Third Wave Fashion // JULY 2013 // THE WEDDING TECH ISSUE | Page 25
M OV E R S & S H A K E R S
What was the inspiration behind creating Loverly?
I first thought of the idea while helping my sister plan her wedding and the
several events leading up to it. Even with my sister being as well-connected as
she is in the wedding industry (she runs her own wedding PR firm), I still
had the hardest time finding just the right necklace, table decor and shoes to
match our bridesmaid dresses online. I was 30 pages deep on Google and had
10 different brand sites open and thought to myself, there has to be a better
way. It was then I decided to create the world’s first wedding search engine,
forever changing the way people plan weddings. Lover.ly is where brides and
grooms can search, save, shop and share all things weddings in one place.
Today, we have a reach of 2.6 million brides, grooms and wedding enthusiasts
online, and in just 8 weeks, more than 50,000 people have downloaded the
Lover.ly app on iTunes.
How are you pulling in the content? Are paid placements
automatically surfaced to the top or equally
distributed with unpaid placements?
From an editorial perspective, we’ve partnered with the country’s top
wedding bloggers and curate their already highly-curated wedding images.
We put each photo through our propreitary tagging taxonomy – or Lover.ly
magic – making our content super searchable. e same goes for the 1800
brands (i.e.: SHOP partners such as J.Crew and Nordstrom) that list their
200,000+ products on our site; they are also highly-curated, designated by a
gray shop banner and integrated throughout the site. Sponsors can pay to
own the featured image at the top of the EXPLORE and SHOP verticals and
have key products surface in certain searches.
How do you differentiate between what can be
classified as bridal? Is there a cutoff for certain
merchandise?
If it has to do with love and/or weddings and is beautiful, it’s in. If it’s not
directly related to the big day but might give someone a great DIY idea or
table decor inspiration, it’s also in. Lover.ly inspiration is never-ending. Our
newly launched search functionality (a first for the bridal industry) allows
users to combine color + category + custom keyword (such as “pink +
bridesmaid dress + full length” or “light pink + decor + vintage”) to surface
specific inspiration, or they can use the “shuffle” button to serve up endless
serendipity.
What is the distribution of editorial to shoppable
content? Do you find having more editorial leads to a
higher sales conversion?
We have over 40 million monthly image views with an average of 12 minutes
spent on site per user, so our editorial content is one of our greatest assets.
Within our shop, we have over 200,000 products from 1,700 brands and
14,000 ven