HN Explorer

Is anyone making something women want?

17 points by aswanson ↗ HN
Not being sexist, but they seem to -want- more than us, and walking into any shopping area seems to confirm that vendors know this. My problem is that from a tech standpoint, it's hard to gauge what a viable need for them is.

39 comments

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pg
In grad school I consulted for a company making CAD software for clothing designers. They said that 60% of the clothing business is women's clothing, and the other 40% shared between men and children.
aswanson
That other 40%, if shared equally between men and children, means that approximately 80% of the purchasing decisions are made by women. I am basing this on the chauvinist assumption that women pick out and buy the majority of clothes for the kids. If this article is correct, that 80% holds for a lot more than clothes: http://www.clickz.com/3363331
kingnothing
It wouldn't surprise me if women bought, or at least had a say in, a statistically significant portion of men's clothing as well.
far33d
I used to work christmas week at a men's clothing store..

90% of our customers were women, even though we didn't sell women's clothing at all.

kirubakaran
If it is 60/40 by quantity, I bet it is more like 75/25 by cost. But you do say "60% of clothing business". So I guess the cost was already taken into account.
gaborcselle
On average, men's clothing costs more per item. So it's probably better than 60/40 in terms of revenue, not worse.
jsjenkins168
Statistically, they also use the internet more than males. If you can find something that they want, It could be a good idea for a startup.
[dead] henning
Dunno. Too hard to emphasize with the weird estrogen-laced ones with axe wounds between their legs.

Women like The Sims and MySpace, I know that.

jward
I was on a first date the other week and was explaining some of my ideas and the lady I was with nearly wet herself with excitement telling me about a webapp she'd love to have. After thinking about it and asking a few other women I know, I'm going to start working on it and apply to YC with it.

Most every idea I came up with seems like someone else has already done. This one... I spent two days searching and found nothing comparable.

german
Well, I think that a webapp should be suited for anyone unless it was created for a specific group of people. About women... I'm a man, and as any man should know, It's almost impossible to understand a woman, so asking a lot of women about your new project sounds like a good Idea to me.
skippybosco
So what you are saying is that you are having a hard time understanding women's needs? ;-)

Since you asked, our company is in stealth mode on a product geared specifically for women (not a shopping, dating/rating, community or gossip site).. each demographic has their special needs, we're attempting to address those needs..

I do agree that a web app should be built for anyone. We are building in flexibility, for example, for the significant other of a female to gain value from the app as well..

falsestprophet
a computer in every kitchen!
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SwellJoe
Most of my other ideas (other than my current Virtualmin, Inc. business) were targeted to women. One a sort of niche-focused social network, one a video/photo dating site, and one a porn site (oh, wait...that one would have mainly attracted men, I guess...but everybody in the valley has a backup pr0n plan...it's what you talk about after a couple of beers..almost nobody is really serious about it, me included).
altay
what? i'm not the only one with a backup pr0n plan?

i'd be so rich right now, if it weren't for these bullshit scruples.

[dead] aswanson
What with the ungodly male/female ratio in the valley, and most of the males being of the tech/fairly well financially compensated persuasion, it seems that the economics of the area would dictate that a gentlemen's establishment or 10 would be in order...
aswanson
The above post was meant in jest and is not to be taken seriously...
SwellJoe
No, you're definitely not the only one. I learned at the last YC dinner that pg and the Viaweb bunch had one, too (a pretty clever one, at that).
staunch
Well, damn it, now I'm curious. I'll ask: What was this (now decade old) plan?

I've worked on some adult stuff in the past. I have no issues with it but I won't be doing anything in it again. Mostly because it's such a relatively small and boring subset of the world.

SwellJoe
I'll leave the story for pg to tell, should he ever opt to do so.

I will say that it involved clever abuse of search engines to generate traffic for obscure fetishes (all of them). It might not work today.

Then again, now that I think of it, see http://xkcd.com/305/ for a pretty good summary of half of pg's Plan for Pr0n (the other half shall be left as an exercise for the reader).

pg
Trevor and Rtm and I noticed that there seemed to be fetishists for just about every fetish you could imagine, and many you'd never think of. We hypothesized that there was no possible fetish so odd that there wasn't at least one person out there who would be turned on by it. So we thought we'd randomly generate thousands of pages about different fetishes, and see how many hits they each got from search engines.

It wasn't a backup plan though, just an idea for a practical joke like Trevor's Information Supercollider.

altay
Ah, so that's where "Make something people want" came from.
altay
Here's mine. You ever play Erotic Photo Hunt? It's a game on those touchscreen video kiosks in bars. Each round, you're shown two almost-identical pictures of a scantily-clad girl. You've got a minute to find the 5 subtle differences in the two photos. (It's embarrassingly addictive -- for both men and women alike.)

Build a web-based version of that. After every round, the player is given two options... "play the next round" or "see more pictures of this girl." The latter is a paid link. Weekend hack => goldmine.

rms
That's a great idea. Any reason you're not doing it? Can I do it?
altay
Hey, thanks! Why am I not doing it? Um, all I can come up with is, "I'm working on other projects... that are more complex... and less of a sure thing." =P

Anyways, if you're inspired, go nuts. Lemme know if you want any help building it. Also lemme know if you want to hear the rest of the idea. (I think Phase 2 could get you one or two patents, and Phase 3 could disintermediate some dirty old men.)

Uh, is it weird that I've put so much thought into this?

rms
You should add your email address to your profile so I can let you know if I get something together. Or just email me so I have your address.

I wouldn't worry about having put too much thought into this, I'm sure we've all spent a lot of time thinking about some really far-out things.

altay
You know, it is on my profile. At least, I filled out the "email" input box. But that doesn't actually show up on my profile.

I'm not sure if this is a feature or a bug. Either way, you can find me at aguvench on gmail.

rms
It's a feature, but not a good one.
bootload
"... My problem is that from a tech standpoint, it's hard to gauge what a viable need for them is ..."

something like "all consuming" perhaps? ~ http://www.allconsuming.net