Ok ok ok. These aren’t quite the Webbys, but everyone loves to be recognized…even the hard working humans at Pod1. So without further adieu….[drum roll please]…and the winners, from the 2012 Communicator Awards are:

Gold Award of Excellence: Salvatore Ferragamo

Gold Award of Excellence: eloquii by The Limited

Silver Award of Distinction: Maje USA

Silver Award of Distinction: Echo

So if you’re a merchant looking to upgrade your e-commerce platform and want to know about Pod1 and/or Magento, then make sure you register for an invite.

As well as Pod1 and Magento, there’ll be presentations from two of our lovely clients, Echo and Erno Laszlo (launching soon), as well as from analytics partner jirafe.

Long term hosting partner Rackspace will also be at the event to answer any hosting questions you may have.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Morning?
Grab a coffee or a Kombucha at  Gasoline Alley on Lafayette & Houston.

Lunch?
Delicious Brazilian curry and many more at the small BarBossa on Elizabeth & Prince St.
+wifi spot!

Korean food at Choga on Bleecker & LaGuardia Pl.

Dinner?
Enjoy the very hidden decor and great food of Freemans Restaurant off Rivington, between Chrystie and Bowery (Freemans Alley).

Let MonoMono seduce you with thousands of vinyls, great decor, soju and simply Korean fried chicken. On E 4th St Between 1st & 2nd Ave.

Cocktail?
Go celebrate your success with bespoke drinks at Mulberry Project on Mulberry St and Grand St.
+ Food and outdoor space.

Spanning almost 90 years, the Echo brand is synonymous for it’s use of color and patterns in everything it does.

Pod1 was tasked with creating a next generation e-commerce site for Echo. The brief was to enhance the brand experience online, improve the customer journey and upgrade the e-commerce platform.

Working closely with the brand, our UX and interaction designers created an innovative, layered navigational structure to the site, mirroring today’s touchscreen App experiences.

The site was also built using an adaptive layout so no matter how large or small your screen, you’ll get a great visual experience.

The same page on a wider screen:

As well as gloves, scarves and accessories, the site also caters to the Home category:

Other sections on the site include an editorial section:

A gift guide:

and brand story:

The techie bit: site was built on the Magento Enterprise platform as well as WordPress. Hosting is via the cloud at Rackspace.

Pier Paolo Piccioli, creative director of Valentino, recently commented on fashion saying, “If you don’t think about fashion, you just do clothes. Fashion needs culture or it becomes empty.” And so, what better medium to seamlessly merge fashion and culture than the moving image? And where better for the consumer to look for inspiration for their own style than on a screen?

But a television set just doesn’t cut it anymore. As technology improves, we spend more time consuming information from the screens of our computers, laptops, tablets and mobile devices. As e-tail has exploded, fashion retailers have found value in combining online retail experiences with a medium that we are all so familiar with; the moving image. Brands like ASOS have pushed the envelope by combining those experiences within the video itself. It’s a way of unifying entertainment, editorial and shopping within one medium.

With technology’s ever-changing fast pace, and as consumers spend more of their lives online, what’s become the familiar online shopping experience is going to have to adapt. We’re going to have to continue to find creative ways to immerse the consumer into the brand experience and convince them that the brand is not only there for them but also willing to grow with them. Perhaps shoppable videos are the answer, well for now anyway – until they too become the norm of the online shopping experience. Watching scenes from the likes of Harry Potter and The Matrix where moving pictures are seemingly integrated into the characters’ everyday lives no longer seems to be a far-fetched fantasy.

Author’s note: The ASOS shoppable video is not the first of its kind, but it does take an innovative step in e-tail as it targets men. As men spend more time consuming information online as opposed to more traditional glossies, they look to culture, bands and films to shape their look. And what better way to include male consumers than by using a medium that has been documenting culture since its invention?

Working closely with the Ferragamo team, Pod1 delivered an end-to-end process, from high-end photography, through to design and technology implementation.

This launch follows the success of the original site that was delivered in time for SS11 Fashion Week.

The techie bit: the site was built on the Magento platform (surprise surprise!), with extensive custom development to implement the style yourself functionality.

Read more about it here (via Luxury Daily)..

Salvatore-Ferragamo

Lovely.

(And if you’re curious, you can see the original designs here.)

Maje is the success story of a “fashion child”, Judith Milgrom, who was introduced to the art of crafting garments at a very early age. Judith created the name “Maje” as a combination of the initials of the names of her loved ones.

The site focuses on the simplicity of the brand, allowing the design of the products to speak for themselves.

As well as the shopping pages, the site features a store locator, look book, press section and news area.

The techie bit: The site was developed on the Magento Enterprise platform for e-commerce functionality, and WordPress to manage editorial. Pod1 also hosts the site on it’s ecommerce optimized, cloud-based infrastructure.

Enjoy!

Code Year, your new year resolution is a really fun and friendly way to learn code, by Codecademy

Audi installation by Atelier FCJZ (via Defringe)

Book Sculptures by Guy Laramee (via Fubiz)

Smoking Kids by Frieke Janssens

Carsten Höller’s Experience at the New Museum (via @swnmn)

Fotoshop by Adobé by Jesse Rosten (via @minasokoni)

Terrariums by Adore NYC & Sprout Home (via @Taohou)

Delightful collection of Black & White images by The Sixteenth Division

Or if you are more into colors… The Craft League

Finally, soothing and magnificent art. Goldfish Salvation by Riusuke Fukahori (via @minasokoni)