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Seven Things You Need to Know About Wanelo

By Esther Hahn

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  • Deena Varshavskaya originally hails from Siberia but now makes her home in San Francisco where her startup Wanelo is based. [Photo via Instagram]
  • Deena faced rejection 40 times before she found the right investors to back her social shopping app with $14 million in venture funding. [Isabel Marant Owel color-block knitted sweater,
  • Stores like Nordstrom, Sephora, Nike, Free People, Crate & Barrel, ModCloth, Yoox, Forever 21, and Nasty Gal (plus 300 others) have all added Wanelo buttons to their sites. [Follow the Flock Motorcycle Jacket,
  • The app is meant to work like a shopping mall for the ecommerce age—meaning that the user can discover and browse high-end and indie brands on one platform. [Francesco Ballestrazzi Feather Ear Piece in Black,
  • Wanelo also curates a feed for the user based on products viewed and saved. [I Love the 90s Crop Top, $42 at Nylon Magazine]
  • Currently, 90 percent of Wanelo's 11 million users are women, and half of these (mostly mobile) users are between the ages of 18 and 24, SF Business Times
  • The next step for the startup is to tap an older demographic by adding more value and more utility to the app's functionalities. [Trina Turk Ali Wrap in Blush Pink, $


If you don't know much about Wanelo (or, really, anything at all), you'll want to change that soon. Deena Varshavskaya's startup is the fastest-growing social shopping site, with 11 million users. (That's up from just 1 million last year.) Before you know it, you'll be at a major shopping disadvantage if you're late to add this platform into your shopping routine. To make the leap more palatable, here are seven facts about Wanelo and its founder (aka @siberianfruit on her social platforms) paired with seven actual items from her Wanelo collections.

· The woman behind Wanelo is building a new social, digital American mall [SF Business Times]
· Is This Social Shopping Platform The Best One Yet? [Racked SF]