Facebook App Feature: Bevy

Do you hate how you get spammed by Facebook apps every day from people who invite everyone on their friends list so that they can get extra points? Well, Bevy is a Facebook app that’s different. It can best be described as a social shopping platform for girls and women to discuss and discover products. I just started using it recently and love it! Basically allows me to indulge in a virtual closet in ways that I could never do with my real life closet ;)

Lisa Conquergood, the Director of Content and Community for Bevy, was kind enough to do a phone interview with me about Bevy, its plans for the future, and her favorite items in her own closet!

Ming MIn Hui: Where did the idea for Bevy originate? What was the inspiration for the name?
Lisa Conquergood: The founder of Bevy, Kevin Fourman, was working as an EIR in a Seattle incubator [editor's note: Bevy Inc. is based in Seattle, Washington] and one day his daughter Alex picked up an advertisement that had been sent to Kevin. Usually these mailings are quickly tossed out and never looked at but Kevin started to think that these ads, most of which are targeted at his wife and daughter, should be where his wife and daughter (specifically daughter) are. Where is his daughter? Well, she’s not looking at newspapers, she’s on Facebook and texting. So he developed this idea to build a platform right around the time Facebook opened third party applications, which turned out to be great timing. Focus groups told us not to create a new social network because everyone is already on Facebook, so rather we’re catering to the women that already exist within the Facebook network.

As for the name, we have a really great and utilitarian name. A bevy of beauty connotes a lot and we want to convey that we are all about having a lot of women interacting about a lot of products and engaging in a lot of chatter!

MH: How did you end up joining Bevy?
LC: So six months ago Kevin was showing his ideas to other people in Seattle. This is not a widely known fact but there are a lot of fashion retailers based here in Seattle and he was letting people in on his plan to give feedback and recommendations. Someone I know was talking to him and said, “Oh! You should talk to Lisa.” We were able to have a great conversationa and I was really interested in what he was doing, so I ended up joining the team.

MH: Are there any plans to expand beyond Facebook?
LC: Strategically we’re starting with just fashion, women, and Facebook. There’s a natural traffic stream provided by having a presence within the Facebook community, but we’re not going to stay within just Facebook forever. Eventually we’re looking to grow into other spaces such as MySpace and build up our own site. We’re also looking into other categories such as makeup, so basically we’ve got platform expansion as well as category expansion.

MH: What kinds of new and immediate additions are in store for Bevy?
LC: One of the things we love most is getting feedback from our community, so we let users decide what kind of priorities they have for ways we can improve Bevy. We’ve been hearing a lot lately that our users want more content, so we’re looking at bringing in some celebrity or blogger content, basically anything that can make Bevy more fun and interesting! Other applications can get kind of spammy by forcing users to invite friends in order to keep using the the app and we don’t want to do that. We want to build relationships with our users and not trick them into coming to our application. It’s important to us that our users think Bevy is fun and interesting and constantly getting better so that they tell their friends about it.

MH: How do you keep all the fashion items and designer labels updated?
LC: The retailers we’ve been working with are great and we have affliate programs with all of them, so when someone clicks on something to buy from Bevy, it automatically sends them to let’s say Nordstroms where they can make the purchase. Nordstrom then says “Thanks Bevy!” for sending a user to look at their item, and if the user buys the product we get a portion of the revenue. We don’t push sales though becuase we want our users to just go in there and chat and talk to each other about their closets, not feel pressured to buy anything. If the sale happens, then that’s great, but our priority is to make a fun and friendly environment.

MH: What are some of your favorite items in your Bevy closet?
LC: I’m a shoe girl, so one of my favorites would have to be my converse Chuck Taylors. I also recently found a Dawn platform strappy sandal by L.A.M.B. that I love. So I like a really wide range of shoes. Today I was looking for fall coats and found a Zac Posen tweed trench coat that I think is so cute.

MH: Anything else you’d like to add?
LC: Since we’re not a spammy Facebook app it’s important for word-of-mouth to keep us growing, so I encourage everyone to check out Bevy and tell all your friends about it. We also crave feedback, the feedback door is always open, so please let us know what your thoughts are!