Apply HN: Nuyolk – A smart curator and aggregator for digital retail

[lovetteregner]

What we're building: We are building an aggregator for e-commerce products. We bring together millions of products from thousands of brands in one place. We then personalize the user’s feed and search results based on their profile and preferences. If the user decides to purchase the product, he/she is redirected to the merchant’s site. For every redirected purchase, we earn a 5-10% commission. Right now, we are adding merchants with existing affiliate programs and hand-picked independent labels. Eventually, we will make special accounts for the rest of the independent labels to index their products with us. The goal is to make it easier for users to find products with the best design, value and brand story that suit their individual taste.

Our Why: Inspired by local independent labels which are often more creative but are limited in distribution, we thought that there might be a better way of leveling the playing field so they can get the market share they deserve. A couple of years ago, we started an independent label crafted by traditional local artisans. We soon realized that having a good product was not enough because the per unit marketing spend was ridiculous and time consuming. We envision a world where designers and artisans can put their full focus on creating great products and where shoppers can always quickly find the best product out of the millions in the market. With digital retail for fashion and interiors alone poised to grow with a CAGR of more than 50% from 2016 to 2020, there is a huge opportunity to sort out the overwhelming mess for the shoppers.

Our progress: Right now, we've soft launched the search feature. In the next couple of weeks, we'll be slowly rolling out the personalization features. Check it out at http://nuyolk.com!

We'd love to hear some feedback too! What can we improve on? Is our site clear enough? What features would you use us? :)

[morirb]

I would use your website but I'm missing a more precise search. Why not a tagging system? Would be nice to be able to look for a "black" "shirt" with "stripes".

Do you guys want to only do this for fashion? This seems applicable to other industries, doesn't it?

I'm doing something similar, see "Apply HN: Alternative to Advertisement" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11441537). I'm excited to see that other people seem to care about that as well.

It would be so cool if things get popular based on their quality and design.

[lovetteregner]

I agree with you on this one. We're currently standardizing the categories across merchants to be able to filter by category, and later by color.

Yes, it does -- but we're starting with the more design-centric industries since they tend to be the ones with weird value/pricing parities.

That's so exciting! Good luck with that. :)

Thanks so much for the nice feedback!

[morirb]

thanks:)

"we're starting with the more design-centric industries since they tend to be the ones with weird value/pricing parities." -> do you mean that there are small merchants offering products that are both cheaper and higher quality than big well known merchants? And it therefore makes sense for Nuyolk to bring these better products to consumers?

[lovetteregner]

Yes. There are quite a lot of independent labels -- especially as the current barriers to entry allow almost anyone with reasonable design skills to start one. Also, the design-to-delivery/store costs are way cheaper in emerging economies like the Philippines (where we're based), allowing local designers to produce quality at a minimum. There is also a growing trend towards proudly-locally-made (in the US) and socially/environmentally sustainable products. Those who chose to fulfill their own deliveries also have better contribution margins as they avoid a huge portion of the ~40% of sales that retailers charge. The major problem for these kinds of labels is distribution. It's tough to get the word out when you don't have the economies of scale -- hiring a content and marketing squad does not make sense early on.

[ejanus]

This is great... I have something close to that in mind but yours is thorough and has the chance of succeeding. Your site takes pretty long time to return search. I wish you all the best.

[lovetteregner]

Thank you so much for your kind words! We'll work on improving that. :)

[morirb]

"I have something close to that in mind", what is that?

[ejanus]

Building an e-commerce aggregator and price comparism platform for my country. If you are interested, please shoot me a mail.