Random fashion thoughts - Part II (A New Hope)

zissou said:

Browsing both sides of the classifieds this evening has me thinking that we really just need one Marketplace where everything is split out by categories, such as footwear, suits, dress shirts, casual shirts, knitwear, etc. There are so many double listings, and lots of footwear in the CM side that I missed by only browsing the SWD side.

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Yes please. And allow me to receive alerts based on my sizing.

zissou said:

Browsing both sides of the classifieds this evening has me thinking that we really just need one Marketplace where everything is split out by categories, such as footwear, suits, dress shirts, casual shirts, knitwear, etc. There are so many double listings, and lots of footwear in the CM side that I missed by only browsing the SWD side.

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We tried this once, and everyone hated it. It would have been easier to rejoin India with Pakistan or China with Taiwan.

NorthCoast said:

Yes please. And allow me to receive alerts based on my sizing.

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The sizing will happen. Alerts, not so much, though I agree that that would be awesome.

The growth of gra1led really shows that styleforum dropped the ball badly

I mean they came up very quickly and took a huge share of what used to belong to SF/eBay/Sufu etc through nothing other than word of mouth and a nice UI (aside from that brief period of fee-free PayPal transactions)

I'm assuming it was just one guy who did it with minimal financial backing though that' may be naive

IN any case is it really that difficult/expensive for SF to develop something similar?
Anyone who works in the industry have a ballpark $ figure of how much capital grailed took to get started?

And is the move to ramp up fees because they now plan to sell it off?

skeen7908 said:

The growth of gra1led really shows that styleforum dropped the ball badly

I mean they came up very quickly and took a huge share of what used to belong to SF/eBay/Sufu etc through nothing other than word of mouth and a nice UI (aside from that brief period of fee-free PayPal transactions)

I'm assuming it was just one guy who did it with minimal financial backing though that' may be naive

IN any case is it really that difficult/expensive for SF to develop something similar?
Anyone who works in the industry have a ballpark $ figure of how much capital grailed took to get started?

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They actually actively tried to build their userbase from ours and from Superfuture, in a very unethical manner. I can't really comment more on that at the moment.

With our SaaS system right now, yes, it is very difficult to build such a system, and even if we were not tethered to this system, it would be difficult, yes. The only good way to do this would be for Styleforum to set up a connected but stand alone system. Building something on top of the forum system would be much more difficult than building it from scratch.

Having talked to a few guys who have worked in marketplace technology before, it's a full time endeavor, with contextual search being one of the hardhest things there are. In any case, while we may be improving our secondary marketplace, our focus is really in another area right now. Again, I can't really talk about it right now, but hopefully in a few months, you'll see what we've been up to.

Incidentally, Ebay doesn't give a ****. There are a lot of speciality marketplaces out there, and menswear is a pretty small one. Ebay is more worried about a player like Amazon.



mementomoriarty said:

4% for PP and 6% for Grailed 

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The grailed fee includes pp

skeen7908 said:

Anyone who works in the industry have a ballpark $ figure of how much capital grailed took to get started?

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The real cost is in the development and design. So, it's opportunity time for a developer. They guy who started Grailed is a serial entrepreneur, and a CS guy, so the cost to him was opportunity time. You can cost that out as you will.

Do you make a living out of this site?

Sorry if that's rude I'm curious

Yes obviously it would have to be outside the forum architecture but so what?

It just seems like a huge missed opportunity for you personally to make money and increase the size and profile of your business

1 programmer working for what a year? 150k?

NaTionS said:

mementomoriarty said:

4% for PP and 6% for Grailed 

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The grailed fee includes pp

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I'm assuming they don't pass the whole 4% on to PayPal due to some deal worked out?
So maybe grailed takes 3-4%?

be interested to know their total sales volume
Hopefully when the IPO happens /s

skeen7908 said:

Do you make a living out of this site?

Sorry if that's rude I'm curious

Yes obviously it would have to be outside the forum architecture but so what?

It just seems like a huge missed opportunity for you personally to make money and increase the size and profile of your business

1 programmer working for what a year? 150k?

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Styleforum is a company with a few employees as well as a revenue share agreement with our technology and sales partners in San Francisco. It does okay, and we are looking to expand into other areas.

Like I said, we will be improving our marketplace, but it will not look like Grailed.

The problem is not the lack of opportunities to make money, but where you choose to spend your time and effort and what personnel you have on hand. There are about a dozen things that I would like to do, and there is enough time and resources for maybe two or three of them.

skeen7908 said:

I'm assuming they don't pass the whole 4% on to PayPal due to some deal worked out?
So maybe grailed takes 3-4%?

be interested to know their total sales volume
Hopefully when the IPO happens /s

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I'd be extremely surprised if they decided to take that company public, at this point. It's a huge PITA, subjects you to public scrutiny and a load of regulations. Most startups raise funds by way of VC, and they do so at strategic times - i.e. if and when they have a vision for growth. Otherwise, you are just diluting your own shares for no particularly good reason.

skeen7908 said:

It just seems like a huge missed opportunity for you personally to make money and increase the size and profile of your business

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Hopefully, not missed for good. That said, I probably work between 60-70 hours a week between this and some other businesses in which I have a hand. At the end of the day, you have to choose where to put your energy, since there are only so many hours in the day.

whatever happened to @brad-t

nahneun said:

whatever happened to @brad-t

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Not sure, but I sorta miss that crazy dude.