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Japanese fashion site iQon lands partnership with Italian online mall Yoox.com

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   Online fashion coordination service, iQon, which recently fundraised 300 million yen (or about $3.2 million), has announced a partnership with a global online fashion mall Yoox.com. Yoox was founded way back in 2000 in Italy, and has now expanded to over 67 countries including Japan. On iQon, users create their favorite looks using photos of accessories and dresses available on the website. In order to provide users with the items they’re looking for to complete their looks, iQon has teamed up with companies such as online fashion mall Zozotown to expand their items database. The company has partnered with over 40 ecommerce companies in total. I exchanged emails with Yuki Kanayama, the CEO of Vasily, the company behind iQon. He shared some interesting information about the service: Many of the looks are created on weekdays and weekends after 9pm. This is probably the time when the users are relaxed and maybe flipping through their favorite magazines — when they have the iQon app on their hands to create looks. On weekends, there are over 2,000 looks created per day. Only 20% of iQon’s users have experience buying online. Many of the users encounter fashion items they like online, and…

iqon  iQon-app

Online fashion coordination service, iQon, which recently fundraised 300 million yen (or about $3.2 million), has announced a partnership with a global online fashion mall Yoox.com. Yoox was founded way back in 2000 in Italy, and has now expanded to over 67 countries including Japan.

On iQon, users create their favorite looks using photos of accessories and dresses available on the website. In order to provide users with the items they’re looking for to complete their looks, iQon has teamed up with companies such as online fashion mall Zozotown to expand their items database. The company has partnered with over 40 ecommerce companies in total.

I exchanged emails with Yuki Kanayama, the CEO of Vasily, the company behind iQon. He shared some interesting information about the service:

Many of the looks are created on weekdays and weekends after 9pm. This is probably the time when the users are relaxed and maybe flipping through their favorite magazines — when they have the iQon app on their hands to create looks. On weekends, there are over 2,000 looks created per day.

Only 20% of iQon’s users have experience buying online. Many of the users encounter fashion items they like online, and then go buy them at retail stores. In a way, this is a good indication that iQon’s users are mainstream users, not the tech savvy users we typically see using the latest tech services. iQon is considering adding offline store information where certain items can be bought to enhance the user experience. What began as a fashion coordination service has now grown into a community, where some popular users have gained over a few thousand followers.

iQon’s users are currently almost all Japanese, however, with the partnership with Yoox, users can enjoy popular fashion items from around the world. This may be a footstep towards expansion to other countries. But Kanayama explains that at this point, the startup is still focused on growing the service within Japan.

As for future developments, he explained that community features will be important.

Since we have over 1,000 looks created each day, we want to allow users to create their own magazine-like page using these looks. The core value of iQon is that it helps you to discover new fashions. We want to help users find their favorite items in different ways.

Japanese fashion coordination site iQON raises $3.2M, will boost marketing efforts

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See original story in Japanese Vasily, a Tokyo-based startup which runs online fashion coordination service iQON, announced today that it has fundraised a total of 300 million yen (approximately $3.2 million) from Globis Capital Partners, Itochu Technologuy Ventures, and GMO Venture Partners. This is the second round of funds following the previous series A funding of 140 million yen ($1.5 million) in May of 2011. The iQON service allows you to combine clothing and accessories online and share fashion coordination ideas with other users. Each item has a direct link to fashion e-commerce sites where you can purchase it, and the startup will generate revenue from partner sites using an affiliate model. More than 300,000 coordinated outfits have been registered since the service launched in April of 2010, and users are bookmarking their favorites more than a million times a month. The startup introduced its iOS app last February (and an Android app is now also available) which really took off. It even helped some of their partnering e-commerce sites make more than 20 million yen monthly sales through the affiliate traffic. The company focused on service development in the series A phase, but will be intensifying branding and marketing…

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See original story in Japanese

Vasily, a Tokyo-based startup which runs online fashion coordination service iQON, announced today that it has fundraised a total of 300 million yen (approximately $3.2 million) from Globis Capital Partners, Itochu Technologuy Ventures, and GMO Venture Partners. This is the second round of funds following the previous series A funding of 140 million yen ($1.5 million) in May of 2011.

The iQON service allows you to combine clothing and accessories online and share fashion coordination ideas with other users. Each item has a direct link to fashion e-commerce sites where you can purchase it, and the startup will generate revenue from partner sites using an affiliate model. More than 300,000 coordinated outfits have been registered since the service launched in April of 2010, and users are bookmarking their favorites more than a million times a month.

The startup introduced its iOS app last February (and an Android app is now also available) which really took off. It even helped some of their partnering e-commerce sites make more than 20 million yen monthly sales through the affiliate traffic. The company focused on service development in the series A phase, but will be intensifying branding and marketing efforts from now on.

When discussing fashion e-commerce sites in Japan, we can’t help but mention Zozotown (listed on the Tokyo Mothers exchange since 2007). The site is a partner for Vasily rather than a competitor because the two companies have different business models and won’t compete and/or conflict. Vasily’s CEO, Yuki Kanayama, says they will keep working closely with their good partner Zozotown in the future.

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Vasily Inc.’s CEO: Yuki Kanayama