I recently went for lunch with Robert Gorton, founder of fashion website LynkU, at Aubaine in South Kensington.

Robert launched LynkU, a website which showcases product from multiple retailers, in 2006 after a successful career in venture capital.

As well as aggregating the best items from stores, LynkU informs its 31,000 registrants of new online shops, recommended products and the best deals, all in a weekly newsletter.

Robert told me the newsletter database has been built organically since Lynku’s launch which I think is very impressive – the quality of the database has a huge impact on the value of the company.

The LynkU platform also powers the Daily Mail’s fashion store. It’s a partnership that has a lot of opportunity because the online readership of the Daily Mail is very different to their core offline audience.

The celebrity section ‘TV & Showbiz’ is extremely popular, constantly updated and building a loyal following. More importantly for online retail, it has a huge amount of celebrity photography which can be used as a vehicle for promoting product.

Because of the wealth of items available through LynkU every celebrity picture could have a relevant item tagged to it which a user could click through to buy.