampen people's interest in buying high-end goods, but simply forces consumers to find better deals. "If you look at general retail, the low-price stores like Loehmann's and TJ Maxx are doing really well," he says, "People want luxury upscale brands but they don’t want to pay full price."
Since January, Regent's Secret's membership has grown to 60,000 members and the Los Angeles-based site holds three sales per week. "I think this will be a huge trend …it fits with consumer appetites for luxury brands," says Cusick. Keeping the business invite-only ensures the audience is fashion-forward. Members are allowed to invite friends to join, and as an incentive, for each referral, the member receives five percent of their friends' purchases in cash back.
Featured designers have included Dolce & Gabbana and Roberto Cavalli. "The more exclusive the brand, the better it does," Cusick says. As for products, denim and accessories have attracted the most interest, possibly reflecting what consumers are most comfortable purchasing online.
The company's next steps include a website re-launch in November, with a lighter and more contemporary look. Developers also want to expand the viral nature of the site, including special rewards to frequent buyers, and creating consumer media, with features about what's hot and what's not.
New York Fashion Week for Spring 2009 collections kicks off today, but the crew at the Shelly Steffee boutique in Manhattan's Meatpacking District got the party started early yesterday evening. With a champagne party featuring DJ MSG on the turntable, guests got a look at the new fall collection, titled "Couture Warrior."
Inspired by Queen Elizabeth I of England, the idea behind the new line is that everyday is a battle and full of new challenges, says Scarlett Baily, an in-house PR representative for Steffee. "This is the outfit to bring you day to night, weekday to weekend," she specifies. All items are intended to be reversible and able to be used in multiple outfits. Elizabeth inspired Steffee, Baily notes, because she was one of the first queens to go into battle with her men. And the couture part, she adds, was because Elizabeth always needed to be the best. (And in case one didn't pick up on the Tudor queen-inspired theme, Elizabeth: The Golden Age was being projected on to the wall.)
A few items from the collection include a leather-looking black, bonded cotton military short pea coat ($1380). There's also a silk charmeuse convertible top, which can be worn forwards or backwards, with ivory enamel beads reminiscent of armor ($690). To top it off, there's a woolly neck warmer inspired by chainmail.
As for the brand, Steffee plans to keep her boutique small as she prefers to keep a tactile feel with clients and the space. The designer often refers to the store as a "cultural salon," as they host their runway shows in-house, along with performances from time-to-time featuring different DJs and even poetry. While this event is definitely low-key compared to most of the events going on at the Bryant Park tents in the past, it was definitely more intimate, which is probably what the designer was shooting for.
To my amazement while flipping the pages of People yesterday, I saw that the youthful, high fashion label, Alice + Olivia, now has a collection at Payless. Has everyone gone to the cheap side? Not that I'm complaining in the slightest. As the tagline of Sarah Jessica Parker's low-cost label, Bitten, says: "Fashion is not a luxury." If the fashion industry's royalty dubs it a right, shouldn't we all be able to look as good as we want?
Target just premiered longtime guest designer, Isaac Mizrahi's fall women's collection (newsflash: vintage is in…again). On August 3, Fashion Avenue's rising star, Richard Chai, debuted his Target collection to rave reviews (personally, I had to have his purple plaid trench coat, and it was an absolute steal at $44.99). Target isn't alone in its quest to spread haute fashion to the masses. Swedish clothing giant, H&M, has brought countless prominent designers to their racks, including Stella McCartney, Roberto Cavalli, and Karl Lagerfeld. On Monday, the discount department store announced they would launch a new line with Comme des Garçons this November.
But why has this development become the it-trend of the fashion business? You could say the economy is helping it. Many young people can't afford to dish out $60 for a t-shirt at Urban Outfitters anymore. But now they can buy an equally fashionable (if not more so, thanks to the designer label sewn inside) product at a fraction of the price. Plus, it’s great exposure for these designers and for building a customer base that could stay loyal to a particular designer as it gets older (and richer). Thanks to Target, Mizrahi has really become a household name, and he has recently been courted and signed with Liz Claiborne as the fashion house's new creative director.
More and more top designers are spreading their brands to the middle class. I think this is one trend that will not be going out of style anytime soon.
You know that show, with the four ladies who are always dressed fabulously and talking about their relationships? Yes, it's The Hills, which returned last night on MTV for its fourth season. The reality show (its "reality" is debatable) has become the music network's biggest ratings hit in years, but more so, the show's lovely ladies have become more recognizable based on their off-screen lives and brands.
First there's Lauren Conrad, the Hollywood Hills resident and aspiring fashion designer. After becoming a spokeswoman and face for Avon's mark. brand, a fun, summery low-priced cosmetics line in 2006, Lauren launched her own designer label, Lauren Conrad, last year. Sales have been less than satisfactory, however, as the label's designs are simple and over-priced. ($200 for a plain, white cotton dress you could get at H&M? No.) The line has been since thrown into the sale bin at hot Hollywood boutiques such as Kitsch earlier this summer. This hasn't deterred the media mogul, who not only has launched a new fall line that is getting some critical praise, but she is also designing a line of handbags for Linea Pelle.
Then there is Team Heidi Montag. "Speidi" (a combo name for Heidi and her boyfriend, Spencer Pratt) could be a brand by itself just for turning their everyday lives into a publicity stunt for the paparazzi. Unless you have been living in a jungle for the last two years, you might be aware that there was a falling-out between Lauren and Heidi (even Obama and McCain have gotten into it). Thus, Heidi has launched her own clothing line, Heidiwood for Anchor Blue. While Heidi's clothes are a fraction of the cost of Lauren's, they still lack any real pizzazz or originality. Heidi, with the help of her conspiring boyfriend, has also been trying to launch a music career. She might want to stick with fashion.
Don't forget about The Hills other two starlets, Whitney Port and Audrina Patridge. Whitney, who probably got into that Teen Vogue internship and onto the show through her own hard work (she did intern at W for two years prior) is in talks with MTV for getting her own reality spin-off on her career with the fashion PR firm, People's Revolution, in New York. And, of course, she launched a fashion line of her own in March, titled Eve & A. Audrina isn't letting her fifteen minutes go to waste either, with a budding acting career, and she is currently in talks to star in a new Fox sitcom with Jerry O'Connell.
While The Hills is currently MTV's spotlight show, it is uncertain how much longer the show will last. Lauren recently told Entertainment Weekly, that at the beginning of every season, she assumes it will be the last. While many of the show's avid followers (myself included), hope that the show will go on forever, let's savor the much vapid drama on Monday nights while we can.
Advertising at sporting events is big business. And for the Olympics, it has to be extraordinary. It has to be innovative. In that regard, Pioco, a Shanghai-based Bluetooth media enterprise, has launched a new advertising campaign for the sporting event that its developers are calling, "the first of its kind." Through the company's technology wired at thousands of hotspots in and around Olympic stadiums, hotels, restaurants, clubs and cafes, Coca-Cola commercials are being brought to Bluetooth-enabled cell phones.
Pioco first partnered with the Atlanta-based beverage behemoth in its digital marketing efforts two years ago, and has been assisting China's digital team with ideas for the Olympic Games. Using BlueAiring broadcasting systems, the company can send advertising directly to millions of mobile phone users across the globe, Overall, it took almost a year and a half before developers were finally able to utilize a large network of Bluetooth hotspots around the Olympic stadiums to deliver "something rather simple, the Coca-Cola commercials, in order to reach out to mobile users and to create maximum impact for the on-the-go user experience," says Steve Chao, CEO of Pioco.
Users with a Bluetooth-enabled phone will receive video within several seconds. (Click here to see an example.) Typical transfer rates range from a low 40 KB to a high 135 KB per second, depending on the phone model. "We believe that the current technological developments in wireless communication can be effectively utilized to enter the currently unexploited and rapidly expanding mobile market," Chao says.
The company plans to expand to additional global events, starting with the upcoming World Expo in Shanghai in 2010. Chao hopes Pioco will be involved with the Olympics again in 2012 in London, with further innovations and integrations of a global positioning system (GPS, which transmits data through microwave signals) or Near Field Communication (which enables exchanging data between devices over four inches apart) with Bluetooth products "to achieve maximum involvement from the public."
If you haven't seen the commercials on every NBC channel for the last year, the 29th Summer Olympic Games commence in Beijing at 08:08:08 p.m. Given that Beijing is 12 hours ahead of the East Coast, and 15 hours ahead of the West Coast, the Opening Ceremonies will be taped. That's all fine and dandy for a glowing extravaganza, but what about for real competition?
Ratings of the Sydney broadcasts in 2000 were the worst ever for NBC and suffered because most Americans were able to read results when they woke up in the morning. The network only had a 14.4 average rating on the Nielsen scale. Athens in 2004 didn't do that much better and had an average of 14.7. The Atlanta games had a double advantage with American superstar athletes (i.e. the "Magnificent Seven" women's gymnastics team) and live-broadcasting the whole time in 1996, thus reaching a 21.5 rating.
A few events will be live, due to some serious maneuvering on the part of NBC Universal. The peacock network negotiated with the International Olympic Committee for swimming events to start in the morning, Beijing time, so that the network can broadcast races during prime time to American audiences.
This year, most people are probably going to go to the Internet to find out results prior to taped broadcasts. But how many people will still want to watch events on TV if they already know the medal winners hours in advance? For those who do want live action, NBCOlympics.com have partnered with Microsoft, via Microsoft's Silverlight technology, to bring more than 2,200 hours of live coverage and over 3,000 hours of on-demand programming. Verizon is also pushing Olympic coverage over streaming VCast videos, and AT&T is competing with MediaFlo and U-Verse products. (But for those who like the old-school viewing style, NBC will be broadcasting between 200 to 300 hours per day of coverage over the next 17 days over the company's networks.) Experts at TNS Media estimate that five percent of viewers will watch Olympic programming via personal computers or mobile phones.
Aside from technological advances, Beijing, is significantly different from Sydney: it is the most politicized and controversial Olympic Games ever. And that was before the torch even reached the Chinese capitol. Since the torch relay began in Greece earlier this year, protests over human rights issues in Tibet have followed it in major metropolises around the globe, including Paris, London, San Francisco and Buenos Aires. Not to mention that many international athletes have formed "Team Darfur," a group critical of China's business and trading policies in Darfur, Sudan. On Wednesday, the Chinese Foreign Ministry revoked a visa from Joey Cheek, a U.S. Olympic Gold Medalist speed skater in the 2006 Winter Olympics and founder of Team Darfur, without any reason. However, the United States Olympic team has chosen Lopez Lomong, a 1,500-meter runner who became an American citizen 13 months ago -- and a member of Team Darfur, as its flag bearer during the Opening Ceremonies tonight.
Ratings still might suffer due to the immense time difference. Then there's the availability of online and mobile viewing, which will definitely impact daytime viewing while Americans have more access to computers rather than televisions over the course of a workday. But the big-ticket sports (like track & field and women's gymnastics) will probably still bring people back to their television sets. And with the political and environmental hype ever the location of the 2008 Games were announced (and maybe with a few American superstar stories), NBC could see its biggest draw for a Summer Olympics outside of the United States ever.
Are you afraid of that little box at the bottom right side of your Facebook screen? You're probably not alone. That box is called Facebook Chat. Released in April, it offers Facebook members the option to see which of their friends are online, and then lets them instant message them. Seems like a great tool -- but many users aren't buying in yet.
This isn't the first time a popular Web tool launched a free instant messaging service and it didn't explode immediately. Google Talk (gChat), offered by Google Mail, is all the rage now, but when it first launched in February 2006, many Gmail users simply looked at the bar on the left side of the page and wondered what it was for several months. But gChat has succeeded quite well in the last two years, partly due to Gmail's popularity among a younger and more educated demographic, according to a 2007 Hitwise survey. Facebook follows in similar fashion, as a study last year argued that the Facebook brand attracts more teenagers and college students from middle to upper class backgrounds, versus its primary competitor, MySpace.
Another hindrance with gChat in its infancy and Facebook Chat now: is it an appropriate method of communication? It's unclear why a social stigma to using a new instant messaging client exists. It's as if there is some invisible line one crosses when sending a message for the first time. AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) had been the dominant instant messaging client in the United States up until then. (Exact member numbers on any IM service is fuzzy as all three clients allow users to sign up for multiple accounts and screen names under different aliases or e-mail addresses.)
A key technical difference, however, between gChat and AIM is gChat's auto addition of contacts based upon how much you contact one another. Additionally, AIM has gotten inundated with spam users over the years, which antagonized a lot of users who were frustrated with how many people they had to block. That could prove to either help or hurt Facebook. It's an excellent tool to get in touch with friends around the world one couldn't otherwise, but how many of your Facebook friends are you actually still in contact with?
Another tech qualm many users have about Facebook chat is that they simply don't like keeping the program open all day. I don't either. The alternative is using an IM aggregator. Who still wants to keep a bunch of extra windows open these days when you can condense them all to one? Ever since I bought my MacBook, I've synced my AIM and gChat accounts on Adium (among several other programs Adium allows including MySpace Chat). Earlier this summer, I finally added a Skype plug-in, and Adium developers are working on adding Facebook Chat to the mix. Mac users can download a beta version here, but I'll warn you that there are still plenty of bugs. Windows and Linux users with Pidgin can try this plug-in, and IM aggregator Trillian offers support here. Inversely, if you're a Meebo user, you can install an application to your Facebook profile page and access all of your IM accounts there.
With time, Facebook Chat will probably take off as gChat did, granted Facebook's popularity is only growing by the day. But when it will become the social norm is still unclear.
All the world needs is peace, love and ice cream -- at least according to Ben & Jerry's.
To spotlight the ice cream enterprise's newest creation, "Imagine Whirled Peace," (a swirl of sweet cream-flavored ice cream, toffee chips and fudge peace), the company has gone digital and partnered with Vitrue in a social media-marketing venture to promote, what else, world peace. And, of course, ice cream.
Visitors can upload photos and small text messages illustrating their thoughts and emotions on world peace. For a treat as sweet and light as ice cream, many of the messages are deeper than a sugary treat. Carl R. from Pittsburgh declared, "Peace will only happen when all traces of hate, racism, and bigotry disappear." Steve H. from Falls Church, Va. advised, "Give one person a break today, and maybe someone will give you one tomorrow!" Anita I. from Chattanooga, Tenn. said simply, "Hate is very ugly."
"Our ice cream and brand really lends itself to social media," says Katie O’Brien, Ben & Jerry’s interactive marketing manager. "This particular flavor had to do with peace. It had music. It had John Lennon."
While the site isn't going to bring about world peace, marketing a brand, such as an ice cream flavor, is a fresher advertising strategy and proposes a new twist on social media. It seems the best avenue to reach younger audiences these days is through social media sites like Facebook or MySpace, so why not cut the middleman and just start a social campaign right on your own website?
"We see more and more brands and companies frankly using social media to connect and be more relevant with their audiences," says Reggie Bradford, CEO, Vitrue, a company that has been building social media experiences for the last two years. Bradford notes that enterprises from numerous other categories are expanding to the social media world, from breweries to cough medicine manufacturers.
Customers seem to be connecting, as nearly 70,000 unique visitors have already participated with a message, and at least 1,000 with images since the site's launch on April 7. The ice cream retailer will begin launching campaigns in their scoop shops throughout the month of August, including signage highlighting the new flavor and social site. O’Brien says the company hopes the campaign will build stronger relationships with their customers.
"Ice cream by its nature is pretty social," she adds.
The new face of Facebook is already up for users to try out. And I hate it.
For most of the summer, www.new.facebook.com has been around for Facebook members to try out, but within the last month, Facebook has officially promoted it to groups of users at a time. This past week, a bar appeared on the top of my news-feed page saying, "The new Facebook is here! Try it now." I did, and I wasn't pleased with what I saw.
What I saw was a cleaner version of MySpace, not an innovation of Facebook. There's a lot more white space and more condensed information. But condensing information doesn't really add clarity in this case. For example, birthdays and events are combined, along with applications all from a drop down menu on the top. The old format was simple with a toolbar on the side for easy access. Why change something just to change it? I wasn't impressed with the new profile layout either. Instead of everything being nicely organized on a single page, users have to click through several pages of information to stalk, …er, get to know more about you.
Facebook developers said the purpose behind the redesign was to make navigation easier and to clean up the clutter of third-party developed applications. I think with the multiple tabs and bigger news feed, there's only more clutter. A simpler solution would be to cut out a number of the Facebook applications and implement a stricter development system (similar to Apple's selection process of what appears in iTunes' iPhone application store.)
Mercifully, there is a link at the top of the page to allow me to switch back. There isn't an official announcement on Facebook's website of when the new version will go global permanently, but it probably won't be far off. Like when the News Feed first appeared in 2006, many users were taken aback and it took some getting used to. That was more because of privacy concerns, but aesthetics are almost as important.
Airfares seem to be climbing exponentially these days. One of the ways to keep air travel affordable is subscribing to a frequent flyer miles program. But rewards points alone won't guarantee a free flight -- at least not quickly. I'm not one to recommend signing up for lots of credit cards, but if you're in the market for selecting a new one, take a close look at cards that will get you in the friendly skies faster.
First, try visiting your favorite airline's website. For example, I have the Jet Blue American Express card because I can get points on things I buy, plus points for travel and it has cheap routes between the two places I go to the most (San Francisco and New York City). Each dollar I spend with the card equals a point, and after 100 points, you get one TrueBlue Point. Then, 100 TrueBlue points equal two one-way plane tickets. Now that may seem difficult to achieve if you're only spending money on the card, but flights across country come out to 24 points if you book online. Thus, after four flights and at least $100 spend on the card, you get a free plane ticket. Not a bad program.
If you don't have a favorite airline (and these days, with air travel as hectic as it is, I don't blame you), you can find an airline within a large network (i.e. OneWorld) and find a credit card from one of those airlines. Typically, these airlines allow you to use your rewards points on any carrier within the system. Frequent flyers with a British Airways Visa Signature card, for example, can use their rewards miles on tickets with American Airlines and Alaska Airlines as well, thus having more flexibility when booking travel plans.
Another option is checking out your bank's website for credit card offers and deals. However, I find this path to be confusing, as banks tend to inundate you with choices, making it hard to decipher and decide which option works best for you.
Besides the point system (and, as with any credit card, the interest rate) a key thing to keep in mind when choosing a credit card: the annual fee. You don't want to end up with an annual fee that approaches the rate of a plane ticket, or you're not really getting a good deal. Some cards, like the United Mileage Plus Visa card, don't charge an annual fee the first year. However, their fares tend to be higher to begin with. Southwest, which has prided itself as a discount American carrier, charges an annual fee of $59 on the Southwest Rapid Rewards Visa card, but $59 is probably not bad for a round-trip ticket from coast to coast.
