Tagwalk, the fashion industry’s first search engine

Already dubbed the ‘Google of fashion,’ Tagwalk is a search engine that
aims to service the fashion industry with new technology the same way other
industries have been disrupted.

Founded by former fashion stylist Alexandra Van Houtte, Tagwalk uses a
directory of 2,800 keywords, where a user can search by brand, trend, city,
season, fabric or colour from any device, altogether creating a digital
database of every garment, shoe and accessory that is tagged and organised.

Unlike shopping search engines, which presents consumers with options
broadly related to keyword searches, Tagwalk is designed to help the
industry track down looks with as much specificity as possible, for example
a bell sleeve dress or a polka dot print from the seasonal catwalk
presentations in Paris, Milan, London, and New York.

In an interview with PYMNTS, an online platform for the payment industry,
Van Houtte states the idea came to her while working as a fashion assistant
in Paris, combing through fashion magazines on a mission to research and
catalog various looks for fashion shoots. It was grueling, tedious and time
consuming, which made Van Houtte wonder if there were a better way to be
doing this.

“For a multibillion-dollar industry that is all about being on the cutting
edge, the whole system was totally hopeless,” Van Houtte told PYMNTS

One of Tagwalk’s early investors was Carmen Busquets, also an early
investor in Net-a-Porter. Busquets told the Financial Times: “I invested in
Alexandra when Tagwalk was only two months old. Investing early on is
always a big risk, but I make exceptions when I fall in love with the
founder or an idea that will disrupt business and our lives as consumers.”

According to PYMNTS, Tagwalk is monetising its service in several ways
without advertising or charging subscription fees. Instead the company
operate as an e-commerce site allowing brands to feature in their database
for a fee and offering consulting to brands on digital and social media
expansion.

So who uses a fashion search engine

“What we have is crystallised intelligence,” Van Houtte told the Financial
Times. “Our users are every single magazine, every single retailer, every
single wholesaler, every single buyer in the world.” She also has fashion
students, design directors, chief executives and marketeers searching the
site, which allows registered users to create moodboards and search for
collections as far back as autumn winter 2016.

Photo credit: Tagwalk homepage