I spent the last few days checking out this site, and it seems legit and pretty useful, so here it is! Ideeli.com is a site that showcases designer goods at discounted prices, and, if you're willing to pay a membership fee, selected goods to win for free. It has a pretty good collection of accessories that currently leans towards bags and sunshades.
You get tantalizing tidbits of a photo, description, and price of an item that will be going on sale within the next 60 days. The catch? You don't know when exactly it will go on sale, but you can sign up to get email notification when it does. From the few sales that have gone live since I joined, I'm happy to observe that things don't sell out within 3 seconds of being posted. That type of bargain free-for-all is stressful and tells me that the lack of inventory means more hype and empty fronts, than an actual marketplace with a good supply-and-demand balance. Here, the 10-hour sale window is large enough that you'll likely be able to get to your computer (and credit card) at your leisure, and things don't sell out overly quickly so you can vacillate a bit while justifying your inevitable indulgence. (I've found that if I ever get to the vacillate point, it means I want something enough that I'm ultimately going to get it. :) )
There's also a comment feature so you can discuss the item, but it seems to be more of a "Ooooh, I want this!!" type of comment, if anything at all. I have the feeling that some people would be reluctant to sing their praises of the item for fear that it would increase other people's interest in the product, and thus raise competition once it went on sale. However, I really would like to see conversations discussing the looks, functionality, or designer (a designer's particular taste and how it's reflected in the product) and hope that the comment section will become more like product-specific mini forums.
Membership is a "friend-of-a-friend" referral like gmail invite codes in the early days. So if you want to check it out, let me know! (I'm 'lauriel' at the beforementioned mail program.) (J, I would have emailed you already, but I didn't know if you had a specific email account you'd want to sign up with!)
