The week comes to an end

This week comes to its end. It was a real nice one for JUSTPROUD.  

• Over 2000 fans at our fan page
• 308 contestants
• Very enthusiastic comments, suggestions & covarge.

 The contest will be a few more days open for entries & then it’s only gaining votes.

We got some suggestions not only rewarding the Nr.1 contestant but also the runners up; we are thinking if & how we can/will do this; we keep you up to date

In the meantime we are busy creating the next release. We cannot wait to put that online. To see all peoples reaction & being able to communicate & interact on our own Fashion Brand platform. But unfortunately we cannot make this overnight, so w have to be a little patient.

All suggestions of the members are taken into account & we think it really will be cool!

We also thought about an ‘ambassador’-role & we came up with this for the moment:

Role:

• ‘Moderate’ designs, model & photography contests
• Member of JUSTPROUD court (the ‘court of JUSTPROUD’ in case members have issues on designs copyrights voting’s etc)
• Arrange yearly live event of JUSTPROUD in your region (small fashion show)
• Representing your region members (activate them & be accessible)
• Periodical updates on region activity / member

Powers:

• Change/ delete comments & contest submissions
• Being one of the votes in order to make a verdict (or not) at the ‘court’
• Submit a plan & budget to arrange the live event
• Representing your region actively within the organization
• Publishing at the JUSTPROUD website & company blog
• Being able to make member accounts inactive (and enter for determination)

If you have any ideas, you can post them at http://justproud.com/en/Forum/ViewTopic.aspx?ftid=26

SOCIAL MEDIA GOES FASHION - JUSTPROUD press release -

JUSTPROUD Launches First Community-Driven Fashion Brand
From today, ordinary people worldwide can break into the fashion industry through JUSTPROUD: the first online fashion community that actively encourages participation from its members. Members contribute their opinions, knowledge & talents from the start, through the design, modeling and photography stages to the end product: selling their clothes and accessories. Ultimately, JUSTPROUD members themselves will be the designers, models & photographers.


The Fashion Revolution
The classic hierarchy of top designers setting trends which filter down into the high street is being inverted. Now ordinary people who are interested in fashion, or people who want to make a career out of it, have a new stepping-stone to enter this industry and give themselves a better chance of being discovered.


Social media foundations
The familiar social media principles remain the same. Anyone interested in the fashion industry can become a founding member for free, invite their friends and network. If you want to be actively involved in the design, modeling or photography stages you can also upload portfolios of your work. All members are invited to make the important decisions. Members can promote their choices and get as many votes as possible; the most popular designs will be produced and the most popular models and photographers will be signed to the ad campaigns. Their clothes and accessories will also be sold through members.


Co-development
Geert Rietbergen, CEO of JUSTPROUD, announces: “From today, JUSTPROUD gives people the opportunity to sign up as „founding members‟ - until January 1st 2010 - and we invite them to share their views on the process and the look and feel of the site. This current site is available in 8 different languages.


By January the community will be in full operation and the first items will be ready for co-development and sale.”


To become a free founding member of the biggest movement in fashion, please visit: http://www.justproud.com/


JUSTPROUD is initiative of the people of BALLSMEDIA. Where they used to work at the agency-side consulting multinationals like Unilever, PepsiCo, KLM etc, now they emphasis on realizing projects where people (like you and me) are really involved & really get the direct benefits. BALLSMEDIA is located in Mountain View (CA, USA), The Hague (Holland) & Shanghai (China).

219 contestants, translations & (almost) ready for the introduction

What a weekend this was. Almost every hour contestants enter our 1st model competition at www.justproud.com/en/model/. This really encourages us to go forward. Even we didn’t plan this event initially we are convinced that it was a good plan to meet the expectations of our members sooner than January. Still this gives us a lot of challenges: removing double entries & pictures without a ‘fashion nature’, installing more security checks & making the entries appear random.
Especially the last one is of great importance, to give all entries equal chance.

Then we are working on the different language versions simultanious. So the whole world (or at least the part that talks English, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German or Dutch) can be a part of this movement. Because of the latest changes in the site, due to the contest, we were a little late in supplying the version to translate. Our main supplier in translations did their very best, but at the latest moment we decided to go for another translator who could deliver earlier; (thanks to Jennifer, a former employee of my China Company & girlfriend of Djon) so now we will implement the language versions today. Hopefully without mistakes, because it is hard to make a Japanese version when you’re not native Japanese.

Last Friday the people of BusinessWire supported me through their website in order to prepare the press release. It is always exciting to say: yes, this is it; without the possibility to reverse. But James of Businesswire double checked it for us & now the press release is translated in several main languages & ready to hit the wire.
We are very curious how the media will react. Only a few days of (less) sleep and we will know.

Model competition & more than 1200 fans!

Today we started our first model competition! After receiving great feedback of our members & fans at http://www.justproud.com/, we decided we organize our first model competition. Currently already 60 contestants entered.

Originally we wanted to remain building on the next release of the site, with all functionalities, taken all suggestions of our members into consideration. But because so many members were enthusiastic about it, we decided to meet their expectations earlier and we implemented the model contest justproud.com/en/model/. The winner will be the 1st ‘face’ of JUSTPROUD. Besides that she will gain worldwide coverage, a fully covered trip & be broadcasted on FTV.

Our fan base at Facebook grows very quickly as well; 2 weeks after starting with our pre-site we already have over 1200 fans! A lot of enthusiasm is read from “the wall”. We are curious how this will evolve after of worldwide introduction next week!

Quickly we will continue creating our different languages for the pre-site.

Model competition & other exciting things

This week was an exciting one. Lots of positive reactions via the JUSTPROUD.com, via Facebook & Twitter.

Many people gave good suggestions & positive feedback. One of my former employees, Bram, currently on a ‘around-world-sailing-trip’, even stopped by & thought with us. I had a diner, at restaurant Christian, with Alex which was inspiring as always. So cool how everybody is enthusiastic towards the concept & want to add their contribution.


Working towards the global introduction of JUSTPROUD, we thought how we could involve our current members already & we came up with the 1st model competition. Who will be ‘the 1st face’ of JUSTPROUD at the January introduction of next release site.

Our fan page at Facebook is going steady towards the first 1000 fans & this excites us obviously.
This week we will start our model-competition, finish the other 7 languages of the pre-site & get ready for the global introduction the week after.

Over 300 fans in 72 hours make us happy

72 hours after launching our pre-site JUSTPROUD.com we have over 300 fans on our Facebook fanpage. This really encourages us! Because it’s our test version, we didn’t put in too much effort in creating traffic yet. The first test results are in and we are very (very, very, very) happy with those.

Results:

• Very positive reactions towards the concept
• Very positive reactions towards the site
• The conversion to member exceeds our (modest) expectations.
• Some members did miss the photo upload, which we have planned for the final release.
• 4 separate message boards are too fragmented

To make the site better & meet member expectations we will change the following:

•  4 boards will be 1 message board 
• We created a “member portfolio link topic”, where members can post their online portfolio temporarily (until we have the photo upload ready).

We tried to find the best temporary option without doing too much harm to our original planning; otherwise the full release would be postponed & we didn’t want to do that; hope you agree & understand.

More than 100 fans in 36 hours

Fashion lovers, designers models & photographers are currently uniting at JUSTPROUD. 36 hours after launching our the English version of our pre-site we got more than 100 fans at our Facebook fanpage; thank you soo much.
Next week we will analyze the test results of the pre-site and make adjustments as sees fit. The initial results & reactions do strengthen us in our mission: creating a community driven fashion brand together with you.

JUSTPROUD, English testversion is live.

Fashion lover, designer, model & photographer; this is your chance. Justproud.com is live with its test version. Our own fashion brand!

Preview homepage

Still in the proces of creating the pre-site. Here you can have a sneak preview of the English site. Hopefully we will enter the testingphase tomorrow. Untill then I leave you with the homepage.

Upcomming week

This upcomming week will be an exciting one. We are finishing our pre-website; the one in which we will explain the concept. At this website you can already signup as founding member and share your thoughts with us, in order to make a great first release of the community.

The first pre-site will be published in English and after the testperiod we will publish also in Chinese, Spanish, Portugese, French, German, Dutch & Japanese. So you can imagine we have a busy time ahead :-)