Much of the Polyvore staff will move over to Yahoo, including the CEO, Jess Lee.
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Yahoo Inc said on Friday it agreed to buy fashion start-up Polyvore to help drive traffic and strengthen its mobile and social offerings.
Polyvore is an 8-year-old startup that specializes in connecting merchants with consumers browsing for ideas on clothing, health, beauty and home decor products.
Polyvore features fashion items that people can click to buy from a retailer’s site. Polyvore’s team, based out of offices in San Francisco, New York and Mountain View, Calif., are all expected to join Yahoo.
Polyvore allows users to shop for and “favorite” fashionable items in categories like maxi dresses or gladiator sandals, as well as viewing outfit collections put together for certain looks (like stealing actress Blake Lively’s style).
Yahoo might be taking some jabs and jibes for its “MaVeNS” digital advertising strategy (or at least for the quirky acronym), but the whole initiative could be getting a serious booster shot.
“Polyvore has perhaps the most amazingly engaged digital community of passionate style lovers creating shoppable content anywhere”, Simon Khalaf, Yahoo Senior Vice-President of Product and Engineering, wrote in his blog.
Yahoo has been trying to attract more eyeballs to its services – including its Mail, Weather and Sports properties – in an attempt to revitalize flagging revenue. We should also note that three ex-Yahoo engineers, Jianing Hu, Guangwei Yuan and Pasha Sadri, started Yahoo back in 2007.
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Earlier this week, Yahoo released a financial forecast calling for little or no growth in its revenue, after subtracting ad commissions, during the current quarter that will end in September. Sales from Yahoo’s traditional moneymaker – display, or banner, ads that run on desktop websites – continues to fade.
