Frank & Oak is a perfect example of the curation trend
The rise of curation is at an all time high, as companies scour the web for you, bringing forth what they deem to be the best buys or the best content or the best ideas. In retail, stores used to take an open mind to the World Trade Center closest to them, and with a wholesale license in hand, they find the best products for their shoppers, order said products, and feature them in their store. Curation today is simply a different path of doing something similar in that it is all digital and companies don’t put their name on it, rather they feature the original company or creator.
Frank & Oak is a new curation site for men’s fashion, and it takes curation one step further by only alerting users of fashion products from their own line that are under $50. “Gain access to monthly issues of curated style and never look back. Answer a few questions so we can tailor our shop to you, for the best in accessible menswear that’s fresh, simple and under $50. Don’t forget to sign up for the award winning Hunt Club for the most hassle-free shopping experience.” Easy.
Why curation is hot
In the era of distraction and an over abundance of choices, curation has become hot for two reasons. First, curation is an amazing way to learn about new brands and products and be among the first to know what’s hot. Second, curation is really popular because searching the web can be overwhelming – go search “men’s fashion,” and you tell me what you come up with. Anything you were looking for? No, because you have to narrow it down and filter through paid search results and the like.
Frank & Oak isn’t alone, and companies are curating all sorts of things and making sense of the endless data their marketing teams are ingesting. Justin Timberlake and famous stylist Estee Stanley teamed up to launch HomeMing for home decor curation, and popular curation sites include Shoppe by Scoutmob which emails out independent designers’ local wares, while The Grommet focuses on “Citizen Commerce,” emailing unique products with their makers’ stories every day.
What can you learn from curation?
People have short attention spans and search fatigue, so whatever your business, curate the best of your products or services, tell their stories, blog about them, and email them out instead of a generic website URL or a list of the millions of things you can do or sell.
If you’re a Realtor, don’t email every single listing you have, curate the most unique or hottest listings and tell their story to email subscribers.
If you’re a jewelry designer, email only two or three of your hottest pieces every week, not because they’re on sale, but because they’re hot, and tell people in the emailer why they’re popular or why they’d want to wear it.
Even if you don’t curate anything, keeping things simple but very niche-oriented is a win in today’s environment, and Frank & Oak is the perfect example of how to do curation well should you go down that path.
