Gokrt

We ran across a great survey done by Lab42 about online shopping preferences and wanted to share it as well. Check out the original article here and let us know what your thoughts are.

Our team met the folks over at cream.hr at the super awesome StartUp Festival and we decided to have them help us do an assessment of our founders. We got some interesting results.

Cream is a psychometric pre-employment assessment test that finds the intrinsic transferable skills that determine if someone is “hardwired” to be productive. The assessment measures five traits: Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Stress Tolerance, Openness (Creativity), and Agreeableness. Using proprietary algorithms developed by psychoanalysts at Harvard University and the University of Toronto, the results of the six qualifiers create a Cream Grade valued from 1-100. The higher the Cream Grade, the higher the propensity for the candidate to be productive.

We wanted to find out how each founder measured up on the scale and compare to each other to see if we complemented our strengths. But the real goal of the whole exercise was to see what personality types might be best for us to search for as we ramp up to bring on our first hires.  Through the test we found out that all three founders were very high in the openness category (creativity), which was kind of expected because all three of us have a very high desire to be entrepreneurs and look at problems in a different way.  It also showed that we all had a desire to be our own boss.  Other then those two things each person had different strengths and got at least one thing they can work on out of the results.

The great thing about going through this exercise is that after going through this process we feel we have a better understanding of who we need to hire next, and are therefore more prepared.

 Check out the site and take the free assessment to see where you stack up: http://cream.hr/are-you-cream

As shopping evolves online, its exciting to think about everything you can buy online. But one issue that’s always been a plague for online retailers, clothes retailers, is that people in general don’t really have that much trust in clothes sizes. Because of this, people have always been less likely to shop online for fashion, and instead would rather buy for a local retailer. And when people do buy online, there’s always those shoppers that get buyers remorse when the shirts too big, or the shoes are too tight.

Luckily, there are some great start-ups popping up all over the world trying to solve these problems. Here’s a quick rundown of a few of them …

Clothes horse (interesting name) uses a patent-pending set of clever algorithms. They ask you to spare just a few details about yourself - how tall you are, your weight (Yes, your real weight. No, we won’t tell anyone), and a piece or two of your favorite clothing. Then Clothes Horse uses those along with everything they know about thousands of people like you and the actual measurements of different brands to fill in the blanks. 

Fits Me is a company in tech-savvy Estonia, which uses a virtual fitting room for online clothing retailers. It has brought together competences from diverse fields ranging from apparel design and anthropometrics to IT, robotics and engineering. With this virtual fitting room, users are able to try on clothes with augmented reality through their cameras.

True Fit patented software service (SaaS) deftly matches shoppers to clothing and shoes that truly fit their body and style preferences. In 3 quick steps, shopping process, they allow users to find the exact sizes that match them. 

Body Metrics uses a system that lets you try on clothes without actually trying on clothes by leveraging the technology behind Microsoft’s $150 Kinect camera – technology developed by a company called PrimeSense — to create a precise 3D model of your body that mimics your movements as an on-screen avatar. When a particular item of clothing has been mapped in the same way, you’re able to see exactly how it would look on you in real life.

We at Gokrt are really excited about these potential breakthroughs, because we love online shopping. Wouldn’t it be great to know you will never have fashion retailer buying remorse again, at least for sizes. Now fashion sense is another questions, but that’s where Gokrt comes in to help you make a better decision :)

So what are your thoughts, do you trust these tools, or do you think they’re a waste of time. Also, do you even buy clothes online?

We at Gokrt think its really exciting how much commerce has been evolving lately. Because of this, we like to see how brands online are taking better advantage of it. Brands that aren’t usually retailers. A few days ago, Mashable.com wrote an interesting article about the the fashion magazine Refinery29.

Like most online magazines, the main way Refinery29 makes revenue is through paid advertising. But now, they are building in the ability for people reading articles to actual shop or add items that are being featured in certain editorials. So if you read about a great new style of shoes, you now have the chance to buy that exact style right there.

The interesting part to us at Gokrt is this seems like a great connection. Why wouldn’t a site that specializes in fashion and latest trends allow users to purchase those items. Another interesting thing is this may help them lower their dependency on traditional paid advertising. 

It will be interesting to see how this “Shop” feature helps the online magazine evolve from simply being a media resource into being a shopping resource for its 5 million readers. And just so you don’t think this is they only magazine selling products, other magazines such as Time Out New York, Real Simple and Elle are beginning to do the same.

So what are your thoughts on this evolution of online shopping into media content? We’re excited to see how well this new product for Refinery29 does, and whether it evolves how people use their site.

Here’s the original article:

http://mashable.com/2012/06/28/refinery29-ecommerce/

Leo Chen over at Techcrunch wrote a great article about fashion tech and the future of that market online.  For good reason a large portion of the article with dedicated to info on Pinterest and the impact that it is having on the area. 

Things like free shipping are being commoditized and new technologies are emerging to make the market more accessible for smaller companies to compete with the big guys.  One of the changes that is really shaping the future of ecommerce is the adoption of social shopping as a method of finding new products.   We are stoked about how great this is going to be for the consumer!

Read over the original article and let us know your thoughts: http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/16/social-commerce-pinterest-and-the-future-of-fashion-retail/

While new tools for shopping are being introduced everyday for the regular person, it’s important to note that it’s not an easy task for shops to be found online. Small businesses who set up their shops overnight can’t really expect to get results overnight. Because of this, it is very important to take advantage of the already existing tools, from posting products on Etsy.com, to creating Pinterest Pin Boards with your items, to have really strong SEO content to help people find you. Not to mention all the competition.

Here’s a great article that Mashable did giving some quick tips on how to boost your websites sales. Does everyone agree with their examples? What else would you add to the list? Do you think Gokrt would be a great tool for your Small Business as well? If so, how would you plan to use it?

http://mashable.com/2012/06//boost-sales-website/

The Gokrt team is very excited to have a couple awesome interns working with us over the summer.  Here is a little bit about each of them and what they will be working on over the next couple months.

Brandon Reim - Marketing ( brandon@gokrt.com )

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“I’m a Liberal Studies Major with a minor in Business Management at San Francisco State University. My personal interests usually revolve around outdoor activities, travel, literature, film, music and conversations in bars. My future aspirations would be to found my own startup that focuses on challenging social problems, or working for an established start up that is changing the way people interact with each other.”

Brandon will be working on working with the team to create and implement our initial marketing plan for the alpha release that will be coming out in a couple weeks.  We are laser focused on making a tool for keeping track of and organizing everything that people are considering buying online.  If you know anyone that does lots of online shopping and would be interested in testing out Gokrt for us, hit up Brandon! 

Ben Schneider - Design and UX ( ben@gokrt.com )

“After receiving a degree in literature from San Francisco State I came to the amazing realization that…Surprise!,  I had no direction in my chosen field other than writing semi-witty tweets. I am a man of many interests. I like the little things. Good friends, good food, good booze and good conversation. A plethora of jobs from tattoo shops to tech start-ups has led me to realization that the doodling I did for fun can actually be put to use. This led me to enroll at The Academy of Art University for graphic design. I have taken a strong interest in the interaction elements of design. I look forward to taking on a new challenge in an inspiring and growing environment.”

Ben will be working mostly on helping with designing a variety of themes we will be testing over the summer with our Alpha users.  Our goal with Gokrt is to make the tool simple enough for anyone to be able to use immediately without any learning curve, but we also want to make the platform visuals and color scheme flexible.  We will be offering some initial themes that you can choose in the settings as well as make the whole website editable so you can add your own colors or images.  If you have any questions or design requests hit up Ben!

Cheers // team @ gokrt.com

Next generation e-commerce is really starting to catch on with companies like Pinterest, Etsy and Fab making a big splash.  Aggregated and curated content is becoming more and more relevant to consumers and slowly chipping away at the strong hold that giants like Amazon, Macy’s and Best Buy have on the marketplace. Established brands like those aren’t going anywhere, but it’s absolutely time for a major disruption and a paradigm shift in how consumers not only find content, but also how they decide to buy. 

Gokrt is a tool that helps people make decisions about what to buy.  Most people don’t want to share everything they are considering buying with their social networks.  We allow people to organize all of the items they are looking at online into one view, then group the items together and take notes about their thoughts at that time.  We also bring easy to find and hard to find content (i.e. reviews and blogs) to the user automatically.

No one ever has to leave a bunch of tabs open to keep track of stuff, email yourself a link that you will just forget about in the future, or keep a wish list that is buried deep in an ecommerce site.  Gokrt is making online window-shopping simple.

Here is a litte teaser screenshot of the tool.  We will have it out there for you to test mid June!