As the competition looks set to turn up the heat, StylistPick, the fashion buying site backed by Accel Partners and Index Ventures, has appointed ex-UK editor of Marie Claire, Juliet Warkentin, as Chief Creative Officer and Co-Founder.
Most recently, Warkentin was Content Director at style trend analysis firm WGSN, while prior to this she has also held the role of Internet director at Arcadia Group (Burton, Dorothy Perkins, Evans, Miss Selfridge, Topshop and Wallis).
Founded in 2010 and originally seed-funded by Stefan Glaenzer and Robert Dighero of White Bear Yard, and Index Seed, Stylistpick is a fashion buying website for shoe and accessory shoppers but with a neat twist to the buying club model: Customers signup to StylistPick and are asked to take a short quiz to “identify their fashion profile”. Then each month they receive tailored recommendations for fashion items such as shoes and bags via a monthly-subscription, which includes the items themselves.
It’s also a model that is strikingly similar to Shoedazzle in the U.S., which is funded to the tune of $23 million and is also said to be planning on entering the UK later this year, while the infamous Samwer Brothers are thought to be cloning the subscription model, possibly via their existing property Zalando, a European Zappos clone. That’s perhaps not surprising: the shoe market in the UK alone is estimated to be worth £8 billion ($13 million) per-year. On that note, StylistPick membership is said to be doubling month-on-month, although the company doesn’t say what that figure is.