7 ms·

Introducing Boutiques: a new way to shop for fashion online

18 points by ordinaryman 16y ago

robotron 16y ago
If you have a vagina.
- ovi256 16y ago
  I don't care if you're sexist, just keep it out of HN mkay ? 3/10, almost chuckled.
  - dagw 16y ago
    In what way was that sexist? As far as I can see there is no menswear section. The most you can accuse the original comment of is being insensitive to transvestites.
    - ovi256 16y ago
      Oh wow, didn't notice that actually. I guess the formulation triggered my reaction more than anything.
    - zingo 16y ago
      "If you are a women" would have sufficed, or more correctly "If you want to buy women's clothing" e.g. as a present. I've noticed many comments reflect a typical consumer mindset i.e. people aren't interested in things unless they are the target audience and can use or buy it.
      - robotron 16y ago
        I perhaps should have worded it differently but was trying to make my statement as simply as possible. I'm actually speaking from a business standpoint - this new site/feature has been marketed pretty heavily. "A new way to shop for fashion", "Google wants to dress you", etc. all in arguably locations that probably skew male. I haven't seen any mention of it being targeted only to those wanting to purchase women's clothing and think the message is off because of that.
- dagw 16y ago
  Sadly that seems to be the case. Unless I'm missing something there doesn't seem to be too much there for those of us with a penis. Seems like a bit of missed opportunity if you ask me.
  - yanw 16y ago
    At this time, Boutiques is only available in the U.S. and only for women’s fashion, but we plan to expand in the future
bruceboughton 16y ago
Is this the first Google property not to have their characteristic design?
phragg 16y ago
this just shines light that anything in the string Google gets rushed to HN front page. ill revisit when theres mens clothing
gabea 16y ago
I am really starting to believe that Google does not have any designers working for them. What is with the search engine like feel for a website that has to do with fashion? I understand if you are just selling regular goods online, but for something that speaks to peoples eyes should there not be some decent aesthetics involved.
- dsplittgerber 16y ago
  Have you actually clicked through to boutiques.com? It looks just like many other online fashion shops do.
  - gabea 16y ago
    Yes I did click through, but I still stand on my original comment. You would think that for Google being as massive as they are and for the unique fact that this is spun off without the word Google in front of the site name that they would spend some type of ample effort presenting a more eye pleasing site. My expectations for other online fashion shops are far less being that they are not Google.
  - mtsmith85 16y ago
    I would disagree ... Look at: http://jackthreads.com/ http://jackthreads.com/ http://www.gilt.com/ http://www.gilt.com/ or http://seshday.com/ http://seshday.com/ I'd say that the majority of online fashion shops -- actual shops, not just a designer's site -- often have well designed, well thought out sites. Boutiques.com looks just like a very sterile, google site. No "fashion" at all. (Disclosure: I work for Thrillist, the parent company of JackThreads. But I'm speaking for me and only me, in the comment above.)
zingo 16y ago
Would guess it's based on their acquisition of http://www.like.com/ http://www.like.com/ Edit: Yes, http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/81927/20101115/google-fashion-website-boutiques-com-like-com-acquisition-froogle-look-book-ebay-amazon-fashion-in-f.htm http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/81927/20101115/google-fashio... http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/15/google-to-enter-fashion-shopping-territory-with-launch-of-boutiques-com/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/15/google-to-enter-fashion-sho... http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/11/17/googles-boutiques-com-opens-for-business-today/ http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/11/17/googles-boutiques-com...
andrenotgiant 16y ago
Interestingly, the whole site is blocked from Search Engines with NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW tags. I can imagine why they would block product pages, given that its basically an affiliate site, but even the homepage? Google sure is playing it safe.
antareus 16y ago
Too bad there's no section for males. Clothes shopping is so hit-or-miss in department stores, especially if you know exactly what you want.
- jaxn 16y ago
  I was really hoping they had men's suits. I wear a somewhat difficult to find suit size and would love for Google to provide me one place for OTR suits in my size.
lukeqsee 16y ago
Has Google lost their focus? Are they trying to be everything to everyone? It seems everything in the last two years has been unfocused, and consequently, ineffective. (Go is an exception.) Do you agree?
- prodigal_erik 16y ago
  At its heart, a corporation is just a pile of money that hires people to make itself bigger somehow. The expectation that it confine itself to a few related lines of business is a reaction to the fad in the 1960s of making leveraged buyouts of arbitrary companies to game the share price of the resulting conglomerate.
- dagw 16y ago
  This is a search engine optimized for searching for a very specific type of information. Then they've tacked on a way to monetize those searches. What could be more 'core' to Google than that? As such it seems to be the most focused product they've released in a while.
alexophile 16y ago
This reminds me of Polyvore(http://polyvore.com/ http://polyvore.com/) - which has a few ex-googlers among their ranks. Most notably, Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, their CEO (via Accel) was the president of Asian-Pacific and Latin American Markets.
zachware 16y ago
Are the product features 100% curated by humans/brands or is it pulling data feeds from Froogle (or whatever it's called now) and building outfits that way? Can't figure out the data?
jfarmer 16y ago
Just so people understand, Google is not happy that sites like Sugar, Inc.'s http://www.shopstyle.com/ http://www.shopstyle.com/ are taking a chunk of commerce search away from them. I'm sure it's all the more frustrating when they're building ad networks on top of their vertical search engines, too: http://shopsense.shopstyle.com/ http://shopsense.shopstyle.com/

18 points by ordinaryman 16y ago

robotron 16y ago

If you have a vagina.

ovi256 16y ago
I don't care if you're sexist, just keep it out of HN mkay ? 3/10, almost chuckled.
- dagw 16y ago
  In what way was that sexist? As far as I can see there is no menswear section. The most you can accuse the original comment of is being insensitive to transvestites.
  - ovi256 16y ago
    Oh wow, didn't notice that actually. I guess the formulation triggered my reaction more than anything.
  - zingo 16y ago
    "If you are a women" would have sufficed, or more correctly "If you want to buy women's clothing" e.g. as a present. I've noticed many comments reflect a typical consumer mindset i.e. people aren't interested in things unless they are the target audience and can use or buy it.
    - robotron 16y ago
      I perhaps should have worded it differently but was trying to make my statement as simply as possible. I'm actually speaking from a business standpoint - this new site/feature has been marketed pretty heavily. "A new way to shop for fashion", "Google wants to dress you", etc. all in arguably locations that probably skew male. I haven't seen any mention of it being targeted only to those wanting to purchase women's clothing and think the message is off because of that.
dagw 16y ago
Sadly that seems to be the case. Unless I'm missing something there doesn't seem to be too much there for those of us with a penis. Seems like a bit of missed opportunity if you ask me.
- yanw 16y ago
  At this time, Boutiques is only available in the U.S. and only for women’s fashion, but we plan to expand in the future

bruceboughton 16y ago

Is this the first Google property not to have their characteristic design?

phragg 16y ago

this just shines light that anything in the string Google gets rushed to HN front page. ill revisit when theres mens clothing

gabea 16y ago

I am really starting to believe that Google does not have any designers working for them. What is with the search engine like feel for a website that has to do with fashion? I understand if you are just selling regular goods online, but for something that speaks to peoples eyes should there not be some decent aesthetics involved.

dsplittgerber 16y ago
Have you actually clicked through to boutiques.com? It looks just like many other online fashion shops do.
- gabea 16y ago
  Yes I did click through, but I still stand on my original comment. You would think that for Google being as massive as they are and for the unique fact that this is spun off without the word Google in front of the site name that they would spend some type of ample effort presenting a more eye pleasing site. My expectations for other online fashion shops are far less being that they are not Google.
- mtsmith85 16y ago
  I would disagree ... Look at: http://jackthreads.com/ http://jackthreads.com/ http://www.gilt.com/ http://www.gilt.com/ or http://seshday.com/ http://seshday.com/ I'd say that the majority of online fashion shops -- actual shops, not just a designer's site -- often have well designed, well thought out sites. Boutiques.com looks just like a very sterile, google site. No "fashion" at all. (Disclosure: I work for Thrillist, the parent company of JackThreads. But I'm speaking for me and only me, in the comment above.)

zingo 16y ago

Would guess it's based on their acquisition of http://www.like.com/ http://www.like.com/ Edit: Yes, http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/81927/20101115/google-fashion-website-boutiques-com-like-com-acquisition-froogle-look-book-ebay-amazon-fashion-in-f.htm http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/81927/20101115/google-fashio... http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/15/google-to-enter-fashion-shopping-territory-with-launch-of-boutiques-com/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/15/google-to-enter-fashion-sho... http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/11/17/googles-boutiques-com-opens-for-business-today/ http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/11/17/googles-boutiques-com...

andrenotgiant 16y ago

Interestingly, the whole site is blocked from Search Engines with NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW tags. I can imagine why they would block product pages, given that its basically an affiliate site, but even the homepage? Google sure is playing it safe.

antareus 16y ago

Too bad there's no section for males. Clothes shopping is so hit-or-miss in department stores, especially if you know exactly what you want.

jaxn 16y ago
I was really hoping they had men's suits. I wear a somewhat difficult to find suit size and would love for Google to provide me one place for OTR suits in my size.

lukeqsee 16y ago

Has Google lost their focus? Are they trying to be everything to everyone? It seems everything in the last two years has been unfocused, and consequently, ineffective. (Go is an exception.) Do you agree?

prodigal_erik 16y ago
At its heart, a corporation is just a pile of money that hires people to make itself bigger somehow. The expectation that it confine itself to a few related lines of business is a reaction to the fad in the 1960s of making leveraged buyouts of arbitrary companies to game the share price of the resulting conglomerate.
dagw 16y ago
This is a search engine optimized for searching for a very specific type of information. Then they've tacked on a way to monetize those searches. What could be more 'core' to Google than that? As such it seems to be the most focused product they've released in a while.

alexophile 16y ago

This reminds me of Polyvore(http://polyvore.com/ http://polyvore.com/) - which has a few ex-googlers among their ranks. Most notably, Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, their CEO (via Accel) was the president of Asian-Pacific and Latin American Markets.

zachware 16y ago

Are the product features 100% curated by humans/brands or is it pulling data feeds from Froogle (or whatever it's called now) and building outfits that way? Can't figure out the data?

jfarmer 16y ago

Just so people understand, Google is not happy that sites like Sugar, Inc.'s http://www.shopstyle.com/ http://www.shopstyle.com/ are taking a chunk of commerce search away from them. I'm sure it's all the more frustrating when they're building ad networks on top of their vertical search engines, too: http://shopsense.shopstyle.com/ http://shopsense.shopstyle.com/