Are you looking for books by smart women? Or maybe you're a new mom overwhelmed by all of the breastfeeding products and need HELP!  Enter: Love The Edit, a new e-commerce site dedicated to helping busy women sift through the 480 plus million products sold on Amazon in the United States. (That's more products than people who live here.)

Very simply, Love The Edit creates curated collections organized into eight sections: Baby, Kids, Style, Living, Beauty, Gifts, Guys, and Guest Editors, like Amber Lewis of Amber Interiors.  All products are culled from Amazon and are shoppable on the site. You "check in" with Love The Edit and "check out" with Amazon. As much as online shopping has made our click-of-a-button lives that much easier, it's also become a bit of a chore-- or as we call it, "the over-world-wide-whelm." 

So we checked in with Love The Edit Co-Founder Anne Ziegler to find out why curated is the new craze and why you need to hop offline to effectively trend forecast.

You have a background in trend forecasting. How did you figure out what was hip before the hyper-onset of blogs?

Trend forecasting is about seeing new patterns as they develop. In order to see new patterns, you have to be up on what is happening right now, and that takes research! 

You need to be hyper-aware of what is happening around you, and always curious - if you’re not looking, you’ll miss it.  For that reason, I try not to get caught behind the computer for too long - the best research is to be out and about - seeing how real girls are styling their clothes, what a new retail concept looks like or what the scene is like at a cool new restaurant. It’s really about understanding how people are living and what’s influencing them, so we can understand why, and what, they might want next. 

"I try not to get caught behind the computer for too long - the best research is to be out and about."

Tweet this. 

How do you figure out what’s on-trend now?

Blogs and social media are fast information and everyone is looking at them, so you have to be looking at them too. But the onset of blogs and social media hasn’t disrupted the process of trend forecasting - it's just another resource. You are still looking, listening, learning and ultimately editing through lots of data for newness, and then trying to connect the dots. 

Who is Love The Edit for? 

Anyone who feels like there aren’t enough hours in the day! a.k.a. every woman we know! Love The Edit is for women who are juggling everything - jobs, kids, home…life! We want to help women shop better and faster so we can all enjoy more time with family and friends! We always like to say “let us be your personal shopper” on Amazon.  

How does it make busy working women’s lives easier? 

We’re all about instant gratification. When I am coveting something, I want it yesterday. So Amazon is perfect for that. We chose to build Love The Edit around Amazon for a reason — they have the most products of any e-commerce site in the country and they deliver the fastest. By editing Amazon we are bringing our users the perspective of a good editor, without sending you all over the web to find it. You can add multiple items to your cart on Love The Edit, hit checkout, and your items are all pushed into your own Amazon account - no multiple checkout, just the stuff you want with one click. 

How many products are you sifting through to get to the good stuff?

488 Million…

Are you at all worried you’re going to run out of content ideas?

No! Because our lives as working mom, friends, wives and daughters constantly provide us with new content ideas! 

What am I supposed to get for 3-year-old boy’s birthday party this weekend? Bingo - Gifts for Little Dudes. I don’t want to lug all these French pharmacy finds back from France in my suitcase. Voila -  French Pharmacy Buys! What do I give for a hostess gift this summer, besides Rośe? Done - The Perfect Gift. (OK fine, in ADDITION to rośe!)

What’s the most surprising product you’ve found on Amazon?

The selection of fair-trade home decor and gifts items is awesome. And, if you really want to splurge, there’s always $6K of caviar….

Curating and cutting through the internet noise is time consuming. Why is this something you’re passionate about? 

It’s the thrill of the hunt! We love finding something super cool that you wouldn’t expect to be on Amazon. That’s what drives us! 

Of all the jobs you’ve had, what’s been the most interesting/rewarding? 

I am always rewarded when I can see work that I do directly make a difference for a client. 

More from our blog: