Social media marketing is a craze and Africa is not being left behind. Inspired by the American fad site, Pinterest, FabHunter a South African startup was launched in January 2012. According to the founder Werner Geyser, “FabHunter is a Social Fashion Discovery Engine relying on user generated content through images to enable fashion discovery and trend forecasting.”
Talking to HumanIPO, Founder Werner Geyser says, “We were inspired by image sharing platforms such as Pinterest, Polyvore and Weheartit. Similar to the way Polyvore has niched into architecture and interior design we wanted to niche our product to the fashion world since this is the sector that draws most content sharing amongst these applications.”
Using the service is pretty simple. Users can sign up using social widgets such as Facebook and Twitter, and start bookmarking and sharing fashion images with their friends across the web. “Sharing fashion images from any website by the click of a button. By installing our bookmarklet users can directly share an image found on any website to their own profile on Fabhunter as well as showcasing the “Hunt” to the community of fashion lovers,” Werner explained.
FabHunter also aims to be a marketing avenue for big brands. Werner told HumanIPO that they are currently talking to 3 fashion brands (not mentioned) to be included in the site.
Currently they have recorded 14,000 image views in the last 30 days “which may show the popularity and need of such a service to local users,” Werner said. This service will be rolled out to the rest of Africa depending on how the service in initially received.
