Though it’s not explicitly stated, Karl Taro Greenfeld’s and Mark Harris’ revealing reports on the state of network TV ["Zuckervision" and "Saving TV", September] carry important implications about the future of online video channels.

Just like producers in the early days of cable, today’s online producers are too readily dismissed as low-rent pretenders or cult curiosities. But when the cable channels started cutting into network market share, out came the checkbooks.

The networks paid billions to acquire their cable rivals. Have we seen a glimpse of the future for today’s online-video producers?

Mercurius Goldstein
New York, New York

]]> http://insidescoop.wardrobechannel.com/2008/10/published-in-conde-nast-portfolio-magazine/feed/ http://insidescoop.wardrobechannel.com/2008/09/unveiling-our-florida-online-tv-studio/ http://insidescoop.wardrobechannel.com/2008/09/unveiling-our-florida-online-tv-studio/#comments Thu, 25 Sep 2008 20:43:35 +0000 Sara Goldstein http://insidescoop.wardrobechannel.com/?p=83

Finally in full working order: our Florida studio, with an extra set for a new show we’re working on.

Watch this space for more news

But what we’ve noticed about those 10-15 slides is that a lot of startup presentations…

Well, we’ve done things a little different. Our slide deck is heavy on pictures, since fashion is a visual medium. It also has a lot more slides than most, but then most of them you can flick through in a few seconds.

Which means the presentation won’t take any longer than the prescribed 25 minutes, 30 minutes max. Just like it’s supposed to.

So if you’re a seed-stage investor, or you know someone who is, don’t be shy. Send us a message and we’d be happy to take you through the deck. It’ll only take half an hour, really. Just don’t count how many slides.

How do you figure out what to do? By trial and error…

My friend Dick Costolo, co-founder of FeedBurner, describes a startup as the process of going down lots of dark alleys only to find that they are dead ends. Dick describes the art of a successful deal as figuring out they are dead ends quickly and trying another and another until you find the one paved with gold.

Source: Why early stage investments (i.e. startups with funding) fail

That sounds exactly like what we’ve done for the past few months… hope it turns out as well for us as it did for the Feedburner guys.

Image: Nick Wiesner

Top writer-producers in television live like pampered pets, the kind that get caviar for breakfast. [...] Some of them think of Web video as a sort of farm club for TV: Why spend $2 million to make a half-hour pilot when you can shoot some high-quality Web episodes at $10,000 to $30,000 a pop, post them online to build buzz, string them together to make a series, and then port the whole thing back to television, where the real money is?

Source: Hollywood Has Finally Figured Out How to Make Web Video Pay

For Hollywood, $10,000 to $30,000 to make 7 minutes of finished footage is considered cheap. Hollywood comes from a time when you needed expensive gear, a big crew and a distribution deal to become a film-maker. Now, you don’t.

Here at The Wardrobe Channel, we’ve now set up two studios for around $500 each. They’re not quite Hollywood studios, but they do produce watchable footage and sound — and they can be operated by a lot fewer people. They’re also easy-to-use, even for people who’ve never made TV before.

Next up, we’ll be open-sourcing how we did it, so anyone who wants a Wardrobe Channel show can make one. It’ll cost them a lot less than $10,000 an episode, and we can’t wait to see what people come up with…

Photograph by Lars Plougmann via Flickr

If you have a long-running business in an established industry sector, that’s not a hard question. Thousands of different types of businesses are understood by most people, as we interact with them and/or their products every day. “We manufacture car parts” or “we operate a chain of convenience stores” are uncontroversial, readily comprehensible statements.

“We’re a 21st century media company” is not.

Nor is “We’re an online fashion media company that makes it easier to find, buy and wear clothing, but not just any clothing, only the clothing that’s exactly right for you.”

Nor is “We create media properties that adapt perfectly to their environment.”

These are all ways we’ve attempted to explain our nascent business in the past. Needless to say, they all tanked.

I wish I could say it only took us three failed attempts to explain what we want to do, and that our fourth attempt was successful. It wasn’t. It was more like a year of failed attempts.

I’m not alone though. I know many startup founders who’ve taken many iterations to find a great way to communicate what their business does. I know some who are still trying after far more than a year of attempts.

I’ve also met some startup founders who cling to a crap way of explaining what they do, despite the blank looks they get whenever they tell someone their brilliant idea. Perhaps they think confusing people makes them seem smart?

Needless to say, they’re having great difficulty attracting co-founders, investors, customers, buzz etc. Long story short, their businesses are going nowhere fast.

So if you have a startup, iterate your communication the same way you iterate your product. If what you say confuses people, try something different. If the new version still confuses people, try something different again.

Keep going ’til you fix it — and that doesn’t just mean an end to blank stares. Your communication is ‘good enough’ when your target customers get really excited when they hear what you’re creating. Nothing less will do.

Image: Erik Stattin via Flickr

Vogue’s newsstand sales dropped 14.8%. Marie Claire’s dropped 12.1%. W was down 10.4%. Allure was down 9.6%; Glamour 9.2%; Elle 6.3% and Cosmopolitan 6.1%.

Lucky was luckier than most, dropping only 5.0% at the newsstand — but a figure like that is hardly cause for celebration.

The only good news amongst the fashion glossies’ circulation figures was In Style’s 4.0% increase at the news stand.

There is much speculation about why fashion magazine circulation has changed so dramatically in such a short time:

Whether the change is cyclical (uncertain economic times that include high gas prices, fewer supermarket trips and less disposable income) or secular (consumer behavior is undergoing a fundamental change away from newsstand, or from print magazines themselves) depends on whom you ask. Editors and publishers would have it be the former.

[...]

But some advertisers and observers are beginning to wonder whether the second diagnosis is upon us. As consumers’ attention fractures, spoiled by choice and easy digital access, the culture and entertainment industries already have adjusted their expectations, counting smaller sales numbers than ever as blockbusters. The magazine industry might be falling prey to the same tectonic shift.

Several magazines, such as Glamour and Marie Claire, have seen disappointing sales for several periods in a row, even when the economy was flush, suggesting more of an overall move away from big women’s titles.

Source: Magazine Circulation Falls in Half. WWD, 8 August 2008.

At the same time as their print cousins are falling from favor, online fashion magazines are starting to be taken seriously. Their growing user base, fashion-forward audience and relatively low costs are attracting forward-thinking advertisers:

Some [online fashion magazines] struggle for revenues, but a few are drawing blue chip advertisers, including Neiman Marcus, Tiffany and Lancôme. Advertisers can pay $10,000 to $50,000 to promote their products on a Webzine.

[...]

“The preponderance of ad spending is still in the traditional media,” [MediaPost.com editor Joe] Mandese said. But, he said, as marketers reach for Web audiences, which are widely perceived as hipper and more influential than those for print, “we are going to see a rationalization to shift money online just because it looks good.”

Source: Where the fashionistas go for a quick fix. International Herald Tribune, 7 August 2008.

Whether there’s a shift from print to online — or just a coincidental shift away from print media at the same time as online fashion sites are gaining traction — it’s a good time to be in online fashion media.

Style Spice is our first official show here at The Wardrobe Channel; that’s the pilot above.

Personally, I think it’s a great result — especially when you consider that the studio cost $500 to set up and none of the cast or crew had made a television show before.

It’s an important step for us because it proves that:

“A high-quality online fashion show can be made by anyone with a good idea, some free time and a few hundred dollars”

…which is very important to our business model. Our big audacious goal is to be where everyone comes for style advice; this shows that one part of how we intend to do that really does work.

Long story short, to get into every possible niche, people within that niche need to self-identify, get the tools to create great content and get their message to their audience. We want to facilitate that — and we’ll start by showing others how to create their own Wardrobe Channel shows, using all the tricks it took to make Style Spice happen.

The Wardrobe Channel is launched. At last you get to see what all the fuss is about, and we’re going to leave it alone for a few days so you can tell us what you think.

Up until now, we’ve been a vapourware company, so all the hard work has taken place behind closed doors. We’re delighted to show you what we’ve designed, and invite you to consider this prototype for a 21st century media company.

We launch with three complementary media communities - a blog, a wiki and a video channel. More are in development, and will make it easier for people to find, buy and wear the clothes that are exactly right for them.

But first, we’d love to hear your thoughts on the prototype. Take a look around at wardrobechannel.com, test it out and tell us what you think.

This is only the beginning…

Our own CEO Sara Goldstein co-wrote a chapter in the book above. Here’s what she has to say about it…

In a field as new as experience design, copying, borrowing and outright stealing are incredibly important research tools. If people in another field have solved a problem, adapting their solution is a sound strategy. Does it ever make sense to re-invent the wheel?

In that context, Digital Experience Design: Ideas, Industries, Interaction has the potential to be important in the experience design field. Each chapter is co-authored with a subject matter expert, to see what ideas from their field can be applied to experience design.

I was fortunate enough to be asked to co-author a chapter that looks at the intersection between fashion and experience design. The single most important idea that the fashion world knows (and the experience design world largely does not) is that we each have idealized selves as well as our real self.

Our ideal selves are an amalgam of who we’re trying to become and who we wish we could be. They’re not ‘real’ as they only exist inside their owner’s head — but they do effect our behavior in interesting and measurable ways.

In the fashion world, that’s taken for granted. People will purchase things they will never use in the real world if that item suits their ideal self. They will also pay much more for basic items that seem to reflect their ambitions and desires, like a Ralph Lauren polo shirt with its carefully cultivated associations with old money.

The nascent experience design field could learn from that.

Smash-hit products are the ones we collectively fall in love with. When a product evokes desire by helping us feel more like the person we want to be, it becomes a ‘must have’ — no matter how non-essential the item is by practical standards. For example, the iPod.

I’d love to see a web site as seductive as an iPod, but I’m not sure I have yet.