Polyvore
| Web address | polyvore |
|---|---|
| Available in | English |
| Owner | Yahoo |
| Launched | February 1, 2007 |
|
Alexa rank
|
 1195[1] |
Polyvore is a community-powered social commerce website headquartered in Silicon Valley, California.[not verified in body] Community members curate products into a shared product index, and use them to create image collages called "Sets".[not verified in body] Active Polyvore communities exist in the areas of interior design and artistic expression,[not verified in body] and in the primary area of fashion. Polyvore opened an office in New York City in August 2012. In August 2012 Polyvore was receiving 17 million unique monthly visitors, a number which grew to 20 million in May 2014.
Polyvore was initially funded in three rounds by six investors, including initial investors Benchmark Capital and Harrison Metal, and Matrix Partners and DAG Ventures as lead investors in later rounds. It was acquired by Yahoo on July 31, 2015.
History
Polyvore started as a prototype developed by Pasha Sadri in August 2006.[citation needed] Jianing Hu and Guangwei Yuen joined Sadri to form the founding team,[citation needed] which launched of the first version of the website in 2007.[2][better source needed] Polyvore Inc. was formed in August of the same year.[citation needed] The company received US$2.5 million in series A funding from Benchmark and Harrison Metal in December 2007.[3]
In August 2009, Polyvore reached four million unique visitors, 150 million pageviews a month, and received US$5.6 million in series B funding led by Matrix Partners, alongside previous investors Benchmark Capital and Harrison Metal Capital.[4][3]
The New Yorker profiled Polyvore in March 2010, calling it a “fashion democracy” and a “world of virtual Anna Wintours”. At the time, Polyvore received 6.6 million unique visitors.[5]
Polyvore reached profitability in 2011, with Colleen Taylor of GigaOm stating, “Polyvore’s product-first strategy seems to be paying off: an eighth of Polyvore’s audience comes back to the site more than 100 times per month.”[6] For that same year, Polyvore was named in Entrepreneur Magazine’s 100 Most Brilliant Companies list,[7] and as number 29 of Time Magazine’s 50 Best Websites.[8]
Polyvore received US$14 million in Series C funding from DAG Ventures, Goldman Sachs, Matrix, and Vivi Nevo in January 2012,[3][9] bringing its total venture capital-backing to $22 million as of January 2012.[3]
Shortly afterward, in February 2012, Polyvore partnered with CoverGirl to launch "Polyvore Live", a live-streamed fashion show during Mercedes Benz Fashion Week, that showcased the collections of four alumni from the Fashion Institute of Technology, Lauren Bagliore, Vengsarkar “Ven” Budhu, Sergio Guadarrama, and Dana-Maxx Pomerantz.[10][better source needed] That same year, Polyvore was named by Fast Company as number 28 of its 50 Most Innovative Companies of the year.[11]
In August 2012, Polyvore opened its first New York office, in SoHo, with Mayor Michael Bloomberg issuing a personal welcome: “By opening an office here, Polyvore is joining the growing group of tech companies who recognize that the benefits of being in New York City are irresistible, regardless of where a startup began.”[12] In November 2012, the company launched its inaugural iOS app, and Polyvore's website achieved a 19 million monthly unique visitor count.[13]
By May 2014, over three million members had downloaded the Polyvore iPhone app and the company was reporting 20 million unique visitors per month; in that month, the company launched its first Android app.[14]
On July 31, 2015, Yahoo and Polyvore announced that Yahoo would acquire Polyvore for an undisclosed amount to augment its e-commerce operations.[15] According to Eric Jackson, manager of hedge fund SpringOwl, Yahoo purchased Polyvore for $230M.[16]
Leadership
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Polyvore was envisioned as a product and service by Pasha Sadri in August 2006.[citation needed] He was soon joined by Jianing Hu and Guangwei Yuen to perform necessary programming,[citation needed] and the trio launched of the first version of the website in 2007.[citation needed]
In its first year of creation, Jess Lee, an early Polyvore fan and user, emailed Sadri with a set of product suggestions, and, as Sadri explained in 2013: "The email was unlike any feedback we’d ever gotten ... It was a two-page-long analysis, detailing ‘this is broken, we can fix it this way.’"[17] In a July 2013 feature in Wired, Lee described herself as an "obsessive user" prior to her recruitment, and described her interest and motivation: “Influencers in fashion right now are a cliquey club in New York that’s very hard to get into,” making it hard for others to shape the trends.[17][relevant? ] Lee joined the company within nine months of her first visit, would rise through the ranks to become CEO,[17] and is now listed as a founder of the company.[3] Lee played a roll in attracting its eventual buyer, Yahoo, as she had business relations with the company's present CEO, Marissa Mayer, who had recruited her during her period at Google.[15]
At the time of its acquisition, Lee was listed as Co-Founder and CEO, Pasha Sadrias as Co-Founder and Director, Arnie Gullov-Singh as COO, and Guangwei Yuan and Jianing Hu as Co-Founders.[2]
Traffic
In August 2012 Polyvore was receiving 17 million unique monthly visitors, and as of July 2013, traffic of 20 million visitors per month.[17][12] In May 2014, the company was reported to be receiving 20 million unique visitors per month.[14] Hence, between August 2009 and May 2014, the number of monthly unique visitors increased from 4 million to 20 million.[4][14]
References
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- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.[better source needed]
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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Further reading
- Miller, Claire Cain (01-23-2012), “[1]”, “The New York Times”.
- Kalinske, Ashley (02-15-2012), “[2]”, “CNBC”.
- Boyd, E.B. (02-11-2011), “[3]”, “FastCompany”.
- Swisher, Kara (07-30-2010), Polyvore Execs Talk About Social Fashion! [video], The Wall Street Journal.
- Sellers, Patricia (02-23-2010), Google vet snags a CEO job, “CNN”.
- Miller, Claire Cain (02-22-2012), “[4]”, “The New York Times”.
- Miller, Claire Cain (08-18-2009), “[5]”, The New York Times.
- Miller, Claire Cain (07-26-2009), Site Wins Fashion Fans by Letting Them Design, The New York Times.
- Friedlander, Whitney (06-07-2009), At Polyvore, it's a virtual overlap of styles, Los Angeles Times.
- Sloane, Julie (10-11-2007), Yahoo Pipes Founder Creates Fashion Mashup Site Polyvore, Wired.
