With 20M unique visitors in 2012, Polyvore brings on new CRO

Fashion startup Polyvore is in an enviable position: it has an army of dedicated users importing 2 million items to the site each month, a new iPhone app, and the site pulled in 20 million unique visitors in 2012.

It’s about time they started generating some serious revenue. To help with this goal, the company has brought on a chief revenue officer,  Arnie Gullov-Singh (pictured, above). Prior to joining Polyvore, Singh was the CEO of Adly, an influencer marketing platform for Twitter, and an EVP of Product, Technology and Operations at Fox Audience Network.

“Polyvore’s traffic has grown tremendously over the last year. It’s been all organic growth, fueled mainly by our users sharing their content to social networks like Facebook and Pinterest,” said Jess Lee, the company’s cofounder. Polyvore is an addictive shopping experience that lets budding fashionistas mix and match outfit ideas, browse items by theme or clothing type, and directly purchase items from mainstream brands like H&M or Tory Burch.

Related: Read about the company’s recent launch of its iOS opp

Cofounders Lee and Pasha Sadri would not disclose their monetization plans, but told me recently they see strong opportunities to mine their data. Since I met with them two weeks ago, the site has attracted an additional million users. Needless to say, they have a wealth of knowledge at their fingertips about how we shop, and the reasons why we choose to spend money. This would be extremely valuable to both advertisers and brands.

Polyvore is one of the fastest growing e-commerce startups, and unlike Pinterest, its users are buying as well as browsing. The average basket size is $220. For this reason, the startup has more in common with flash sale retailer Fab.com, which is experiencing skyrocketing growth and expects to surpass $100 million in revenues this year.

What stands out about Polyvore is that seven of its top 10 retailers are in the luxury space, and it’s most popular with the wealthiest segment of online shoppers. 33 percent of visitors make over $100,000, and the average household income of users is $77,000. In future, the company plans to take advantage of this fact by expanding to home-ware, kids and men’s clothing.