Online Shopping - Bees buzzing for the best?

Stylehive/News/Article/Beth Hughes
Found on: sfgate.com

Paris has the grand dame of flea markets, Le Marché aux Puces de Saint-Ouen. In Marrakesh, it's suuq. Kyoto offers temple markets, Minneapolis, the Mall of America. As is true of all alluring retail districts, shopping in such places is elevated from mere hunting and gathering into a social, even sensual event, one filled with assessing, touching, smelling, discussing what's on offer.

Stylehive, a new Web site based in San Francisco, wants to do the same for online shopping. Think of it as Flickr and MySpace with a hangtag or assembly instructions.

Describing itself as offering "social bookmarking for the product and shopping obsessed," it targets a global community of people "who are really passionate about finding and sharing the coolest stuff," says founder and "king bee" Michael Carrier, an entrepreneur with a robust and successful Web-based resume.

It is, he believes, a notion that combines technology and trendsetting fashion, shopping and online retail. "A lot of things have converged, and we're in the right place at the right time. Eighty percent of shopping online is research ... what to buy, where to buy it, comparing prices."