Inporia (YC W11) Launches Kaleidoscope, Takes You from Photo to Purchase

http://www.betabeat.com/2012/02/16/ycombinator-alum-ryan-junee-inporia-kaleidoscope-shopping-app-02162012/

by pg • 14 years ago

50 6 14 years ago

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ryan2• 14 years ago

Thanks pg & jessica for getting me out to NY for YCNYC. It's been onwards and upwards since then :)

nitashatiku• 14 years ago

PG: planning on hosting another YCNYC this year?

int3rnaut• 14 years ago

Kaleidoscope is going to be massive! I told my sister about it this morning, and within an hour all of her non-Iphone friends were using it. I think you really stumbled onto something huge here Ryan.

I'm really curious though--How and why do you go into something so fashion-centric (I'm assuming to be a bit out of your comfort zone) with such a high barrier of entry? Obviously it's in the e-commerce sector, but fashion is it's own beast.

Good luck and congratulations.

ryan2• 14 years ago

Like any sector that hasn't been totally disrupted yet, it's inevitable that technology will change the game. But subject matter expertise and relationships do matter a lot (especially in fashion) so we brought on a director of biz dev who's worked at Chanel and other fashion brands and we are pursuing partnerships with top names in fashion.

Plus, my Stanford/Google background notwithstanding I actually do enjoy fashion :)

zasz• 14 years ago

So what makes this better than Polyvore?

ed209• 14 years ago

When I first saw the app, I thought I could take a photo of an outfit and it would return purchasing suggestions.

So if I understand it, you take a bunch of photos, some fashion interns find places online where you can buy similar looking products (although they probably only look in places where you get an affiliate commission) and then you list those items where the user can individually go and purchase them to make a complete outfit?

Some problems I ran into were that items you linked to were no longer available. Most of the sites you linked to were not mobile friendly, so I wouldn't purchase from them on my HTC Desire anyway. And who are you targeting to? There is a huge range of prices, $50 to $1600 for jewellery?

And why only for women? Women love shopping, going to the shops and looking round. Why not target it for men? You've seen how well The Trunk Club is doing.

Certainly the way we discover and buy fashion is ripe for disruption, but I don't feel like Kaleidoscope (on mobile) is offering me any better alternatives that what already exist.

I also think the title is misleading. What it actually does is take me from a photo to a breakdown list of the constituent parts of the outfit. I then click on one constituent part, say a clutch bag, and get taken to another list of similar clutch bags chosen by some interns. At that point, I choose one of those clutch bags and get redirected to a non-mobile friendly website where I can choose to add that item to my shopping cart on that site and go through the checkout process.

Actually, "Takes You from Photo to Purchase" would be something like, "buy this whole outfit for $270", on click purchase you take care of ordering the constituent parts from the various retailers.

I want an app like this to succeed so I hope you guys have more coming - unless I missed something already.

Inporia (YC W11) Launches Kaleidoscope, Takes You from Photo to Purchase

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