Over the last six months we’ve been tracking the progress of BeachMint, a company started by Diego Berdakin and MySpace cofounder Josh Berman, who formerly worked together heading News Corp incubator Slingshot Labs. In June the duo closed a $5 million funding round for BeachMint but declined to give many details, save for their goal to make waves in social commerce. Today, we have a much better idea of what they’re up to: BeachMint has just launched its first shopping site, a jewelry store dubbed JewelMint, and it has more on the way.
The site’s big hook is star power: every piece of jewelry on JewelMint was designed by actress Kate Bosworth and her stylist Cher Coulter. Sign up for the site and once a month, you’ll be able to choose from a handful of Bosworth/Coulter-designed pieces exclusive to the site that are suited to your taste, each of which costs $29.99. If you’ve ever used ShoeDazzle, then JewelMint’s model will sound very familiar (ShoeDazzle’s celebrity backer is Kim Kardashian). For those that haven’t here’s how it works:
After first browsing to JewelMint, you’ll be asked to complete a quiz that establishes your ‘style profile’. Then you’ll be asked to enter your credit card information (you aren’t actually charged until your first purchase) and are shown a handful of pieces of jewelry. Purchase one, and you’ll be signed up for the program — once a month you’ll be charged $29.99, and you’ll receive a ‘Credit’ that can be used to buy one piece of jewelry on the site. The catch is that you’ll only be able to see a handful of pieces that are suggested based on your tastes — you can’t go browsing the entire catalog as you would on Amazon. If you don’t see anything you like one month, you can skip it and wait til the next month (you aren’t charged the $29.99 fee if you decide to skip a month).
This kind of ‘push shopping’ has proven very successful for ShoeDazzle, and BeachMint is hoping to extend the model to more verticals over the next few months. But it won’t be alone here: ShoeDazzle itself just raised a $13 million funding round, already sells shoes, handbags, and jewelry, and will almost certainly be expanding into more verticals, too.
