Tag Archives: Fashion & Beauty

Customizing sneakers with removable stickers

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Hard on the heels—so to speak—of our story about sneaker customization at Keds Studio last week comes another spotting in the world of customized footwear: Sneakart, a site that lets users personalize sneakers from any brand via specially designed removable stickers.

Still in beta, UK-based Sneakart offers users the opportunity to customize their sneakers via Sneakskin, a super-thin, flexible, durable and waterproof graphic film that can be applied to white, light-coloured and metallic shoes. Printed with non-toxic ink in the UK, Sneakskin is 100 percent PVC-free and can be peeled off and replaced at will. It’s available either in sheets of individual stickers or in 22-by-29-cm sheets of patterns that the user can cut to fit the areas to be covered; either way, one or two sheets is typically enough to customize one pair of shoes, Sneakart says. Sneakart offers a wide variety of patterns and designs ranging in price from about GBP 4.95 to 5.95 per sheet, but users can also create their own artwork and upload it to the site. They can choose either to keep their design private, for their use only, or to make it public and offer it up for the use of others as well. The motivation to go public is considerable: each time a public design is purchased, Sneakart credits the designer’s account with 10 percent of the sale price, available either as a credit toward further Sneakart purchases or via direct payment. Sneakskin peels easily off its backing paper for application, and sticks on shoes with regular daily wear for a few months. Sneakart donates 10p from every order it receives to Street Kids International, and it has also offset its 2008 carbon footprint twice over through PURE’s renewable energy projects in India, Brazil and China.

There’s no doubt customization is a good thing, but rewarding consumers for their customer-made innovations just may knock this one out of the park. Next, how about helping to bring this concept to other types of shoes, handbags or even cellphones and personal gadgets? (Related: New sneaker brand relies on crowds for design.)

Website: www.sneakart.com
Contact: www.sneakart.com/bin/WebObjects/SneakArt.woa/wa/contactPage

Spotted by: DawnRae Knoth

Click to buy: fashion blog is a street version of shopping mags

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Most street-style fashion blogs serve their readers primarily as sources of inspiration, but a new London-based blog has added an e-commerce twist to let readers click on looks they like and purchase them on the spot.

Stitsh, which launched earlier this year, offers up galleries of photos of real men and women on the London streets wearing a wide variety of looks and styles. In addition to having subjects sign photo releases, Stitsh’s photographers also find out about the clothes they are wearing and hunt them down in retail stores, forging e-commerce partnerships wherever possible. Users of the site, which is ultimately much like a blog version of shopping magazine Lucky, can then just click on items they’re interested in and be taken to stores where those items—or very similar versions—can be purchased. Photos are arranged by gender, and items are also tagged for easy searchability.

“The way I shop is I look at what people are wearing,” Stitsh founder Dom Fendius told Women’s Wear Daily. “When the street-style blogs came online, I thought, wouldn’t it be great if I could buy the clothing worn in those photos?”

Stitsh is partially funded by ads, but it also works on a commission model, WWD reports. Specifically, each Stitsh reader who clicks through to the site of an online retailer such as Topshop, Miss Selfridge, House of Fraser or French Connection and buys something there earns Stitsh a commission of up to 12 percent. Some stores will even pay Stitsh the commission for shoppers who return to buy something as much as 30 days later, according to WWD. Stitsh currently covers just the streets of London, but Manchester, Stockholm and New York are reportedly in the works. One to partner with or emulate in other parts of the world…?

Website: www.stitsh.com
Contact: dom@stitsh.com

Spotted by: Susanna Haynie

The Nat-2 transformer shoes

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Imaginée par les deux jeunes entrepreneurs allemands Sebastian Thies et Stephen Yeung, la collection de chaussures "Nat-2" a la particularité d'être composée de modèles d'un nouveau genre, qui sont entièrement transformables en sandales pour l'été. La vidéo dans la suite !

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Le principe ? Ressemblantes à des converses, hautes ou basses, elles sont dotées d’une fermeture éclair sur tout le tour de la semelle pour permettre d’enlever la partie haute de la chaussure au profit des sangles de sandales déjà incorporées à la semelle.

Transformershoes

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Proposées dans une vingtaine de modèles, les chaussures transformables en sandales Nat-2 seront idéales pour l’été.

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Découvrez le principe en vidéo !

Stylish helmets for urban cyclists

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Catering to design-concious urban cyclists who’d rather not sacrifice style for safety, a group of Danish designers ha created a bicycle helmet with interchangeable covers.

Copenhagen-based Yakkay sells a simple shell helmet (dubbed “Smart One”) that’s tucked away under one of ten different covers. The helmet retails at DKK 599 (EUR 80 / USD 120), and the covers are sold for DKK 299 (EUR 40 / USD 60). While chin straps betray their true nature, the helmets otherwise resemble hats and caps worn for fashion, not protection.

Yakkay states that the number of seriously injured cyclists with head injuries is around 2,500 per year in Denmark (on a total population of under 5.5 million). And that’s in a country where motorists are accustomed to cyclists, and where most roads have separate bicycle lanes. As more consumers across the world hop on their bikes to reduce their gas bills, carbon footprints and waistlines, the market for innovative cycling products and services should grow at a healthy pace. One to tap into! Easy way to get started? Ask Yakkay about regional distribution opportunities. (Related: Stylish fire protection kits.)

Website: www.yakkay.com
Contact: info@yakkay.com

Spotted by: Lori Webb