Like.com has been steadily expanding its mini digital fashion empire. There is Like.com itself, a visual shopping engine; Covet.com; a recently launched visual shopping personalization application; and Weardrobe, which is a social platform for users to shop street style compilations (Like.com acquired Weardrobe last December). Today, the company is expanding its mini-empire with the launch of visual styling tool Couturious.
Couturious’ focus is on 3D photo-realistic styling. You pick a photo of a model (you can choose from a variety of races and body types) and then style the model accordingly with clothes from over 100 different brands. Like.com’s computer vision technology allows your to dress a fairly realistic model and actually style them. So you can tuck pants into boots, adjust the folding of a scarf or have the model wear the shirt with top few buttons open. And you can purchase any of the items that are styled and share your styles to Facebook and Twitter.
The idea is for users to not figure out what to wear but how to wear it. Along with the ability to style a model from scratch, users can also see pre-set styles from stylists. At launch, Couturious has partnered with 20 of the top fashion bloggers in the industry to feature their own styles. Couturious is also partnering with 6 designers at launch (Tory Burch, Tibi, Charlotte Ronson, Yigal Azrouel, Cynthia Rowley, and Alice+Olivia) who are making items they debuted at last week’s fashion week in New York City available for users to style immediately, even though these items aren’t even in stores yet.
Like.com’s CEO and founder Munjal Shah says Couturious fits the strategy of revolutionizing the online soft goods shopping experience. Weardrobe helps you to be visually inspired with streetstyle looks; Covet helps you to visually personalize your shopping (using celebrity photos), Like.com helps you to visually shop for soft goods and now Couturious will help you to visually style the items you have. Couturious makes money when people click on the links to buy the outfits, similar to the model on Like.com’s other sites. Couturious will also white label the technology to retailers and designer sites for a processing fee. Couturious will face competition from fellow styling site Polyvore.
Like.com, which launched in 2006, is growing steadily both in revenue and networks. The startup raised $32 million in funding during the implosion of the financial industry, with a valuation just north of $100 million. And while we can’t reveal what’s to come, there is definitely more innovation in store for Like.com.