How to Use Polyvore.Com To Show Product and Marketing Ideas at Work

Most people cannot visualize an idea by just hearing an explanation of it. As the saying goes, " a picture is worth a thousand words". This article will share with you how I turned my creative hobby,polyvore.com, into a visual support tool to use at work in presenting creative concepts. When I first discovered the website Polyvore.com I was most attracted to the ability to create imaginative collages of product and play with making them look like magazine layouts. However I soon discovered that this site could be highly effective for my job as the creative director of design for a fashion and fine jewelry company in New York city.

Users of polyvore.com clip product pictures from websites they are searching on. These product shots are then filed into the polyvore archive and available for members to use in creating their polyvore collages. The value of this is seeing the types of jewelry items the vast number of members are 'clipping' to the site. I check on the newest additions weekly now because it gives me some insight on what women are finding of interest out on the world wide web. I find that I can use the new clippings as a resource for tracking the trends in jewelry and accessories in order to increase my own product direction success at work. It's important to be consistent in visiting polyvore.com to view the clipped images so that you begin to recognize what is newest, and what is being used the most in the polyvore collages that users are creating.

Another way I have found to use polyvore's unique 'clipping to polyvore' function is to clip images of jewelry that I find interesting or which I believe may be fresh looks to pursue for my company. Once I have clipped a number of new jewelry images and saved them to polyvore.com I make sure to visit my account to view how many times other users have included a specific image in their work. I have found that this action is extremely effective. I have most recently clipped about 10 new jewelry product to polyvore. Out of those ten, one of them was used by over 60 different members in the first week it was added. I believe that this information speaks to the kind of jewelry it was, and how it was able to mix into so many very different fashion polyvore sets. My takeaway from this was to add similar looking earrings into all of my collections. I varied the colorways and the scale, but stayed true to the shape and materials used in the original. These designs were very well received by the sales team and the buyers this past market.

Polyvore.com has improved the users ability to edit the images that are in its archives. I find that this function allows me to take parts of images and marry them to parts of other images to create completely new design ideas. How does this help me at work? Rather than spending time creating drawings I can work very quickly with previously stored images to outline a concept and get it in front of the sales team as soon as possible. Line drawings are very difficult for non-creative team members to understand. Using photographic images manipulated into designs gives them a much more clear image of what you are trying to produce and aids in the conversation about the look, price,and potential of the jewelry design idea. This is very similar to photo-shop, however I find that the images of jewelry saved into polyvore make it faster for me to react to an idea and get it printed out or circulated with speed.

Marketing support is another area in which I have been able to use polyvore.com for at work. Once I have come up with a product idea it is often necessary to show what kind of marketing support I envision to sell it into the various stores on. Using the 'backgrounds' category on polyvore is the key to this. I manipulate various printed backgrounds, borders, photographs, and fonts to piece together packaging concepts, carding, and branding imagery ideas. Again, having the bank of images at your fingertips the way polyvore does makes this extremely easy. Searching by color palette and key words can really refine the types of images you can use to execute a very specific look and feel for marketing support of all kinds.

I also use polyvore.com to create trend collages . I then circulate these to the sales and merchandising teams to keep them abreast of the colors, silhouettes, fashion trends, and competitor products that are out in the market.
This reduces the amount of meetings we need to have to communicate trend information to the teams.
Many of the sales teams have made use of the same collages to help them sell in the products we have created based on those trends.

I continue to use Polyvore.com for my own blog, and to just be creative, but it's value to me at work has become significant and contributed to the success of our jewelry collections and the speed at which I can get ideas communicated to the team. By the way, Polyvore.com is free.