to promote their content.
“With boutiques, you don’t know what they have unless you go in,” Paiji says. “It would be great to be able to window-shop these boutiques easily.”
Because Snapette photos are designed to be on the go and from your smartphone’s camera, boutiques don’t have to put energy into elaborate product photo shoots to advertise their inventory, Paiji says.
Snapette is backed by $1.4 million in funding, which it raised in the form of a convertible note last fall. Investors included McClure’s fund, Kirsten Green of Forerunner Ventures (an investor in beauty tech startup Birchbox and e-commerce site Bonobos), Shoedazzle.com founder Brian Lee, and Digital Garage, which helped expand Twitter’s and LinkedIn’s services to Japan, Paiji says.
The company has racked up about 40 boutiques as partners, with 30 of those in New York, says Paiji. It also runs promotions with specific designers, like Vince Camuto, who gave away give pairs of shoes to Snapette users that posted pictures of its products.
“It’s great brand marketing for them,” Paiji says. “It’s a campaign that had more of an authentic voice.”
Paiji ultimately sees Snapette as another avenue for brands to allocate their advertising budget to. It won’t be making money this year, though—Paiji says the company is cautious of “monetizing too early.”
“We want to make sure we’re partnering with the right brands, the right designers,” she says.
Does that mean a focus on luxury goods? Not so much. Paiji says Snapette would like to host “more accessible products,” ranging from $50 to $200. And a large chunk of the site’s content already comes from the more bargain-level retailers such as H&M and Forever21.
“But you do find a lot of very expensive products on the app, driven by the fact that some fashion is always aspirational,” Paiji says.
