The Shop Exchange: Polyvore Raises $5.6 Million in Second Round, Fashion Playtes $1.5 Million

Polyvore, in many respects a groundbreaking social shopping platform, has secured $5.6 million in a second round of financing (see press release).

"This round of funding brings the startup’s financing to at least $8.1 million to expand its engineering and sales teams.

Polyvore attracted new financing from Matrix Partners and a top-up from Benchmark Capital and Harrison Metal Capital.

 

Founded by three former Yahoo engineers, the Mountain View-based company now has six full-time employees.

The company also has financial backing from LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and Epinions co-founder Nirav Tolia."

A good article on the financing round also in the Bits-Blog of the NY Times.

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Fashion startups are attracting significant attention from investors nowadays. Fashion Playtes, a fashion site for young girls, recently announced a $1.5 million first round financing deal.

In the press release:

"Fashion Playtes gives girls the opportunity to express their creativity in the design process on the web, and then to actually purchase and wear the clothes they have so much fun designing.

Fashion Playtes aims to build a community around creativity in fashion, providing a chance for collaboration between family and friends, eventually incorporating game elements as well."

Fashion Playtes is a Spreadshirt-like targeted towards young girls and makes a pretty good impression with its playful approach (see the video on the website). The potential for repeat and regular customers may be limited however. The site starts off approximately where Stardoll stops.

In the area around Boston, Fashion Playtes isn’t the only startup ("The Second Coming of Mass Customization") which is taking on the mass customization concept ("The custom touch").

Originally posted in German as two posts (1, 2) by Jochen Krisch, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.

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