Finally! The Middle East has its own fashion social network, TopShou, and it’s amazing.
Created by Lebanese entrepreneur Loubna Ibrahim, TopShou is a fashion focused mobile app connecting you to thousands of fashion enthusiasts around the region and the world. Through the app you can create, share and discover, new looks and trends with a few clicks. Simply, you mix and match your personal style, share it and get instant feedback.
TopShou team with founder Loubna Ibrahim (second from the right)
The idea started when a fashion fanatic herself, Ms. Ibrahim found it very time consuming and difficult to find inspiration. “Looking for fashion inspiration and stylish outfits needs a lot of research. You have to look into fashion magazines, watch fashion segments, follow fashion bloggers on different platforms, and yet expect to find the best ones first, among millions of users who aren’t even fashion related”.
Also, being a trendsetter herself, she found that there was too little time-efficient engagement among fashion lovers. “From a trendsetter’s perspective, all the ways I mentioned [fashion magazines, fashion segments, fashion bloggers, etc] don’t come with a tool fashionistas can use to create a collage of clothing to formulate looks they can share instantly with their community”.
“The only way to create a “collage-like” look was to use design softwares, and yet you’d have to search for good quality of images”, but now, with TopShou you can save time by creating more than searching”.
Finding inspiration in other similar apps, she paves her own path, trying to build TopShou in the image of her own needs and preferences. “There is one startup that I personally love, which is available in the states, and it is Polyvore. Unfortunately or fortunately, it never fulfilled all my personal fashion needs, that was a big reason why I decided to work on my own version, TopShou”.
Currently still a startup, TopShou is not complete yet. There are tons of future plans for the company.
“Today we’re an iOS mobile app, available on the App Store only. The reason behind this is mainly a financial one, because we need to validate that our model works first, that people would love it, use it and interact. When we are past this phase we can go and seek a bigger investment to launch our Android, and eventually web version”.
So far TopShou has been relatively successful taking advantage of user feedback for development and expansion. Ms. Ibrahim stresses on the need to include the users in the platform’s growth.
“Our users are loving the concept, they are sending us suggestions, which we definitely take into consideration to always enhance and deliver the best user experience”.
As it seems, Ms. Ibrahim is nowhere near the last we will see from TopShou. As genius as the idea seems at the time being, she has much more in store.
“Our vision is to become a social e-commerce service, where looks created by our users can be purchased through a marketplace redirection. And we are also looking into making it possible for users to mix and match their own clothing items with items from the marketplace, and get instant feedback from the TopShou community as well as fashion advisors. This will help them get the exact look they are looking for”.
You can download TopShou for free to your iPhone through the App Store or click here.
And don’t forget to Follow them on Facebook , Instagram and Twitter @TopShou
