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Geek Chic: Laptop bags from Rickshaw Bagworks

But consider this. Don’t we all have too much stuff already? Aren’t our homes and offices bursting with unused gadgets, clothes, shoes, accessories, just stuff, lots of stuff, making us feel overwhelmed and stressed? The endless shopping lifestyle carries a true cost, one we don’t see in the West because it’s been conveniently exported to developing countries.

I came across this article in the Telegraph about a Chinese town where our unwanted stuff goes, where the children are being poisoned by noxious chemicals used to “recycle” our stuff. It highlights the cost of our shopping-driven lifestyle:

The Chinese town of Guiyu is the graveyard of Christmas past. It is where presents – game consoles, laptops, mobile phones – come to die. It is also where they are reborn. In this giant scrap-yard, so dangerously polluted that its children are being clinically poisoned, the electronic objects of desire, a million tons of them a year, are broken apart, melted down, and washed in acid to be recycled into a new flood of imports for Christmas future.

It’s strange how people feel they’re powerless to do anything. But they aren’t: just stop buying stuff you don’t need and focus on quality. Shopping has become a “fun” activity, the way going to a zoo or a museum exhibit used to be. Is it really fun?

Stores such as Zara and H&M which sell disposable, wear-once-throw-away clothes, promise the consumer that she will always be in style and that the designer clothes she sees on the bodies of celebrities can also be hers for a low price. But what do you get when you buy cheap? Cheap clothes that fall apart quickly and look dreadful after one or two wearings. It’s wasteful.

I had this experience when I bought a cute knit dress from Mango, another purveyor of fashionable, cheap, throwaway clothes. After wearing the dress twice, the knit started to pill (little round balls of fabric developed in different parts of the garment) and the garment began to twist out of shape. I wanted to wear the dress more often but it just started to look very bad. So, off to the trash bin it goes! These cheap, horrible clothes should carry a warning: your dress will self-destruct in five seconds!

Where do all the clothes that the stores don’t manage to sell, go? Where do our old clothes go? Our old electronics? All the useless bits we buy for ourselves and others? Read the Telegraph article and make a New Year’s Resolution to shop only for high quality items you really need.

Anti-consumerist artists slip replica products packaged with political messages onto shelves while religious proselytizers insert pamphlets between the pages of gay-and-lesbian readings at book stores.

I can’t imagine it’s fun for the personnel of the stores who have to arrange items on the shelves.

I signed up for a Stylefeeder account and found it very easy and fun to use. The best way to make use of Stylefeeder is to install a browser plug-in button so that whenever you find an item in an online shop, you can simply add it to your Stylefeeder list.

For example, you go to a store, click on an item, click the Stylefeeder button to add to your Stylefeed. A box pops up that allows you to pick the photo you want associated with the item and to edit any information about it. Click “add” and that’s it. You can also edit to add tags to the item, and add it to any groups that you have joined in the Stylefeeder community.

Stylefeeder is like Kaboodle, the other social shopping site that’s been around for a while and has a larger audience. Kaboodle describes itself as “social shopping community where people discover, recommend and share products. Kaboodle’s powerful shopping tools allow people to organize their shopping through lists, discover new things from people with similar style, get discounts on popular products and find best prices. At the heart of Kaboodle is a fun and engaging community of people who love to shop.”

Both sites encourage users to make lists of favorites, to tag items, create or join groups, make recommendations, rate items, etc. Kaboodle was recently sold to Hearst Magazines. The rumored price is $40 million (Kaboodle raised $5 million in VC funding).

I like Stylefeeder more than Kaboodle because Stylefeeder looks better and is easier to use. It’s less cluttered, more “Web 2.0″. Stylefeeder also lets you place widgets on your blog, website, Friendster and MySpace pages, and it has a Facebook application. But Kaboodle has the advantage in terms of the size of the community so if you are looking to join a group of beauty junkies who have already posted a lot of items, Kaboodle is better . . . for now.

There is such a demand for online sites that do taste search, not just for shopping, but also for travel, entertainment, eating out, and home decor. I expect Stylefeeder to attract a large audience very quickly.

Stylefeeder and Kaboodle founders motivated by similar problem: finding things that match their taste

The similarities between Stylefeeder and Kaboodle extend also to the founders. Both sites were started by couples who had difficulty shopping for things online to decorate their homes. In the case of Stylefeeder, she couldn’t find decent lighting in the US (see http://www.stylefeeder.com/about.html). Kaboodle’s About page says the founders were remodeling their home and couldn’t find products that matched their tastes.

Stylefeeder’s founder goes into his obsession with taste search, finding whom to trust when it comes to restaurant reviews, etc. (http://blog.tech.stylefeeder.com/).