The Newest Fashion "Icon": Rue La La's Gone Viral

For my social media monitoring project, I decided to follow the members-only shopping site RueLaLa. The tech company database CrunchBase describes Rue La La as 

“the invitation-only destination for a life of style. Where members delight in discovering private sale boutiques that open daily and stay open only for a short time. A community where members shape the experience and enhance the excitement by inviting their friends. A place where they discover some of the most sought-after brands in fashion, accessories, footwear, home, travel, wine, gourmet food, local services, and more.”  

Once reserved exclusively for those "in the know" and living in major fashion hubs, sample sales have now gone mainstream, over the past year a number of online sample sale sites have popped up, such as Rue La La’s competitor GiltGroupe. I am sure anyone who is an avid online consumer/shopper has heard of some sort of members-only shopping sites since they have exploded in popularity throughout the past few years.

Both Rue La La and Gilt Groupe operate using similar models — both are invitation only, meaning that you have to be invited by an already existing member to take part in the action. They feature premium designer clothes and accessories in private sale boutiques that are only open for a limited time. Members receive reminder emails when new sales are about to open —driving interest and visitors to the online boutiques before coveted items are sold out. Over the past year the word has clearly spread and the secret is out that these sites exist. This is evident from the chart below which shows that Unique Visitors to both sites have been steadily rising.

I wanted to follow the website’s trends in online conversation and other social media because of her incredibly rapid success in use within the online shopping industry. To monitor RueLaLa, I utilized a variety of social media monitoring resources such as IceRocket, Social Mention, FameCount, Trendistic, Twitaholic, Google Blog Search and Insights for Search, Facebook Lexicon, YouTube, and Twitter. The increasing traffic to the site show that in these times premium brand shoppers are looking for deals too, even if it is on a $300 pair of jeans. Over the next couple of weeks, I will use these tools to further investigate the topics, tone, message, word-of-mouth, engagement, campaign and especially the mobile capabilities of Rue La La in order to make my own suggestions for the future direction of my client. Stay tuned for a more in depth look at this fashion "icon"...literally!