Fashion Roulette

With everyone shopping at the same fast-fashion shops, it’s easy to find yourself wearing what everyone else is. A #FirstWorldProblem to be sure, but one that inspired undergrad Jennifer Lee to launch Cartful.

Cartful curates a list of little-known niche fashion labels in the manner of StumbleUpon, the website that bakes serendipity into how you interact with it by randomly transporting you to an interesting website with the click of a button.

“We randomly bring something back that might interest you,” Cartful’s marketing associate told Racked.

First you fill out a survey that describes your style and the price-range you’re interested in. Then, you click on the “Let’s Discover!” button, which let’s you discover a brand and its website without leaving Cartful.

It provides a service for people in big cities who don’t have time to discover new brands, and opens up a new world for people in small towns who don’t have variety.

Cartful is still trying to find a way to monetize the site, as they’ve not yet sparked up collaborations or created affiliate link programs, but it’s an interesting business model. It combines the trend we call Armchair Exploration, shopping as if you lived near cool niche shops enabled by ubiquitous technology and connectivity, and Data Divinity, generating and leveraging big and small data in new ways.