UK b2b startup Smartzer, which was founded back in December 2012, has pulled in $400,000 in angel funding to launch a fashion-focused video tagging tech that’s designed to make look book, catwalk and other fashion video content shoppable.
Serial entrepreneur Jamie True is one of the angels in this round, the rest are undisclosed private investors.
Smartzer’s tech works by overlaying interactive elements (such as the square ‘+’ signs in the above screengrab) on top of video content, allowing viewers to click on individual items to add them to a shopping wishlist so they can easily buy them later. The tech is designed to work on retailers’ websites or in store, accessed via touchscreen display devices such as tablets.
Founder Karoline Gross names video tagging startup wireWAX as a direct competitor but says Smartzer has a different emphasis — owing to its focus on fashion and retail.
“We focus purely on fashion and retail putting high emphasis on design, user experience on a bespoke basis,” she says, noting that Smartzer worked with one of its customers, clothes chain Whistles, to create a wistlist notification system for next season items so the company could gauge interest in a future collection. The video can be seen here on Whistles’ website.
In the first week of the Whistles’ video, Smartzer said 3,185 products were added to personal WaitLists and 19.0% of these emailed through the Notify Me service.
“There is proven success in enhancing online sales through integration of video. However, the videos and actual online shop are still largely disconnected,” Gross says of the problem the tech is looking to fix. “Finding items featured in videos can be extremely time consuming.”
Retail customers and fashion designers it has currently signed up are: Whistles, The Outnet.com, Olla Kiely, Muubaa and Emma Shipley.
It launched the tech last month at London Fashion Week where visitors were able to shop The Outnet.com’s trend shows, designer fashion films by Emma Shiplet and Muubaa using Smartzer’s tech displayed on Giant iTab touchscreens at the venue.