What if you could get rewards towards future purchases, just by sharing what you have in your closet already? Zappos founder Nick Swinmurn has launched a new site to do just that. It’s called RNKD, and it wants you to show the world what kind of clothing and accessories you already own.

Even though the site launched last month and is still in beta, RNKD shared some extremely interesting stats with us that show a growing community for the premise. You might think that something like RNKD is just for the ladies, but the company tells us that 46% of users are male. They’re seeing some eye-popping engagement too, with users sharing 26 items each on average.

The idea is pretty brilliant when you think about it, if people share the items that they already have, then the site will known exactly what brands to partner with and what deals to offer to its user base. RNKD says that 2,000 different brands have been uploaded to the site so far.

The most popular brands on the site are Nike, Ralph Lauren, Express, and H&M. With this type of data, RNKD can do some serious damage in the social shopping space.

Show me yours, I’ll show you mine

Just getting deals based on what you have already purchased is interesting enough, but being able to share the contents of your closets with others takes it to another level. Each user gets a profile, and that profile shows all of the items that they have uploaded.

You can search through the items by type, brand, or the store that they bought it from. One neat feature is a quick breakdown of items by category so if you were holiday shopping, you’d be able to see the gaps in your friends wardrobe.

You can upload your items on the site, or use RNKD’s iOS and Android apps.

Reward me!

Here’s where things get interesting on RNKD. The more you share, the more chances you have to win rewards. The rewards or none other than Zappos gift certificates. Makes sense, since RNKD’d creator is the founder. The site sets up fun little categories like “Most Improved” and “Best Watch Collection” and rewards its users with gift certificates to buy more stuff. Pretty genius. You can even get badges for the types of things you share, cementing your place as a top brand maven.

If you’re really into fashion, you can get lost for hours on this site. RNKD has done a really awesome job of making everything clickable and shareable, so you can share something from someone else’s closet on Facebook or Twitter.

We’re told that of the items uploaded, the average user shares 12 different brands & 9 different stores, so I have to imagine that partnerships with these big brands are coming soon. It’s the perfect audience to share deals and exclusives with, and since they’re showing what they have in their closet already, we know that they like to buy.

➤ RNKD

With the Holiday season arriving fast, it’s time to step back and think about others who are less fortunate. With all of the commerce happening online, it’s a perfect time for big companies to start Social Good campaigns to get gifts to those who can’t afford them. Social commerce site eBay has teamed up with Toys for Tots for the “Give-A-Toy Store” campaign.

Toys for Tots has been in operation since 1947, and is one of the most popular organizations to donate to around the Holidays.

With the tap of a button on your mobile device, you can give a gift to someone who deserves it.

Cheief Marketing Officer of eBay North America, Richelle Parham, had this to say about the “Give-A-Toy Store” initiative:

This holiday season, we’re giving people an innovative way to window shop for good that will benefit Toys for Tots. We’re leveraging our mobile technology to power The Give-A-Toy Store, which offers a differentiated, interactive experience for shoppers who wish to give using their smartphone.

You can donate anything from $2 to $25 for popular toys via eBay’s mobile app.

This isn’t just a mobile experience, as there is a physical Give-A-Toy store in New York City at 35th Street and Broadway near Herald Square, in addition to a location at 117 Post Street in San Francisco. You can even scan custom QR codes to automate the donation of your toy of choice. The QR codes cause the toys to animate, bringing you a feel-good experience when making a donation.

Here’s a video from the company, explaining the initiative:

If you’re not in NYC or SF, you can simply go to eBay’s “Give-A-Toy” website and donate there.

On Facebook, eBay is allowing its fans to customize toys, and $1 will be donated to Toys for Tots for every toy customization, up to $50,000.

Download the eBay mobile app today, visit the website, or visit one of the stores physically to make your donation. You could turn a child’s Holiday into an amazing experience, just by doing some Social Good online with eBay.

➤ “Give-A-Toy Store”

When I wrote about sneakpeeq in September, I mentioned that its approach to selling high-end items online was genius. The basic idea is this: You see an item that you like, and you click a “Peeq” button to flip the price tag around.

It’s an action that you do every single time you shop in stores. Last week, the site launched out of beta with the addition of badges and a point system, and has seen over 30% growth in engagement.

I spoke with Henry Kim, Co-Founder and President of sneakpeeq about what tweaks the company made to see such an increase in social sharing on Facebook and sales overall.

Badges and point systems work

The unique approach to buying online that sneakpeeq takes has enjoyed a lift from a new badge and point system. The company tells me that these features bring consumers closer to the over 500 high-end brands that it has partnered with.

For example, if you share a lot of Kate Spade items, you can receive a “Kate Spade Ambassador Badge”, which shows your friends how in tune with the brand you are. It also shows Kate Spade how in tune you are, because you can turn that badge in for more deals on an item.

“Gamification” and badges have become hot since foursquare launched them as rewards for check-ins to venues, but sneakpeeq is actually making real money from these reward systems. As I noted in my first piece, brands were actually approaching the company to participate, and Kim tells me that the demand hasn’t slowed down since we talked.

With the addition of badges that you can actually turn in for real deals, you will find items on the site that you can actually get free of charge. This is something that will keep shoppers come back for more, and intentivizes them to share the things they interest them with their Facebook friends. It’s a cyclical system that could eventually print its own cash as far as I’m concerned.

You are given points for sharing, buying, and using the “Peeq” button to see the price of an item.

Taking E-Commerce to the next level

In addition to the partnerships and gamification of E-Commerce, sneakpeeq is bringing top fashion bloggers and models into the fold. By letting a well-known persona curate items and offer them to their fans, the company is helping both brands and curators gain respect and influence in fashion.

Certain items that are curated by known fashion personas like “Her Campus” are only available to fans of their brand.

Henry Kim tell us that sneakpeeq is working on mobile and table applications which should be available in January 2012, and the company continues to look at all data points to make tweaks on its system. The company is also focused heavily on bringing goods from the United States overseas, and vice versa. The engagement on the website has increased along with the Facebook app engagement, which are uniformly designed.

With all of this work revolving around the huge brand partnerships that the company has made, sneakpeeq is in a unique opportunity to get a runaway lead in the social shopping space, especially with its deep Facebook integration announced at f8. Of course, having former Facebook employees as seed investors certainly doesn’t hurt either.

➤ sneakpeeq

The best part about the Internet is that you can “crowdsource” anything and everything. That means that you no longer have to make any decisions on your own. Asking your friends on Facebook and Twitter followers where you should eat is a part of what makes using the services fun and rewarding.

Picking out clothes isn’t the easiest thing to do, especially when you’re shopping online. If you’re in a store, you can ask a clerk or a friend you’ve brought along. On the web, you’re probably just sitting in front of your computer alone. What do you do if you need someones opinion on a piece of clothing? Do you IM or email the link and wait for a response? If so, Suitts.me is about to blow your mind.

The site Suitts.me lets you ask your friends about individual pieces of clothing you find online.

Does this make me look fat?

I’m not sure if men do it as much as women, but from time to time we need advice on what we should wear. Suitts.me lets you add something you found online, and sets up a beautiful page and easy thumbs up or down voting system to help you decide on whether to make the purchase or not.

Simply grab the URL of any page you like that has the information about the clothes you want to poll your friends on. The images will be pulled in automatically and you give the page a title.

Simply drag the photos, and choose a picture of yourself to add to your page. Once you approve it, you’re given a link that you can send to everyone and buttons to Tweet the link and post it on your Facebook wall. The page is simple, and asks the simple question: “Does it suit me?”

The votes from your friends will show up in real-time. The original link to the item is intact if your friends want to inspect it further, and perhaps look at the price. I suggest you pick a snappy title for your page to incentivize people to participate.

Suitts.me saves all of the piece of clothing you’ve asked about, making it easy to go back and check the votes later on. It would be interesting if the site added a feature that let me tag something as purchased or not, so my friends know how much they can sway my decision-making.

This could actually be quite addictive. No longer do you have to wonder if something will make you look good or make you look bad. You don’t have to waste money finding out, or friends out to the mall. Just try Suitts.me.

Oh, and please click this link and tell me if you think this orange shirt suits me!

➤ Suitts.me

Online ordering is a wonderful thing. Amazon has nearly perfected the ability to let you order something one day, and magically receive it almost the next day.

Keeping track of all of your online purchases through email receipts is a hassle though. Slice is a site that wants to give you a history of all of the items you’ve purchased, as well as the ability track them in real-time.

Your order history

While Amazon does a great job of this themselves, when you’ve ordered from other sites you’re not so lucky. Slice brings everything together simply by connecting your email account to the service. It currently only works with Yahoo! and Gmail only. Sorry, Hotmail users. However, you can forward your orders to orders@goslice.com to be included from any account.

Once you’ve connected your account, Slice will go through your emails and pull out the known ones that were receipts from orders. It pulls out the tracking numbers as well, so you can track your packages from within the Slice site.

I found that Slice missed some of my orders, perhaps it was because they were from sites unknown to the service. You can forward missed receipts to orders@goslice.com and they’ll be placed in your account. That’s pretty handy. You could do all of this with filters and searches in your Gmail account, but it would take forever to set up.

Tracking pre-orders

This is where Slice holds the most value for me. When you pre-order things, it’s easy to forget about them. If you’ve ordered a book, a new device, or a video game, you simply can’t keep everything at the top of your mind. Slice shines here and shows you exactly how many days until your pre-order will be delivered.

While it might take some time for you to tune Slice to track all of your purchases, if you’re an avid online shopper, it might be worth it.

Slice also offers a pricing alert feature that will tell you if a recent purchase is priced cheaper somewhere else. Again, this is all done automatically so it’s quite handy.

We’re told that men don’t like to shop as much as women do, so GuyHaus has decided to make shopping for the essentials, simple and automated.

I discussed GuyHaus with CEO and Co-Founder Jesse Middleton today, and he tells me:

It’s magic when a product just shows up at my house and my wife asks me what brands I buy, and I say I don’t know, it just showed up

When you visit GuyHaus, there is no signup process, you just choose which packages of essentials you need, including toilet paper, toothpaste, and shampoo. Condoms are one of their highest selling items, Middleton says.

Once you’ve chosen your items, there is no typical “check-out” other than taking your payment information, these items are simply added to a monthly shipment so you don’t have to think about it. Of course, you can change that queue, much like you can change your Netflix, well now Qwikster, delivery queue.

The site is targeting an underserved demographic in e-commerce, 18-35 year old young professional males.

With an early investment of $250,000, the GuyHaus team is focusing on building relationships with brands, and creating VIP programs so that brands can send free samples to GuyHaus users.

The only thing that stands out as a negative, is that monthly shipments might not work for all, especially if you have a bunch of friends over and they use all of your toilet paper. I’m told that functionality of the site may change soon though.

With social shopping getting bigger and bigger, especially after Facebook’s Open Graph announcement, sites like GuyHaus are able to build a brand, loyal userbase, and simple experience quickly.

I had the opportunity to speak with Henry Kim, Co-Founder and President of the social shopping site sneakpeeq today to discuss their upcoming Facebook Open Graph initiatives.

sneakpeeq is a shopping site that, in Kim’s words “mimicks the hustle and bustle of offline shopping”, something not many e-commerce sites have been able to replicate in the past.

The company background that is the most intriguing is Harish Abbott’s, Co-Founder and CEO, who is credited with having a big hand in conceiving and building the shipping infrastructure that Amazon has become famous for.

Replicating an offline shopping experience isn’t easy, and typically happens in 3 stages, Kim explains.

- You go to a store with no idea of what you’d like to buy
- Something catches your eye
- You flip the pricetag over and make your decision

That serendipitous shopping experience is what sneakpeeq aims to replicate. And the company does an amazing job at it.

Up until now, the online shopping experience starts with you doing a Google or Bing search for exactly what you want, followed by a prompt with a few options based on price. Normally a shopper would purchase the one with the best price.

The difference with sneakpeeq, is that the company has a relationship with over 400 brands, and that’s growing daily. Brands are now reaching out to sneakpeeq to get involved. Those relationships, plus a solid discovery platform with a twist, is what makes sneakpeeq stand out.

When you visit sneakpeeq, you are shown a variety of brand name in season items. This isn’t extra stock of outdated items, we’re told.

Once you’ve found something of interest, one click on it and you are presented with the item page and information. Except there’s one thing missing.

The price.

To see a price of an item that caught your eye, you have to click the “peeq” button. At which time, a prompt comes up to connect with Facebook. After connection, you are able to share the item with your friends, and are then shown the price. The price is known only to you and the seller. This is important to brands, Kim says.

This type of “brand protection”, as Kim calls it, destroys the old “70% off” model, which customers may see as cheapening the product. The item is then shipped directly to the shopper after purchase, or the brand can decide to go through sneakpeeq’s customer service team, and the normal turnaround for the company is under 6 days.

In regards to Facebook’s Open Graph announcement yesterday at f8, we’re told that sneakpeeq is listed as a strategic partner in the “Lifestyle Apps” category on Facebook, which gets the company early access to all of the developer information, which is a huge advantage for the company.

In fact, some of their seed investors are early Facebook employees.

Kim tells us that “deep integration” with Facebook’s Open Graph is imminent, and we’ll update you on when that happens.

Currently, over 48% of sneakpeeq shoppers are repeat customers, with one woman purchasing over 85 items in just under 5 months.

About sneakpeeq and Facebook’s Open Graph, Kim says:

“For us, the way we see ourselves with Open Graph, it’s essentially the way people would shop offline, it’s mimicking the hustle and bustle of offline shopping.”

“Facebook has made everything democratic, every brand has a chance now, that’s what open graph and Facebook is all about, a fair playing field”

Alibaba Group, Chinas leading e-commerce company today announced, it is planning to build a network of warehouses across China and hopes to mobilize other partners to join in this effort to create an integrated logistics platform that will help elevate the quality of service to Chinese consumers and allow merchants to meet rapidly growing domestic consumption needs. Over the medium term, Alibaba Group and its financing partners will commit between RMB20 billion and RMB30 billion (US$3.01 billion to US$4.52 billion), and Alibaba Group hopes to spark a total investment of more than RMB100 billion (US$15.05 billion1) in logistics development in China by others partners in the e-commerce eco-system.

“It’s clear that logistics is a crucial link in the e-commerce eco-system and in order for Chinese entrepreneurs to reach their future growth goals, this sector needs to develop rapidly in China. It’s also clear that everyone involved in this sector needs to work together to accomplish this,” said Jack Ma, chairman and CEO of Alibaba today. “Hopefully within 10 years’ time, anyone placing an order online from anywhere in China will receive their goods within eight hours, allowing for the virtual urbanization of every village across China. In order to achieve this, we will need to establish a modern, 21st century logistics network.”

Alibaba Group’s strategy towards logistics is composed of four key parts. Initially, Taobao will continue to deepen its pursuit of the previously announced Taobao logistics initiative to enhance quality control of delivery service. The Taobao logistics initiative consists of the Taobao supply-chain management platform (e56.taobao.com) to help merchants handle inventory; logistics partnership network; and industry code of standards guiding logistics service providers. At the same time, Taobao will focus on providing relevant value-added services in accordance to product vertical-specific needs. Alibaba Group will also mobilize efforts to establish an integrated logistics platform that aims to bring together all players in the industry from warehousing to delivery. Third, Alibaba Group will invest in the establishment of a nationwide warehouse network across China in the goal of redressing the key bottleneck facing the logistics industry. Lastly, Alibaba.com (HKSE: 1688) (1688.HK) will offer warehousing facility support to small Chinese exporters.

Alibaba Group will coordinate closely with working partners in all sectors of the logistics industry to establish a national network of warehouse facilities to service the B2C industry across China. Usage of the Alibaba Group-owned warehouse facilities will be a service available to all, including partners in the logistics industry, Taobao sellers as well as independent B2C websites. Beijing/Tianjin area, the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta were the regions initially selected by Alibaba for warehouse construction because of their proximity to major population centers. Initial plans are to establish warehousing facilities in these three regions totaling approximately 3 million square meters in size, or the equivalent of 560 American football fields of floor space (or 356 football pitches).

“Creating a network of warehouse facilities is a key tactic in our strategy to resolve the bottleneck facing the logistics industry in China. In the other areas of the logistic industry, Alibaba Group will mainly participate through investments aimed at helping our working partners to accelerate their own growth,” said Zhang Wei, senior vice president of Alibaba Group and head of its strategic investment team.

As the leading source of business for the Chinese logistics industry, Taobao recently shared that transactions per user grew 35 percent year-over-year while Taobao Mall, its dedicated B2C platform, saw its 2010 gross merchandise value quadruple over the previous year. On November 11, 2010, more than 15 million packages were sent as a result of a single-day promotional event on Taobao Mall.

Luxury businesses are feeling the effects of the economic downturn (although to a lesser degree in China) with growing job losses and plummeting consumer confidence. This has translated into cuts in retail spending; so many in the luxury brand category are looking for ways to reach the consumer in a more cost effective way. In a departure from traditional marketing practices, luxury brands are increasingly turning to the web for promoting their wares as well as seeking out new audiences that would rather chat online and read the BBS’s than turn to more tradition marketing forms such as newspapers and magazines. The problem is that although luxury brands all have web presences now, many fail to realize the full potential of this medium.

The state of the Chinese luxury market

The luxury brand marketers are fully aware of the influence that the wealthy Chinese consumer is having on their digital campaigns. Until recently, most of the wealth in China had been concentrated along the coast—with Guangdong, Shanghai, and Shandong provinces containing the highest number of wealthy households—and the current luxury point-of-sales network roughly mirrors that distribution.

But as wealth has begun to spread throughout all city tiers and regions—with some of the most explosive growth occurring outside of Shanghai and Beijing—luxury stores have begun to follow. Therefore, it will be increasingly important for marketers to address this within their digital campaigns. The Boston Consulting Group’s research highlighted that many of the leading luxury brands have adopted quite different store based strategies. From their chart below you can see some luxury brands that have a very broad geographic footprint and others with a much more focused one.

This in turn should be reflected within their individual digital marketing strategies. Although all of these brands have a website presence, many have yet leveraged performance marketing or ecommerce in China.

According to the Luxury Institute the trends towards ecommerce is already happening in the US:

• In 2008, 33% of luxury brands had e-commerce sites.
• In 2009, 66% percent had e-commerce sites.
• Luxury consumers are individuals who make $419,000+ per year.
• 48% of them are on Facebook, and 14% of them are on Twitter.

Even last week, Forbes reported that Lacoste, which targets the 18-34-year-old demographic, said that it will now spend its estimated $12 million annual US ad budget on display ads on sites such as Facebook, Hulu, Pandora, and Condé Nast’s websites. Forbes stated that Lacoste knows that 18- to 34-year-olds, aren’t heading to newsstands anymore and that they need to go where their audience is these days- Internet.

High-end jewelry maker Tiffany & Co. now has a MySpace page, while Estée Lauder just launched a virtual makeup widget that users can download to their social media page or desktop.

Ralph Lauren was the first high-end retailer to introduce a mobile commerce site last year. The apparel maker began placing special codes in print ads, mailings, and store windows. After downloading special software to camera-enabled photos, users can scan the codes and be directed to the retailer’s mobile website where they can shop and access other content.

Luxury brands are turning to Digital Marketing… but are failing to convert

While all luxury brands now have established websites, I would argue that generally their approach to digital marketing (specifically, search, social & affiliate marketing) is often sub-optimal and fails to unleash the full potential of this channel. This is because, all too often, luxury businesses pursue digital initiatives tactically and in a suboptimal fashion. Common issues I think inhibit the successes are:

• Insufficient senior management buy-in (e.g. formal corporate KPI’s for digital marketing)
• Organizational ‘silos’ causing disconnects between ‘digital initiatives’ and ‘physical initiatives’ – for example physical stores not reflecting online campaigns, or physical stores not accepting returns from sales made online; under-utilization of customer data for devising new campaigns
• Lack of clarity around the objectives (selling vs branding vs engaging) – this then reflects as a lack of an online strategy, leading to confused, under-performing online campaigns
• Small marketing budgets allocated for online activities
• Within the online budget, poor allocations within the digital channels-  for example, one client we worked with was trying to drive conversions on their ecommerce site but taking a media buying approach. We had to educate them on various other channels that would produce much better outcomes (such as search and social).
• A tendency to outsource to their offline marketing 4A agencies (that boast ‘full service’)  – for example many 4A agencies have great digital groups but the traditional marketers at agencies tend to either allocate sub-optimal budget, ‘forget’ to invite the digital team into the campaign planning meetings or the digital team is in a state of flux and they need to sub out the digital work.

From my prospective, the luxury brands should consider two core digital marketing strategies; either a branding experience using media buying placements targeted to their demographic or using performance based approaches with ‘calls to action’, driving consumers to online points of sale (for conversion). However, while some luxury brands understand the ‘branding aspects’ of an online campaign many lack the performance marketing elements that would really help drive conversation and online sales.

Some more reading:

Digital Marketing Inner Circle