Glamhive, a two-year-old Seattle startup that rewards fashionistas with gift cards for sharing their favorite outfits online, has raised $946,000 in investment to help grow its platform.
Seattle angel investor and PicMonkey Chairman Jonathan Sposato led the round, which is still open and includes participation from early Facebook employee Marc Kwiatkowski, Corum Group President Nat Burgess, and Seattle Angel Conference, which awarded Glamhive with the $205,000 top prize at its pitch contest in May.
Glamhive lets people browse through photos of different outfits and gives them the ability to purchase items that they like — the photos are “shoppable,” as co-founder Stephanie Sprangers describes it. Users can earn points on Glamhive when they buy outfits or when someone buys part of an outfit that they’ve posted. The points can be used for gift cards.
The platform is geared at women ages 18-to-44 “who love to share and shop great style.”
“We started with what we know and love: digital marketing, audience development, and fashion,” explained Sprangers, who co-founded the startup in 2013 with Gisella Walter. “From there, we recognized the trend of people sharing photos of their style in social media and the shift in how people discover, and then want to purchase, the products shown in those photos. This behavior, combined with the overall increase in spending for fashion online, pointed to an incredible opportunity to bring all of this activity — sharing, discovery, shopping — under one roof with Glamhive.”
Glamhive, which employs three, has partnered with more than 700 retailers and earns affiliate revenue of four to 20 percent on each outfit sold through the network.
“Down the road we will earn revenue by more top-of-the-funnel activities including view-through attribution, CPC and other engagement and direct sales marketing products,” added Sprangers.
The company competes against Polyvore, Wanelo and RewardStyle. Sprangers said it also considers social media giants like Facebook and Instagram as competitors, but noted a few differences.
“While both claim to be racing to answer the consumer desire to ‘buy it,’ we think they will miss what women really want — the ability to shop style that individuals share, not just products retailers and brands pay to promote,” she said. “This is a key differentiator of Glamhive. We enable people to create, share and shop user-generated style photos.”
Editor’s Note: Jonathan Sposato is GeekWire’s investor and chairman.
