Don’t have time to obsess over the latest fashion trends? Launching today, a new service called Ajent is bringing curated style options to busy professionals.

Most e-commerce sites focus on breadth and offer a massive database of fashion items, typically imported by the community or a developer scraping the web. Polyvore, for instance, is updated with over two million new items each month. 

But San Francisco-based Ajent feeds its users just one “look” per day. Sign up for free, and receive a daily email with trendy style suggestions, home decor options, and more.

Today’s look is “Emerald”; users can peruse a shortlist of affordable deep green shirts, a kimono, pants and shoes, and even plan a trip to the Emerald Isle.

Ajent’s founder Meghan Higney (pictured above) hit on the idea for the site when she was bedridden for several months after breaking her back. The former private equity professional said she felt “overwhelmed” by the clutter on the Web and yearned to have a personal style hunter to source the best deals, delivered straight to her inbox.

So Higney quit her day job to develop the site and daily newsletter. She tested the beta on 200 users — men and women — and brought on a team of five staff members, including a front-end designer and several fashion editors. Each day, Ajent’s human editors pore through magazines, street style blogs, arts and culture, and more for inspiration. 

Ajent is a bootstrapped effort, and the next step is to hire engineers to build an algorithm (inspired by Netflix or Pandora) to offer personalized style recommendations. This will differentiate it from sites like Stylefeed that help users curate fashion by searching for deals from their favorite designers.

“The really interesting piece will be when Ajent brings you items on a day-to-day basis that you have told us specifically to look for,” said Higney over coffee. Ajent will also be aware of users’ size, budget, and style preferences.

To make money, the team is also considering rolling out a concierge-style service. If you’re looking for a leather skirt for spring, an Ajent style hunter will source the best deal and style from the Web and offer suggestions for items that will complement the look. It’s a similar business model to Zirtual, a virtual assistant service that is growing quickly and recently raised funds from Zappos’ CEO Tony Hsieh, among others.

In the future, Ajent will also benefit from building its own buying and selling platform, so users won’t be redirected to an external site if they choose to make a purchase.

In a recent interview, Forerunner Ventures‘ founder and managing partner said the key for the next wave of e-commerce sites is to “focus on augmenting the traditional shopping experience.”

ShoeDazzle is reverting back to what it knows best: helping women find trendy, discounted shoes.

Just three months after the L.A.-based e-commerce company reinstated its cofounder Brian Lee as CEO, it has announced some big changes. Among these is a new “VIP” membership service that enables users to receive special discounts on shoes. This harks back to the site’s early days when women paid $40 each month to receive a pair of shoes.

Over coffee, Lee said the plan is to bring back “innovation and creativity” to the site. Recently departed CEO Bill Strauss had planned to turn ShoeDazzle into a Zappos clone and bolster its marketplace with apparel, lingerie, and swimwear. Strauss also did away with the membership model to enable the site to appeal to a broader audience.

“Bill Strauss helped us build a foundation,” said Lee over coffee. “But I didn’t feel that the site was headed in the right direction.” Shoes account for 80 percent of the overall business — although the site will continue to sell handbags and accessories.

The new VIP membership service costs $9.95 a month. Unless users make a purchase, the monthly fee accumulates in an account known as a “shoe fund.” Women that sign up to the program receive special discounts, advice from personal stylists through a concierge service, and extended return policies.

Lee hopes to increase return visits to the site and gather data about consumer purchases. ShoeDazzle uses an algorithm, not dissimilar to Netflix, to target its members with shoes they’ll love. The curatorial piece is central to the company’s vision — Lee explained that customer service reps receive “fashion training” so customers can call and ask for a pair of shoes that will match their red dress.

Lee said the program is showing early signs of success. ShoeDazzle is adding 500 women a day to the VIP program from the wait list. Likewise, results from the beta have been encouraging (about 12,000 women are currently signed up). The VIP program will be launching to the public in mid-February.

The site is already known by over 45 percent of women aged 18 to 32, but to increase awareness, ShoeDazzle surveyed its members for their ideal celebrity spokesperson. The winner? Rachel Zoe, who was recently named the company’s chief stylist. Lee is no stranger to the benefits of celebrity endorsements — he cofounded the Honest Company with actress Jessica Alba.

Online shoe store Spartoo is stepping into €25 million.

Known as the “Zappos of Europe,” Spartoo is a straightforward e-commerce site that sells affordable footwear. The inventory contains roughly 30,000 options provided by 700 brands, including popular retailers Ugg, Nine West, and Dolce and Gabbana. The selection is wide, spanning women’s high-heeled stilettos, men’s work boots, and children’s flip flops, as well as bags and other accessories. Delivery is guaranteed, and free returns are possible for up to 30 days.

Spartoo was founded in France in 2006 and has since expanded to 20 European countries. It sold 2 million pairs of shoes last year and is growing fast. This investment will go towards sustaining the rapid growth and entering new markets.

Sofina, A Plus Finance, CM-CIC Capital Privé, Highland Partners, and Endeavour Vision contributed to this round, which brings Spartoo’ total financing to €45 million. Read the press release.

Love the shoe, but hate the heel? You can change its height or style too. Want a different strap? Yep, you can change that too. The site has 16 shoe bases to start with, plus multiple fabrics and designs so you can customize to your shoe-obsessed heart’s content. Prices range from $140 to $330 depending on the style.

When I first looked at the website, I rolled my eyes a bit at the thought of a women-focused shoe service. But, I just lost ten minutes of my life customizing a pair of shoes, so clearly there is a place for such a product. The shoes pictured above (created by myself and Senior Editor Heather Kelly) were made for fun, but you can make far less tacky shoes on Shoes of Prey’s website.

Shoes of Prey just landed a $3 million round of funding from Crunchfund and other investors. The full press release is below.

Design-Your-Own Shoes Site Shoes of Prey Secures $3 Million with Silicon Valley’s Most Influential

SYDNEY, June 7, 2012 /PRNewswire/ – Shoes of Prey, the mass customization site that lets users design, buy and share their own bespoke shoes, announced that the company has secured $3 million in funding from a global syndicate with some of Sillicon Valley’s most influential players.  This is the first series of funding for the startup, which has gone from bootstrapped to multimillion in under two years.

Launched in 2009, Shoes of Prey is pioneering the consumer-centric commerce movement by combining user-driven interface, high-fashion product, and innovative social integration.  The site allows women to design bespoke shoes across over 4-trillion possibilities using a proprietary web- based 3D design platform.  Products are designed entirely online via computer, smartphone or tablet, and then handmade using premium leathers and received anywhere in the world in around two weeks. With fans including The Wall Street Journal, Oprah, and Tyra Banks and jubilee-themed shoes in the hands of The Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton, Shoes of Prey has earned a following among the pinnacle of business and fashion influencers alike.

The syndicate investing in Shoes of Prey counts Silicon Valley’s top players, including TechCrunch founder Mike Arrington under his new investment company CrunchFund and legendary venture capitalist Bill Tai, whose track record includes nineteen IPOs. Investing alongside them is Australian trailblazer Atlassian founder Mike Cannon-Brookes.

The capital raised will enable Shoes of Prey to further development along several key initiatives, including innovating social shopping functionalities, broadening retail presence, expanding product array with new fashion-forward options each month, and driving in-person experiences blurring the traditional separation between brick-and-mortar and online retail.

“Women around the globe have already logged 20 million minutes on Shoes of Prey and designed tens of millions of shoes,” says co-founder, Jodie Fox. “We are excited about the opportunities ahead as we begin to work with our new investors to redefine how women interact with the products we buy and wear.”

When it was founded two-and-a-half years ago by serial entrepreneur Brian Lee, ShoeDazzle set-up shop with a unique payment structure for an online fashion company. Would-be shoppers had to sign up for a $39.95 a month membership, which got them one item a month. If they didn’t buy something during any given month, the credit would roll over like cell-phone minutes.

As of Thursday, ShoeDazzle is dropping the membership requirement so anyone can buy its products. It’s also expanding its selection from just shoes and accessories to include clothes, lingerie, and other fashion items.

“We’re more augmenting what our customers want,” said new chief executive of six months, Bill Strauss, in an interview. “We have to be ready for people who want to buy one-off.”

Dropping barriers to sales is a natural move for a company with a booming customer base. Since the Andreessen-led $40 million round of funding last May, ShoeDazzle has jumped from 3 million to 10 million members. Killing the monthly subscription model could also be a smart move for Strauss whose last company, Provide-Commerce (parent company of ProFlowers), was sued over fraudulent monthly membership fees.

Even with the changes, ShoeDazzle is sticking with some features that have made it stand-out, including the dollar store approach to pricing (everything costs $39.95, mostly), and custom recommendations. After you take a fun survey covering a limited range of fashions (what style of sexy, extremely high-heel shoes do you prefer?), the site begins to recommend products it thinks you will like. All the items on the site are ShoeDazzle brand, made exclusively for the company in the same factories that produce similar brand-name goods, which helps to keep prices low.

Another of ShoeDazzle’s claims to fame is its celebrity connection. “Brian says he loves to take advantage of the natural resources in LA, which is celebrities,” said Strauss. The company brought on reality personality Kim Kardashian as a co-founder, and credits her with being one of the keys to its success early on.

Just how useful is a big name for a small startup? “At the time that it launched, it was very important. It gives a brand, especially a startup brand, credibility,” said Strauss. “If Kim Kardashian is out there talking about it, you open up the brand to her whole audience for relatively low-cost.”

The LA-based company currently has 185 employees. It has raised $60 million in funding to date from Andreessen Horowitz, Polaris Venture Partners, and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

The company, which can be best described as China’s equivalent of the online retailer Zappos, says it will use the funding to increase its stockpile portfolio and product range. An increased range of products is necessary since variety directly affects the profitability of e-commerce companies, according to the company’s founder Lu Ming. He also notes that OkBuy.com has an experienced buying team. The funding will go towards team formation and warehouse construction as well.

OkBuy.com has already built large storerooms in Beijing and Guanghzhou, and it also plans to set up more in northeast and east China to have five major storage locations by the end of the year.

Sequoia Capital raised $1 billion for two new private equity funds in China earlier this year, and it previously invested $35 million in Zappos before it was purchased by Amazon. (Zappos founder Tony Hsieh said earlier this year that Sequoia pressure directly led to the Amazon purchase.) With OkBuy.com, Sequoia certainly seems to be hoping for repeat success in two major online markets.

The site was founded in 2007, and landed $10 million from Sequoia Capital in its first round of funding.

[via TMCNet]