FLOSSinstyle Team Blog

The OC fashion site

2005-10-11T01:57:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone. Man it's been a little while since I've posted. I'm rusty! I just wanted to write real quick to let everyone know about a cool new site that we came across the other day. For all of you looking to learn how to emulate the fashion of the O.C. they have a website on Amazon that is cool stuff. The URL is http://www.amazon.com/theoc.

I hope you like it!

keep flossin'
iji

An update on the team

2005-06-13T21:41:00.000-07:00

Ok, so a little disclaimer. I think this post feels a little drier than usual...less inspired. It doesn't help that I'm almost falling asleep. How am I so sleepy!?!? It's only 10:06pm. Dude, if this were college, I'd be downing my first red bull and vodka about now! Ah well, I need to write this so that everyone can get back up to date with what's going on.

So it's been a little quiet on the line for the past two weeks. I can't even believe it's been that long. For some reason I thought it had been little over a week. I guess time really does fly.

Even though it's been about two weeks since the last blog entry, we've been pretty busy here at FLOSS. Me, Dirty, and Fu have been putting together a lot of cool stuff. We finally have started to get back on our rhythm. Now the ideas are flowing freely again, and our speed of progress is picking up.

Things are much different now. A lot of the big technology pieces we were building earlier in the project have been built now. Before, Dirty and I used to be working 20-30 hours a week each just to get features built. Now most of the projects we work on are small five hour affairs. They aren't really even projects. More like projectettes, haha.

So just to give you a little feel for what we've been working on, I'll go through some of the stuff.

Dirty is putting together a tool that will automagically disable old products that are no longer for sale. Before we used to have to manually disable each item that was out of stock or no longer being sold. Imagine the tedium! Just thinking about it is making me doze off... Well, we're not the most disciplined guys in the world, so we knew that if we left it a manual process soon the site would be full of dead links. So like any great engineers we wrote software that would do it for us!! Dirty is ironing out the kinks as we speak. Hopefully it'll be up on the site within the next 24 hours. I'm actually pretty excited about this. This is one of the cooler tools that we've built since we started working on FLOSS.

Of course, not to be outdone, I threw in a couple of lines of code too. Just so you know, if you ask Dirty he would say I was outdone by him at birth, haha. But to be fair, when I say a couple I don't think that's an exaggeration. I basically made it so that suggested items showed their pictures on the page. That took all of fifteen minutes to implement, but the cool thing is that now it's easier to see the suggested items. Designer Ella from KissMeStace was the one to point out that our suggested item links looked like google ads. It was a good catch on her part. Now we've done it up much better.

So that was the past, what about the future. Well we finally decided it's time to turn our vision away from technology. We've been working almost non-stop on technology for the past five months, but what's really needed now is better content. So that's been the focus for the past week, and will continue to be for the next month or so.

We started hiring more Flossers aka Fashion Consultants to help us put more suggested items on the site. Remember in my last blog I said we've realized that this is the last missing piece? Well now we're attacking the problem.

We've gotten some of the most fashionable, and fashion concious people out there to join us to suggest items. Look out for some new names!

Now. The most exciting item on our plate is the press release. Fucasso is owning this. He has drafted a press release that is so money. Straight money in the bank right there.

We're putting together a press package and hopefully we'll be getting that ish out in a couple of days. Once that's together it'll be time to start telling the world about FLOSS IN STYLE. It'll be mad cool to see how many news outlets pick it up. Honestly, I think a lot will. So far people have loved the idea!

So that's all the good stuff. I'll let you know when we finish the press release. I'll probably post it up on the blog for those that are curious to read it.

Aight. Time for me to bounce out.

keep flossin',
iji

Cool people and suggested items

2005-05-28T01:49:00.000-07:00

Ah, summertime is here. I love the summer. Old school music. Long, warm, sunny days. Mimosas, Sangria, and Mojitos. And of course more FLOSS IN STYLE. Now I only need to be FLOSSin on a sandy beach in Cali and my life would be perfect.

So I want to spend some time talking about what’s next for FLOSS IN STYLE. Me, Dirty, and Fucasso have been hard at work making small but important improvements to the site. We’ve also been working with some wonderful people to spread the word to the world about the coolness that is FLOSS IN STYLE.

The three of us founders got together about a month ago now to talk about where we go next with FLOSS. We realized that we have all this cool technology, and FLOSS IN STYLE looks great, but we’re missing a key ingredient. We don’t have enough suggested items. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, we want to roughly double the number of suggested items we have over the next month or so. We also want to drastically increase the incoming rate of items.

Well we’ve started to put together the last pieces in the puzzle. We had to build some technology to help our Google rank. Dirty built that. We had to improve our suggested item click through rate, Dirty and I did that on a two-way collabo. We added branding and changes the picture sort order to favor suggested items. We needed a plan on how we were going to ramp suggested items. Fucasso took the lead on that front. And so it goes…

The last piece was getting the word out about the site. Well our site focuses on celebrity fashion and we figured it would be most loved by fashionistas that appreciate what we’re trying to do and would applaud our efforts.

Well we couldn’t have been prepared for the warm reception the online fashion and celebrity communities have given us. We already talked about the people over at Jen-Fan. Now let me tell you about some of the best fashion bloggers on the internet.

We’ve been in touch with Elle at KissMeStace (http://kissmestace.com/). She’s just a wonderful person, very kind and full of energy. We’re excited to see that she really loves our concept and is even helping suggest items! She is a true expert on celebrity fashion. Check out this Coach handbag post for Eva Longoria! http://www.flossinstyle.com/ShoppingMall/CelebShop.aspx?pictureID=510&sessionGuid=blog What a great find! I love this stuff!

We’ve met a lot of great people as we’ve been doing this, but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Britanny over at The Fashion Musings of Brittany Ancell (http://fashion.typepad.com/). She’s another really cool and sincere individual. She’s written a post about FLOSS IN STYLE that all of you reading this blog would be interested in http://fashion.typepad.com/tfmoba/2005/05/speaking_of_fas.html. Along with KissMeStace, Brittany runs one of the best fashion blogs on the web.

On a side note, I guess blogs can only exist on the web…so the “on the web” part is meaningless. Let’s just say Brittany runs one of the best blogs out there.

There are a number of other great people that I can’t even go into detail about because of limited space, and I’m sure you’re already tired of reading this J. So here are the people I’d like to thank: Lera over at Fashion Addict Diary, Coolchiq, Erin from Jen-Fan and so many others.

It’s cool to see the community around FLOSS IN STYLE grow. Hopefully we have many more people to meet, and much more growth ahead of us.

Now that the pieces are falling in place, it’s time for us to make suggested items our clear #1 priority. Right now it’s kind of mixed in with the others.

I can’t wait to get the new content up. FLOSS IN STYLE is becoming more fun every day!!

keep flossin’
iji

FLOSS In Style gets page view number 100,000

2005-05-23T01:29:00.000-07:00

Whoooo hooooo!!!! We've passed 100,000 page views. Next stop 1 million. This feels really cool. Honestly don't ask me why. It's only a number. Still, it feels like a big number. Although I know if we get where we want to go it'll seem small in retrospect. One day hopefully we'll be celebrating having reached 100,000 page views per hour. Haha, that day will come, but don't expect me to hold my breath.

What I will do, however, is say that the people over at Jen-Fan.com are mad cool. If you're a Jennifer Aniston fan, and you don't have a celebrity forum you call home, check out the people over at Jen-Fan. They were so friendly. Dirty posted up a link to our website the other day asking for feedback from people on the forums there, you know, just to get some thoughts from hardcore fans.

Well they loved FLOSS IN STYLE. Not that I'm surprised of course. We know we're onto something cool over here at FLOSS, but it's still great to hear other people confirm that intuitive sense of ballerhood we feel :). Ok let me stop being cocky before god strikes my laptop with a bolt of lightning.

So. Oh, there have been a couple of changes on the website. First off, I think all of you guys know this by now, but we've added discussion forums now to FLOSS IN STYLE. These forums will serve as a central location where people can meet and chat about all things celebrity fashion.

We realized that shopping on Floss can be a lonely activity. We have tons of cool pics, we have great suggested items (thanks to SexyFLOSSinGal and FlossinSista!!) and we have cool features. But regardless of all of the stuff we have, to us Floss can still feel like a ghost town sometimes. I think all websites are like that. However, we're intent not to be like all websites. So we decided to work on the problem.

We think that forums are a part of the solution. I say a part because I'm sure there are more parts to making FLOSS IN STYLE more fun. But hey, how much can you really expect us to do in a weekend.

Oh also, we added website and brand information to suggested items. We realized that a bunch of people think that the suggested items on each page come from our website. Nope. We just link to other people's website. Hopefully by adding this information to the suggested item button, people will understand it a little better.

Hey by the way. If anyone wants to contact me, my AOL screename is topflosser. I'm not always online under topflosser, but I'll try to be more often. All right time to go to sleep. Just got back in Seattle from a wedding in Sacramento and I'm tired.

keep flossin',
iji

Let's Catch up a Little

2005-05-11T21:28:00.000-07:00

Good thing I'm typing this, because I lost my voice this weekend. Just got back from Canada. A friend from the frat, DNH, real name Herman, came up to visit me from LA.

It was ridiculous. Way too much partying. Basically, since Thursday I've been yelling at the top of my lungs. I swear I was yelling every minute. I was either:

1) Trying to talk to a girl over music at the club.
2) Cruisin' down the street hollerin' out the window at. Or,
3) I was having too much fun to care. Like my friend P.Lo says, I get louder and louder as I have more fun.

By the way, how many shots are in a redbull and vodka? That ish is dangerous, mang.

On another point, Vancouver is tiiite! This weekend we went to this club Bar None off a tip from our bartender. Man! So many beautiful women and of course a couple of struggling b-list actors trying to look cooler than they really are. Bottom line, if you're in Vancouver and need a place to go out, go there. Just make sure to get there early. It's one of those clubs that everyone is trying to get into, and the bouncers know it.

So anyway, I'm not writing to tell you all about my weekend. As much as I'm sure you want to know about my personal life, we have better things to discuss. First off, let me revisit some topics I brought up earlier and promised to follow up on.

A couple of weeks ago we had a question of quality versus quantity for the pictures on our site. On our website we have a choice; should we focus on putting up pictures that have excellent quality but perhaps are harder to get our hands on, or should we focus on providing an abundant supply of pictures with somewhat lowered quality. Well we talked about it, and we decided to go down the quality route.

Basically, we decided that the quality of our pictures is critical for you to be able to get a good look at the fashion items that you like. You know...for example, if you like a handbag that Gwen Stefani is holding, you need to be able to tell what material the handbag is. If there is something cool about the strap...you need to know. So from this point forward we might be a little slower in getting fresh content up, but don't be scurred, it's only because we're trying to keep the quality as high as possible, not because we've forgotten about you.

Aight, next point. A little while back, we were trying to figure out what we were going to do to promote our site. We haven't decided yet, but tonight Fu, Dirty, and I will be knocking heads on it. I think you can safely rule out any ideas containing public nudity or raves in the downtown Los Angeles business district. I don't know what we were smoking when we came up with those ideas, but clearly I need to get some of that Blueberry yum yum again cause we were definitely twisted. As much as I love the movie Old School and would love to be "Frank the Tank", we decided we could run FLOSS IN STYLE better from home than from jail. So anyway...scrap those ideas.

Now that we've gotten that stuff out of the way, let's talk about some new stuff. So we've decided it's time for us to ramp up the number of suggested items. We're going to start hiring people to put them up. In a couple of weeks you should start to see the number of suggested items on the site go way up. I think now we have about 500. That should roughly double.

Oh...before I forget, let me take a moment to thank SexyFLOSSinGal. She was our first hire here at FLOSS IN STYLE and she's doing an excellent job at putting up suggested items. If you thought that SexyFLOSSinGal was a random person, it isn't. She's on our team.

So yeah, we think we need more suggested items. We've got pictures, but you don't come to our website just for the pictures. If you just wanted pictures you could always go to a celebrity picture site. But on FLOSS IN STYLE, you come to shop for gear so you can be flossin' in style. That's our job. We have to get items up on the site. So we're about to do that. Keep your eye out.

Aight, time to meet with the fellas and continue our promotion brainstorm.

keep flossin',
iji

Get a Free FLOSS In Style T-shirt!

2005-05-02T23:22:00.000-07:00

Aight. So we're giving away some free FLOSS IN STYLE tshirts right now. We've hit the point where we need our users to answer some critical questions for us. We've mentioned this before, but the hardest part of doing our own project is that we have to figure out what we should be working on.

Unlike when you're working for someone, we have no boss that can tell us what to focus on. We have a lot of ideas we think are cool, and we could go off and start building all types of stuff. But the honest truth is that half the stuff we would build wouldn't even be necessary.

So we want feedback from our users, and we figured one of the best ways to get feedback is to give away something. What better to give away than our stylish t-shirts? Now first off, not everyone can get a t-shirt. So don't go telling you mom's cousin's sister's boyfriend's aunt to come check out FLOSS IN STYLE and take our survey, because only fifty people will get a free t-shirt.

Second we need you to fill out the entire survey to get the t-shirt. Therefore, don't just put in your address and then peace out, because we're not giving those people t-shirts. We need real answers. You know?

So far we only have a handful of people who are receiving the t-shirt, so as of the time of this writing we have over forty left. Here's the URL with the survey: http://www.questionpro.com/akira/TakeSurvey?id=236284.

Fill it out and get your free t-shirt!!

keep flossin',
iji

Bringing our A Game

2005-04-22T00:22:00.000-07:00

Man. We've just realized that we were losing some of the momentum we brought to the project in the earliest days of FLOSS IN STYLE. In the beginning we used to be straight soldiers. We'd be working on FLOSS IN STYLE until 4 in the morning almost every single night. I'd have to force myself to go to bed, and to realize this isn't college, and I can't just skip work like I used to skip classes.

Haha, that reminds me of the time in college that Fu and I saw the sun rise for 30 days in a row because we were politickin' every night. It's sad, because you would think we would have a reason right. Like maybe we had mad work to do. But nope. We were just downloading FinKL videos and playing trance music, haha. I'm sure if Bippy is reading this he's rollin'. Remeber that Bips? Haha.

But back to what I was saying. In the beginning of FLOSS IN STYLE, we'd be brainstorming on IM, on the phone, over email, over SMS. I mean it was non stop...we were just always thinking how can we make this site the best it can be.

Now, we think we're slowing down a little bit. I mean don't get me wrong, we're still up all hours of the night. Just ask Fu. The guy is falling asleep on the phone these days because he's going so hardcore. You've gotta be damn tired to fall asleep on the phone...hahaha. And then we have Dirty, the guy is fixing FLOSS IN STYLE bugs during breaks at work. I’m like man, you gotta take it easy. But then I’m not one to talk, because I can't go 10 minutes without checking our traffic statistics, haha. So we're not slacking. But if we were working at 110% before, we've probably slid down to about 95% now.

And that's understandable. With the 2nd site launch this past Monday we have definitely earned a small break. We delivered some awesome features. Everyone is telling us the magnifier and the picture tooltips on the suggested items is off the chain. That's really good to hear, and gives us a great boost of energy.

However, we know that unless we keep bringing more and more goodness, then eventually FLOSS IN STYLE will just be another site with great potential that became a ghost town. That's what we DON'T want to see happen. We don't want to be that site that was tite back in the day. You know, that site where you tell your friend..."Yo remember FLOSS IN STYLE???", and your friend's like, "oh yeah, didn't we used to go to that site back when Clay Aiken was still hot?" Naw man, that won’t be us.

So we realized we have to keep the intensity up. We have to continue to bring our A game to the table. Otherwise, we’ll get lost amongst all the other noise out there.

So now, we're back in the lab and we've started to throw out the ideas again.

We're focused more on marketing than we ever were before. We've realized we have to do something grab attention. You know, we need to do something outlandish. We need some stuff that is going to make people say, "Damn, did you hear what those FLOSS IN STYLE guys did?"

Don’t ask us what we're going to do. We don’t know yet. We have a number of ideas. One of my favorites is throwing a rave in the middle of downtown LA with many scantily clad people during business hours (let us know if you want in). Other not so wise ideas are public nudity wearing nothing but black and red latex paint (If you haven’t already guessed, those are the FLOSS IN STYLE colors). Yeah, for some reason I don't think anyone wants to see the naked rear ends of me, Dirty, or Fu. We'll save the streaking for our over the hill “Old School” style fraternity.

So as you can see we're still far from having a good idea. We could probably use a little help. If you have any good ideas feel free to give us feedback. Here is a link: http://www.flossinstyle.com/FlossUtility/FeedbackForm.aspx

Aight. Well I guess I'm gonna call it quits for the night. It’s time to get back to my other job :).

keep flossin'
iji

Wooooo Hoooooo!!! The launch is here!

2005-04-17T23:52:00.000-07:00

Uh what it is yo, uh what's up? Waassssuuuppp! Can a player just FLOSS IN STYLE? IN STYYYYYLLLEEEE! (Haha, you gotta know it to get it.)

Aight!! After a week of delay, Dirty, Fu and I are re-launching this thang. Time to start FLOSSin' again. The next wave of features is live baby. This was a tough four weeks. We put so much effort into cooler features and more content. But it was worth it. We really feel that Wave II is going to help our users FLOSS IN STYLE much, much better (don't you love the colors every time we say FLOSS IN STYLE).

We've doubled the number of pictures. We've added the FLOSS LaunchPad. We've added the image magnifier. We've added tooltip images for suggested items. And we've added so much other stuff that's behind the scenes.

Don't worry, FLOSS IN STYLE is going to get even better.

In the feature list above, I mentioned the suggested item tooltip last but honestly I think this is by far the coolest feature. To try it, put your mouse over one of the suggested items and you should see a picture of the suggested item under your mouse. Now you can see what the items look like instead of just seeing overwhelming plain text.

By the way, one of the reasons for the delay in our launch is that we were having problems with our old site host. We were using GoDaddy before and we encountered tons of database errors. Man, those guys were mad bootleg. Just straight ghetto. We should've known they were bootleg after their superbowl commercial. If you didn't see it you should go look at it (http://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/superbowl05/landing.asp?isc=bpshdr002). That ad there is the definition of bootleg. Anyway, now we've moved to another host, and it's already much better. We'll see how it goes.

So I think it's pretty obvious that our crew is excited about what we've accomplished here. This is another successful Dirty, Iji, Fu collabo.

Again, we have to thank all of you for your feedback. Every time someone gives us advice on how we can improve the site, we're back in the lab working away to bang out new features.

I hope you enjoy the goodness of FLOSS IN STYLE.

keep flossin'
iji

Quality vs. Quantity

2005-04-11T03:20:00.000-07:00

So. We reach our first impasse. A question hangs in the air, the answer upon which the future of FLOSS IN STYLE lay.

Well, that's a little bit of an exaggeration. The truth is right now we're having a lively discussion over what you guys, as in our customers, prefer regarding celebrity pictures on the site.

See as we build out the site, we have two options.

Option #1: Slowly and carefully add pictures of celebrities, always being careful to maintain a high quality bar. Meaning only upload high resolution pictures. These pictures are harder to come by, but lead to a "so fresh and so clean, clean" site experience.

Option #2: Quickly add lots of pictures of celebrities to our site even if many of these pictures are smaller and lower resolution. This is fast and easier, but gives the site a more pedestrian (to use a high brow word) feel.

As you can see, it's the age old question of quantity versus quality, and as usual no one knows what the right answer is. So we take the most obvious route available to us....engage in a heated discussion backed by a complete lack of facts and hard evidence.

See here is the thing. We know that you as a customer want both options. You want tons of celebrity pictures, so that you can have a great variety of selection in terms of fashion items that are available. At the same time you also want high quality images, so that as you shop for celebrity fashion you can verify the veracity (wow...he's just bustin' out SAT words today) of an item match.

And now you're thinking, "Hey I was just about to say that. I do want both." The problem is that we can't do both well. We can do an awesome job with picture quality, but then you'll only get like 2 new pictures a day (okay, maybe an exaggeration...but very few). Alternatively, we can lower the quality bar, but give you dozens of pictures across a wide swathe of celebs.

The real question is right now as you shop on our site, what is more frustrating for you? Are you more frustrated by the lack of selection in terms of clothing style, or are you more frustrated by the low resolution of the images, and therefore your inability to validate a suggested item?

This question is key because once we get pictures up on the site it is maaaad painful to take them down and replace them with better pictures. Also, if we go the wrong way we've wasted time...and if there is one thing our team does all share in common, it's a hate for wasted time.

Hmm....anyone have thoughts?

After talking with some peeps, I think the truth is that pictures don't even matter overly much, but suggested items are probably more important. At the end of the day, FLOSS IN STYLE is a shopping site. The celebrity pictures are just meant to provide fashion inspiration. You probably need suggested items more than you need pictures.

Anyway, I won't tell anyone where Fucasso (Fu's new artistically inspired name), Dirty (Frank), and I stand on this matter in an effort to keep the discussion unbiased. But I'll say that we all have our opinions.

Regardless...I'll let you know which way we ended up going. Hopefully, if we've done a good job, you'll be able to figure out what we decided when you look at the site.

Aight, it's 4am, and we're not going to close on this issue tonight. I'm out for today. Maybe sleep will bring the answer.

keep flossin'
iji

April 12th Launch

2005-04-09T00:59:00.000-07:00

April 12th is right around the corner and we're excited. That's the day we've targeted to relaunch FLOSS IN STYLE. Awww yeaaahh!

When we took the site down two weeks ago, April 12th seemed like it was forever away. Now it's here and we're rushing to get everything finished.

Two weeks comes and goes way faster than I would've thought. But it's especially tough when you have so many cool features you want to build. With the addition of picture galleries for all of our celebs, the FLOSS LaunchPad, instant outfit notifications, and a number of other great features we've had our work cut out for us.

But hey, we think you guys are going to love it. Oh also, we've started to bring more FLOSSers on board to help us get better content up on the site. You should see the amount of content on FLOSS IN STYLE really start to pick up over the next month.

I think we've learned that you guys want picture of celebrities, and a great selection of fashion to shop for more than you want whizbang features.

Don't worry. We haven't forgotten. Keep checking back frequently to see the goodness we have to share.

keep flossin'
iji

The FLOSS LaunchPad is Tiiiiight

2005-04-04T01:39:00.000-07:00

Yoyoyo Flossers. So Dirty (that was Frank's name back in school) and I spent ridiculous hours working on the FLOSS LaunchPad this weekend. This feature is hot!! Check it out. This was another great example of what can come out of a Fu Dirty Iji collaboration.

Here is how it started. We were using our site, and we thought you know what....this site doesn't have as much energy as we want. We want to have a page that's dynamic...that's changing all the time. We want our users to be able to go to a page and in one snapshot see everything that's happening on the site. The FLOSS LaunchPad is the brainchild of this brainstorm.

The main part of the feature is the celebrity list. Basically we show you a list of all the celebs on our site with some interesting tidbits of info. We show you their first picture, how many outfits are on the site for them, the number of items, and the latest item and comment. The last two there are the most interesting. If you're following a single celeb pretty closely, it lets you easily see updates on that celeb.

Second, you have the Statistics. That shows you all the outfits on our site, the number of items, the number of comments, and page views. Now don't ask me why you want this information. We just thought it'd be kind of cool to see. Now you can log on to our site every day and say wow, yesterday they had 22,071 page views, and today they have 23,089!!! Naw, I joke, but it is pretty cool to see how things change daily. I'll definitely be watching that number.

Ok. So we also have the Top FLOSSers. This is kind of cool. So as you know, you can suggest items right. Well with this feature you can see who is suggesting the most items. My cousin Vaughn right now is in the lead spot. He's only 11 but he's posted some really good ones. The little guy really knows the celebs. I'm tempted to hire him to lead our content efforts =).

Random Outfit. I talk too much. I'll let you figure that one out for yourself. I'm making you try it. Hope you like.

Now about Most Active Outfits. This is cool. It basically shows you which outfits have had the most user behavior on them. We count comments, suggested items, and a bunch of other stuff to come up with a score. Basically, we give you a quick way to see what outfits have the most action. We think it's pretty tight. Time will tell how much everyone else likes it. Let us know if you think it's hot or not.

So anyway. There is a lot to this feature, and we think it's very cool. We're going to play with it and we ask you guys to play with it. If it's great then tell us, and feel free to tell the rest of the world too ;). If you have some not so positive feedback such as "hey guys, what were you smoking when you built this thing...." then let us know that too.

Aight. It's 2am, and I have to be to work early tomorrow. Daylight savings isn't helping the FLOSS IN STYLE cause at all. I'm out.

keep flossin'
iji

Fashion Ninjas

2005-04-01T21:41:00.000-08:00

Hahaha. Man, so we just coined an awesome term...the Fashion Ninja. I don't know if other people have already said this, but I thought it was hilarious.

What is a Fashion Ninja? Well according to us at FLOSS IN STYLE it's a person that is just ridiculously good at finding fashion on the web. Someone that can see a picture and within minutes find you the article of clothing you're looking for.

I wonder how many of our users are Fashion Ninjas. I'm sure a lot of our top posters are. You know what, one day we might need to hold a Fashion Ninja tournament. It could be a cool head to head tournament to see who really is the best on the web at finding online fashion.

What would it be called? "Clicks of Fury" maybe?

keep flossin'
iji

Hello World!

2005-03-27T21:53:00.000-08:00

So. FLOSS IN STYLE is finally launched to the world!! I guess I should tell you my name first. I'm Ayo. My last name is Ijidakinro, and danger is my middle name. Hahaha, sorry I know that wasn't funny, last week I watched Austin Powers like six times. Anyway, my last name is impossible to say so sometimes I go by iji, or ijidak, or even ijibeast amongst my friends. I think Iji is probably the one I like the most. But of course you can always call me Ayo.

I'm doing this website with two really good friends of mine. Both of them are friends from college. My good friend Frank is one. He's out in LA enjoying sunshine and warm sandy beaches. While I'm in Seattle enjoying rain that falls in the morning, afternoon, evening, and night. Frank of course doesn't let me hear the end of it as he often complains about being too hot and needing to open his window in the middle of December!! Or muses about splashing in the pool in February. I guess February is considered part of winter everywhere except Southern California.

Actually, we started this website because I want to move to LA, and we figured, what better way to get to LA than to start a website on celebrity fashion.

I guess I can't complain too much about the weather, because my friend Fu...real name Ben Fu, but we call him Fu or Benfucious at times, is out in freaking cold NYC. Now, I love NYC to party. It's probably the best place on earth for young people to party, but if I have to choose between LA's warm sunshine or NYCs night clubs....I'm in LA hands down. Now, we just need to convince Fu...

So anyway, I digress. We started FLOSSinstyle because we thought to ourselves. So much of fashion is driven by celebrities. Admit it, Escalades are hot because of rappers. Supposedly Ashton Kutcher made the trucker hat popular...although we think he was a little behind on that one. And All kinds of women want Jennifer Aniston's hair. We don't even have to mentiond that J.Lo has come out with every product you can think of.

Oh, I don't know how many of you watched the super bowl, but when we saw that P.Diddy commercial with him in the Pepsi truck we were rolling. That ad right there is our idea in a nutshell!

We want to create a website where people can get celebrity fashion. We figured we might not be able to afford (I shouldn't say might...we know we can't) that exact jacket that Usher is wearing, but I can learn from his style and I wouldn't mind wearing a jacket that had some of those same design elements.

So we were like let's make a website that does that! We'll put up pictures and suggest the items, and it'll be tight.

Well...we realized that's a lot of work. There are way too many celebrities, and way too many pictures for three guys to do it. Notice that I say three guys as well. We can't really do the female celebrities ourselves. In summary, we need help.

So we decided to enlist the world. Or I should say you, the reader of this blog, and anyone else who is interested in what we are trying to do here.

We thought. Man, if we could get hundreds of people who really know fashion and love the style of particular celebrities to come onto this site and help us find products that capture the celebrity's style, then we would have an amazing fashion resource that tons of people would love to use.

And thus the name FLOSS in style. We want to help our users FLOSS in style by giving them examples from celebrity fashion.

We're thinking, forget the talk show makeovers. If you use FLOSS in style to design your wardrobe, you will be doing your own makeover.

So that's the vision help people FLOSS IN STYLE.

Now we need people to help us, cause like I said...it's going to take the coordinated effort of many different people. However, we're dedicated to giving you guys and girls the tools you need to make it happen. We're going to be right beside you suggesting items and figuring out ways of making the site bigger and better all the time.

Aight, well, I think that's all I have to say. Hopefully, this thing works. Always tell us what's on your mind.

keep flossin'
iji