Lady LUX

In one of the latest attempts to reinvent online shopping, Lucky magazine, together with social shopping website ThisNext as its new official shopping partner, has released a new Web platform today on luckymag.com and ThisNext.com, reported WWD.

According to ThisNext’s CEO Matt Edelman, the site is the first effort that truly characterizes the idea of “social shopping.” The way it works: Lucky staff members choose their favorite clothes and accessories. ThisNext shoppers fill their own personalized shopping guides with items from the magazine, share what struck their fancy with friends, and peruse the editor picks.

“In the modern world, you can’t just be an entity on your own domain, you have to be wherever people are shopping. Women want to share what they love about fashion and what Matt [Edelman] has done is create a nice platform for women to be able to share with their trusted friends about what they are going to buy or the promise of what they might get,” Brandon Holley, Lucky magazine’s editor-in-chief, said to WWD. “Lucky really only does one thing, which makes it very nimble. We are all about shopping and getting you to shop and buy things — more than any other magazine. Because we do that one thing, it translates nicely to apps, extensions and partnerships.”

The collaboration has allowed some cross-promotion as the two companies pool their existing audiences to acquire new visitors. With both boasting high numbers of users, potential is running high: Luckymag.com draws more than 1.8 million page views each week and ThisNext hits in excess of 3 million visitors a month.

“We are getting them to click through to our content and vice versa. It’s an exchange of content and audience,” Holley explained.

Reputedly the biggest independent social shopping platform, ThisNext has recently seen its traffic soar. Already the company has witnessed an 80-percent hike in page views from last year. The difference from competing sites, said Edelman, is simple: ThisNext concentrates on the meaning of the word “social.”

“Social engagement is about two-way communications between people. When women shop, they discuss the products they’re considering buying with their close friends. Those conversations help women make more informed shopping decisions, which in turn makes them feel great about what they’re buying,” Edelman said. “Providing a permanent forum for that dialogue in an environment designed for shopping is what makes us different.”

Edelman believes that his competitors – TheFind.com, ShopStyle, Kaboodle and Polyvore – as “technology-driven and crowdsourced comparison shopping search engines” simply see their users generate social content surrounding items, which then results in reviews from strangers. “That’s not social shopping,” Edelman said.

“The idea of women creating communities and speaking about clothes, beauty products and signature items that they want is a great place for us to be. It’s the next evolution,” Holley said.

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