
Show HN: My startup Curvio - IMDB for Clothes and Accessories on TV - tansey
http://curvio.com
======
kmfrk
Great concept, and I like how it's actually possible to scale it to have
everything up to date, so you don't have to manage something at the size of
IMDb.

I imagine the vampire shows will also be very popular, if you add them. _The
Glee Project_ as well.

Less excited about the Facebook log-in, but it's better than nothing for those
with an account.

If I were you, I'd shop the site around to gossip sites like Perez, Popsugar
and Buzznet as opposed to the tech sites like Techcrunch most of us think of.

I'd be interested to see to which degree this is a "website" versus a "start-
up", but time will tell. Just remember that you should start this at a
grassroots level with places like Zetaboards-powered forums. You'd also be
doing yourself a _major_ disservice, if you did not integrate a Tumblr blog
with the site to capitalize on its viral capacity and its central fan
demographic; Tumblr is basically the new Livejournal for TV show blather.

------
newbusox
Is it possible to pre-populate the data for this from pre-existing sources
(like the TV show itself publishing information about where the clothing is
from?). The reason I ask is that I stumbled on a Mad Men "fashion show" where
the fashion designer from Mad Men talked about where you could buy clothing
like the actors wore from stores (Macy's, I think). I'm guessing this
information is available somewhere, although maybe I'm wrong. Do you make
money on the referrals to the department stores via links?

~~~
tansey
We do have some of the links as affiliate links. That's our first source of
revenue which will hopefully enable us to bootstrap to the next level.

In principal, there should be a system to do this automatically. What we're
seeing is that Hollywood has trouble getting it in place. Lots of issues arise
and it's been tried before, but at the end of the day it has never been
executed well. Our goal is to execute in progressively bigger steps until we
can be working directly with the studios, but that's a long way away. :)

~~~
newbusox
Awesome--good luck, I'll definitely check back often!

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IanDrake
Nicely done. I can see a lot of possibilities for this app.

Having the ability to crowd source the answers seems like a good idea, but
might be difficult to manage poor suggestions. I couldn't tell if there was
some kind of "karma" type score for users that get the best answer.

~~~
Stwerner
We don't currently have a "karma" idea, but are working to add more game-like
elements.

~~~
isleyaardvark
Have you made any connections with the actual wardrobe people working on these
shows? Or the clothing manufacturers themselves? The companies that
"graciously provide" the stars' clothing surely have a vested interest in
promoting those clothes.

~~~
tansey
We've talked to a ton of people, including one costume designer for a well-
known show and some mid-level people at a few retailers. Right now we are
focused on gaining traffic and building up to the next level of visibility so
we can start bringing interns onto sets, approaching manufacturers and
retailers directly, etc.

Also, we encourage any independent fashion designers that have had their
products (or similar ones) featured on a show to email us: team@curvio.com.
We'll be happy to add their product and get them additional exposure.

------
viraptor
Very interesting. I'll definitely come back when some other shows are
available.

> Log in to Curvio with your Facebook account

... but will probably never log in.

~~~
tansey
Thanks! We're trying to expand quickly, so please do come back!

We tried to use FB sparingly. It's useful to us because if you want to post
comments or suggest an item, it's now much more likely you're going to tie it
to your account. This hopefully helps reduce spam, on top of the obvious
benefits of sharing with others in your feed. You can also "love" (vote up +
save) items if you're logged in.

The flip side is that the site is very usable without ever logging in, which
is fine too. The login is only needed if you're trying to discuss or further
interact with the site. I think it's a pretty good balance.

~~~
rhizome
you should make it more obvious how to contribute or otherwise allow the user
to cause more shows and stuff to appear.

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samstave
This is a great idea.

1) Where do you get the data?

2) Will you do movies? I'd like to know what shirt Daniel Craig is wearing in
several scenes from "The girl with the dragon tatoo" -- I'd like to know what
shoes and suit Ryan gosling was wearing in "Crazy Stupid Love" etc...

3) if you get information from the costume designers/stylists of these shows -
do they get a commission on sales of items from their designs?

Also - Post this to Quora and try to get the interest of Ashton Kutcher - he
is very active on Quora, a well known startup investor and obviously
entrenched in Hollywood.

~~~
kmfrk

        2) Will you do movies? I'd like to know what shirt Daniel
        Craig is wearing in several scenes from "The girl with
        the dragon tatoo" -- I'd like to know what shoes and suit
        Ryan gosling was wearing in "Crazy Stupid Love" etc...
    

I wouldn't be surprised if there were women who were interested in dressing up
their boyfriends, fiancés, and husbands as Ryan Gosling, too.

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pwf
Is there a way to report broken links?

[http://www.curvio.com/glee/season-3/episode-10/yes-
no/quinn-...](http://www.curvio.com/glee/season-3/episode-10/yes-no/quinn-
fabray/seafoam-sweater/582)

Clicking the sweater would normally take me to an online store I assume, but
on this page it leads to a 403 on the J. Crew images server.

~~~
Stwerner
Good idea, we'll add that in as soon as possible. For now, here works. Thank
you! We will get that fixed.

------
ljf
Love it - As Seen on Screen (<http://www.asos.com>) used to be like this for
the UK - started off with the clothes from Trainspotting I think - but now
it's just another highstreet type brand.

Definitely a gap in the market for this, esp if it's done well. Good luck!

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siculars
You should resize your images and display the thumbnails throughout the site.
Not sure what your stack is, but I use imagemagick bindings for nodejs to do
just that (npm install imagemagick). Obviously imagemagick may be accessed
through most programming languages.

------
koopajah
This idea is great. How many times have I heard my gf saying "I need the same
shoes as her" or "I love this dress" while watching a TV show and trying to
google it without success most of the time. Hope you'll be successful!

~~~
Stwerner
Thanks! You wouldn't believe how many people told me more or less the same
thing while we were developing this site.

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hhastings
Very clever. You have a unique idea and a great product so far.

In my opinion, you should really avoid calling yourself the ___ of ___, aka,
IMDB of Clothes. I'm sure you can come up with a more appealing one-liner!

------
dfragnito
These guys are doing something similar <http://www.deliveryagent.com/>. They
run this site <https://securesale.seenon.com/account.php> and others.

They are very corporate as you can see. You might be able to find areas where
they fall short(markets not served, poor implementation, etc) and focus on
those areas. If you do a good enough job they may be a possible exit strategy
for you.

~~~
tansey
Thanks!

Last time I checked seenon, they picked like 7 items from the latest movie and
ran those as exclusive offers for a week. There are tons of sites that pick
out a few items and write blog posts about them or something.

We're trying to be more than that. We want to catalog items and provide a more
comprehensive, permanent database. We also focus on similar (dress-for-less)
items. Shows like Gossip Girl routinely have $5000+ items that have very
similar knockoffs available.

~~~
dfragnito
It's good to see you have done your homework and are differentiating yourself
from the competition. I like the knockoff and comprehensive strategy but
"permanent" I am not so sure about. There is nothing permanent about the
fashion industry, unless there is some nostalgic value of who wore what and
when.

~~~
tansey
Good point! I think that's one hypothesis we have to test by seeing how
traffic to different episodes/items drops off over time. I personally expect
there to be fat tails, but seeing the data will be the only way to find out.

~~~
dfragnito
There may be value in providng knockoffs to nostalgic (iconic) items, ie
giligans hat, pee wee herman's bike (is that iconic?), dorothy's dress etc..

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minouye
How do you plan to unseat Cool Spotters? Is it mainly an organization issue,
i.e. looks sorted by specific episode?

<http://coolspotters.com/tv-shows/gossip-girl>

[http://coolspotters.com/characters/beatrice-
grimaldi/and/tv-...](http://coolspotters.com/characters/beatrice-
grimaldi/and/tv-shows/gossip-girl#medium-1862243)

~~~
tansey
Right. In a lot of ways cool spotters is a competitor. I think the main
difference is that we're focused on connecting people to the show itself
rather than an individual celebrity.

I believe our design and positioning is also better than CS. We're looking to
move to working directly with designers rather than creating a big community
of people who upload random snapshots of shows/celebrities. There are a lot of
designers out there who would love more exposure and we're hoping to give it
to them.

~~~
kmfrk
I find that difference really, really great. Building a business around
paparazzo photographies is creepy as hell to me and makes me feel like a
private detective for visiting a site like that. It's like reading an
opposition file on a politician.

It'll probably also make celebrities more likely to help you out.

------
coob
Think I found a bug:

<http://curvio.com/criminal-minds> \- black jeans 'from $187'
[http://curvio.com/criminal-minds/season-7/episode-10/the-
bit...](http://curvio.com/criminal-minds/season-7/episode-10/the-bittersweet-
science/derek-morgan/black-jeans/538) \- has jeans at $25.

~~~
tansey
I think that's a caching expiration issue. We're on it-- thank you!

------
samirahmed
If I could make two recommendations,

One would be to have a mens section of the site, or a filter for mens items.

Additionally, I would recommend a little more emphasis on the ui design. At
the moment, I would place it at good enough.

Customers coming to the site are looking for fashionable clothes, so your web
design has to match that.

------
prawn
ASOS used to do this in a basic way and built a huge following amongst women.
Nowadays they're more of a typical online fashion store:
<http://www.asos.com/>

My wife says that ASOS didn't categorise by show/actor quite like this.

------
tylerwl
Very cool idea. My one suggestion would be to add an email signup to your
homepage. Something along the lines of:

Be the first to know when new shows are added!

You could also add a form to the individual show pages by simply replacing
"shows" with "episodes".

------
emehrkay
Tom Haverford wore this coat on Parks and Recreation a few weeks back that was
very nice. I went to reddit and there were multiple threads asking about it --
a men's coat. This is a good idea.

~~~
JL2010
Was it this one?
[http://www.reddit.com/r/malefashionadvice/comments/ohp9u/doe...](http://www.reddit.com/r/malefashionadvice/comments/ohp9u/does_anyone_know_what_kind_of_coat_tom_was/)

~~~
emehrkay
Yup. Great looking coat. It was already sold out by the time I read the reply
with the link.

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rottencupcakes
Why isn't it possible for me to pick what episode I want to see the
accessories from? The first thing I want to do after clicking "Gossip Girl" is
pick the episode.

~~~
tansey
You can indeed do just that! :)

You click a show, then we show you a preview of each episode (top 4 items)
from the most recent season.

------
JL2010
You should post this here as well: <http://www.reddit.com/r/malefashionadvice>

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ericflo
I'm not at all in your target audience (I suspect), but this seems like a very
good idea, well executed. No doubt to me that you'll find success.

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hodder
Unlike a ton of sites and apps coming out these days, I can actually see how
this will make money. Nice work.

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collegeportalme
I might be wrong. But aren't those pictures copyrighted?

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floorzero
This is very well done. Where are you guys based?

~~~
Stwerner
Thanks! We're pretty much split between Austin and Pittsburgh.

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isleyaardvark
Why isn't it possible to search by movies?

~~~
Stwerner
Movies are absolutely on the road map. We are currently bootstrapping, so we
had to limit ourselves to what would be the most popular to launch with at
first.

------
gsmithvt
Great idea. Good luck!

