Behind the scenes of ShopMy's NYFW
a very high stakes UNO game, the story behind our NYFW Happy Hour, and the future of the creator economy
Our Billboards + ShopMy Social Club
We kicked off the week with a Happy Hour on the rooftop of a members club in NoHo. We were so excited to see so many creators and brands from our community and celebrate the start of NYFW.
It’s funny how the event ended up coming together. Initially we wanted to have a small happy hour to celebrate the launch of our ShopMy billboards (!!!) and give some of the creators featured an opportunity to shoot with Tyler Joe, an incredible street style photographer who we’ve had the pleasure of working with on several events over the past few years.
He captured so many incredible photos — we shared a round-up on the ShopMy IG here. I think my favorite might be Coco’s because the billboards just look SO GOOD and she is wearing one of my favorite designers (Kallmeyer!).
Anyway, we were originally just going to have a very small early evening gathering, but then we had the opportunity to get a larger space at the venue (the entire roof) and the rest is history! You can see an album of the event photos here. And here are a few more behind the scenes snaps:
Also, this is what I wore!
ShopMy x The Love List NYFW Designer Dinner + UNO Night
Later that night, I headed over to Raf’s (the best place ever) for a really fun night with my friend Jess Graves and some incredible designers and founders. For those who don’t know Jess, she’s an incredible fashion writer. Her Substack is called The Love List — I have learned so much about the industry and discovered so many great brands from her.
For the past few years during fashion week, she has been hosting a high-stakes UNO game with “New York Happy Meals” (martinis and french fries) where she gathers brand founders and other women in the industry. When she asked if ShopMy wanted to participate this year, I immediately said yes.
One of my favorite parts of my job is meeting and talking to brand founders, so I was really excited to participate. I love hearing what inspires them to create something and how they balance the creative and business side of their brand. It helps me think about how we can continue to improve and iterate what ShopMy looks like for brands at every stage of their growth journey.
So we had our New York Happy Meals and started the UNO tournament. The prizes were pretty baller: 1) A Burgundy Bottega Andiamo Bag, 2) Garrett Leight Sunnies, and 3) a HigherDOSE LED Mask. I actually walked into the evening thinking I was going to be playing in this UNO tournament and might win a Bottega, so the previous evening I recruited some ShopMy team members to train with me. Then when I showed up at Raf’s ready to go, Jess told me it would be a conflict of interest to participate (lol). Fair enough! Dreams deferred for my Bottega bag.
I did get to keep one of our ShopMy gift bags though (which included goodies from some of our favorite brands on the platform — a fragrance discovery set from Victoria Beckham Beauty, Dr. Diamond’s Metacine, blush from Ami Colé, Tower 28 Lip Jelly and more. Here are a few snaps of our team putting them together the night before:
The Love List Pop Up in The Park
The next day, Jess hosted the designers from our dinner to her home for her Pop-Up in the Park! After meeting so many of them the night before, I was so excited to shop their pieces.
Some of my favorite things I saw:
AREA FW24 NYFW Runway Show
Our next event was the AREA FW24 NYFW Runway Show. AREA is an incredible brand founded in 2014 by Beckett Fogg and Piotrek Panszczyk. If you haven’t heard of them, you may have seen Taylor Swift wear their crystal slit jeans at last year’s superbowl. And it wasn’t her first time — she is a known lover of the brand.
AREA is a new brand partner and exclusive affiliate partner to ShopMy, so we were so excited to celebrate our partnership by sponsoring their show. As part of that, we were able to have some of our team and creators sit front row. Very excitingly, it was their 10-year anniversary of the brand, and they were opening NYFW. The show was incredible!
Something really cool about the entire experience was that AREA used our Loobooks feature to dress the creators and our team for the show. So in advance of the show, they sent us a Lookbook via ShopMy to select items we wanted to wear. When you make your selection, it automatically places an order on their site and gets shipped out to you (like a normal customer order!). I wore their slit midi skirt and crystal heart necklace. My teammate Jackie is in their famous crystal heart back dress.
Here are some snaps of us getting ready and attending!
Vogue Business x ShopMy: Understanding the Future of the Creator Economy
The following week we partnered with Vogue Business to host a panel about the creator economy and where it’s going. I was so excited that two of my favorite brand founders — Meg from Dorsey and Nell from Hill House Home participated, as well as Grace Atwood, one of my favorite creators who I have been following for years. All 3 of them are building incredible businesses. There is a recap of the event here, but here are some of the main topics/points that we covered (with some added commentary from me):
The industry is moving away from outdated myths about influencer marketing. We’re seeing a shift towards building communities instead of viewing influencers as actors and actresses that you just cast in a campaign. This approach involves gifting and engaging with creators organically before working with them in a flat fee paid capacity.
Affiliate needs to be a core component of a brand’s influencer marketing strategy. For many years brands have been flying blind — they have no idea before working with a creator if they are able to convert, and then when they do a campaign with them, trackable affiliate links are often not even part of it.
The only way a brand can do influencer marketing in a ROAS efficient way is to build an influencer affiliate/ambassador program from the ground up — gift to creators and give them a competitive commission rate. Then on some cadence, continue to do this consistently — add and remove creators from this community based on who converts and who doesn’t until you’ve built a group of people who love your brand and are enthusiastically sharing it on a day to day basis (and driving sales!). When you decide to do any kind of flat fee paid partnerships, the bets you are making are way smarter because you have this vetted community that you can pick from.
One challenge for larger brands in implementing this approach is that influencer marketing teams and affiliate teams usually operate in silos within the brand’s marketing organization. The teams in charge of gifting often have no idea who is at the top of the brand’s affiliate program. Newer brands have a strong advantage as they just view affiliate and influencer as one in the same.
We all agreed that authenticity is key. Consumers can see right through content that doesn’t seem genuine, which ultimately hurts the brand, the creator, and the audience’s trust. We talked about how authenticity is not just a buzz word that everyone is using right now, but necessary for successful collaborations (and of course affiliate plays a huge role in this).
And here are some photos from the night (credit to Paolo Verzani)!
And, what we wore!
Fun Things: What I Ate
Some favorite meals from the week (don’t forget, I’m a retired food blogger):
LTD Pizza - honestly the best pizza I’ve ever ordered
Lure Fish Bar - we live across the street, so we always end up there, and it’s just so good
David’s Bagels - they do not have a social media presence but they are incredible. 273 1st Ave
One White Street - one of my favorite meals I’ve had in a long time
Pastis - 10/10 always
Loring Place - a really delicious, veggie centric place and it isn’t that hard to get a reservation, so I end up going there a lot and every time I do, I love it
THISBOWL - my new favorite healthy place. I went there 3 days in a row
More Snaps
Thank you for reading! As always, you can shop everything I mentioned in this post on my ShopMy here.
So great meeting you IRL and love seeing how ShopMy engaged with brands and creators/influencers/writers
SO much fun, you're the best!