5. Stitsh — Click to buy: fashion blog is a street version of shopping mags

Most street-style fashion blogs serve their readers primarily as sources of inspiration, but a new London-based blog has added an e-commerce twist to let readers click on looks they like and purchase them on the spot.

Stitsh, which launched earlier this year, offers up galleries of photos of real men and women on the London streets wearing a wide variety of looks and styles. In addition to having subjects sign photo releases, Stitsh's photographers also find out about the clothes they are wearing and hunt them down in retail stores, forging e-commerce partnerships wherever possible. Users of the site, which is ultimately much like a blog version of shopping magazine Lucky, can then just click on items they're interested in and be taken to stores where those items—or very similar versions—can be purchased. Photos are arranged by gender, and items are also tagged for easy searchability.

"The way I shop is I look at what people are wearing," Stitsh founder Dom Fendius told Women's Wear Daily. "When the street-style blogs came online, I thought, wouldn't it be great if I could buy the clothing worn in those photos?"

Stitsh is partially funded by ads, but it also works on a commission model, WWD reports. Specifically, each Stitsh reader who clicks through to the site of an online retailer such as Topshop, Miss Selfridge, House of Fraser or French Connection and buys something there earns Stitsh a commission of up to 12 percent. Some stores will even pay Stitsh the commission for shoppers who return to buy something as much as 30 days later, according to WWD. Stitsh currently covers just the streets of London, but Manchester, Stockholm and New York are reportedly in the works. One to partner with or emulate in other parts of the world...?

4. Sneakart — Customizing sneakers with removable stickers

Hard on the heels—so to speak—of our story about sneaker customization at Keds Studio last week comes another spotting in the world of customized footwear: Sneakart, a site that lets users personalize sneakers from any brand via specially designed removable stickers.

Still in beta, UK-based Sneakart offers users the opportunity to customize their sneakers via Sneakskin, a super-thin, flexible, durable and waterproof graphic film that can be applied to white, light-coloured and metallic shoes. Printed with non-toxic ink in the UK, Sneakskin is 100 percent PVC-free and can be peeled off and replaced at will. It's available either in sheets of individual stickers or in 22-by-29-cm sheets of patterns that the user can cut to fit the areas to be covered; either way, one or two sheets is typically enough to customize one pair of shoes, Sneakart says. Sneakart offers a wide variety of patterns and designs ranging in price from about GBP 4.95 to 5.95 per sheet, but users can also create their own artwork and upload it to the site. They can choose either to keep their design private, for their use only, or to make it public and offer it up for the use of others as well. The motivation to go public is considerable: each time a public design is purchased, Sneakart credits the designer's account with 10 percent of the sale price, available either as a credit toward further Sneakart purchases or via direct payment. Sneakskin peels easily off its backing paper for application, and sticks on shoes with regular daily wear for a few months. Sneakart donates 10p from every order it receives to Street Kids International, and it has also offset its 2008 carbon footprint twice over through PURE's renewable energy projects in India, Brazil and China.

There's no doubt customization is a good thing, but rewarding consumers for their customer-made innovations just may knock this one out of the park. Next, how about helping to bring this concept to other types of shoes, handbags or even cellphones and personal gadgets? (Related: New sneaker brand relies on crowds for design.)

3. Catwalk Genius

More crowdfunding! Just recently, Irish fashion portal Catwalk Genius joined the crowdfunded fashion fray with its new Adopt a Designer program.

Catwalk Genius features fashion and accessories from independent designers. Through Adopt a Designer, supporters of a participating designer can buy shares (or "elements," as it calls them) in their work for EUR 14—plus a EUR 1 processing fee—in the hope of sharing in future profits. Once 5,000 such elements have been sold, the designer is given the resulting EUR 70,000 to create a new collection within 6 months. In the meantime, supporters receive a limited edition piece created exclusively for them by the designer. When the new collection launches, all profits from its sale are split equally among the designer, the supporters and Catwalk Genius. If the collection sells out, a tidy profit goes to the designer's supporters, who can also sign up for Catwalk Genius's affiliate program and earn 10 percent of the profits from sales through ads on their personal web pages. By the Adopt a Designer program's mid-April launch, 50 designers had already signed up.

Crowdfunding has now been spotted taking hold in the worlds of bands, software, education and sports, among many others. Any doubters left out there? Time to start putting the power of the supportive crowds to work for your growing brand!

2.Transitional Sizes — Clothing rental for size-changing dieters

For dieters working to lose weight, maintaining a decent wardrobe of clothes that fit can be an ongoing—and expensive—challenge on the way to a target size. With just that situation in mind, Transitional Sizes rents out name-brand clothing for temporary use while the pounds come off.

Maryland-based Transitional Sizes, which just recently launched, offers women's and maternity clothing in a range of sizes for monthly rental fees ranging from about USD 3 to USD 25. (Men's clothes are coming soon, the site says.) Customers order items in the sizes they need and keep them for as long as they want; once they're done, they clean them per the instructions provided by Transitional Sizes and send them back in the original box. Customers needn't be members to order from the site, but membership packages ranging from USD 10 to USD 40 per year are designed to give dieters a range of extra perks, including coupons, discounts, email alerts and weight-loss incentives.

Transitional Sizes' inventory is still very limited, and its site feels rough around the edges. Nevertheless, the concept is a good one, and could be enhanced by personal features such as automatically sending a smaller set of clothes when a customer is scheduled to have dropped to the next size, for example. And how about a partnership with Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig? Either way, dieters are just one group among the legions of transumers out there, eager to be free from the bonds of (unnecessary) ownership. Which creates lots of opportunities for entrepreneurs who can support the new leasing lifestyle! (Related: Baby clothes rental service.)

1. Yakkay — Stylish helmets for urban cyclists

Catering to design-conscious urban cyclists who'd rather not sacrifice style for safety, a group of Danish designers has created a bicycle helmet with interchangeable covers.

Copenhagen-based Yakkay sells a simple shell helmet (dubbed "Smart One") that's tucked away under one of ten different covers. The helmet retails at DKK 599 (EUR 80 / USD 120), and the covers are sold for DKK 299 (EUR 40 / USD 60). While chin straps betray their true nature, the helmets otherwise resemble hats and caps worn for fashion, not protection.

Yakkay states that the number of seriously injured cyclists with head injuries is around 2,500 per year in Denmark (on a total population of under 5.5 million). And that's in a country where motorists are accustomed to cyclists, and where most roads have separate bicycle lanes. As more consumers across the world hop on their bikes to reduce their gas bills, carbon footprints and waistlines, the market for innovative cycling products and services should grow at a healthy pace. One to tap into! Easy way to get started? Ask Yakkay about regional distribution opportunities. (Related: Stylish fire protection kits.)

Update: please don't email Yakkay about international distribution. They wrote to tell us that they have a plan in place for their international launch and are currently receiving too many distributor requests.