Article from the Star newspaper: http://thestar.com.my/metro/story.asp?file=%2F2011%2F1%2F10%2Fcentral%2F7743524&sec=central

Blogshops move to the real world

By TAN KARR WEI
karrwei@thestar.com.my

WOMEN who love their clothes, shoes and accessories usually also dream to have a walk-in wardrobe to store everything.

With that in mind, Offline Blogshop owners Yeo Bee Sean, 25, and Bernard Chia, 28, designed their store to look like one.

“People walk into the store and it is like going through their own things in a walk-in wardrobe,” said Yeo during the official opening of the store at 11.11am on Jan 1.

 

Not a square: Lam’s products are naughty and cutesy.

 

What is unique about the store is that each section of the wardrobe space features items being sold by designers and entrepreneurs online.

These online stores are also known as blogshops.

Having run her own, Yeo knew how hard it was to generate traffic into their sites.

“It is not easy to run an online site. Besides selling products online, we also have to go to bazaars and it can be time consuming.

“That is when I thought about opening my own store and found out about the space in Sunway Pyramid,” she said.

However, Yeo found out it was too expensive to rent the whole space on her own and the idea to bring together all the online blogshops under one roof came about.

“Each blogshop gets a wardrobe space in the shop and they customise the look of their own space,” said Chia.

Yeo added that the Offline Blogshop fitted in well in the mall’s Asian Avenue because the retail area had a concentration of chic and trendy designs for the younger crowd.

Butttons galore: Lam’s button badges are inspired by the periodical table.

 

Among those who had a space in the store was Aaron Lam, 25, a designer and lecturer who has been selling his T-shirt designs on his website www.individium.com

He specialises in T-shirts that were inspired by the chemical periodical table where each element has been attached with catchy words like Always Hungry (AH), Day Dreamer (DD) or Social Animal (SA).

Lam said each person could choose the label that best fit them as an individual.

Besides T-shirts, the designs were also available on button badges and he also designed unique square-shaped Individolls in different fabrics and changeable button-badge eyes.

Each doll also had a name like The Tea Critic, The Confused Analyst or The Minty Gummer.
Another space owner Chloe Mok, 23, started to sell corsets online at www.queenchloset.com when she found out how hard it was to find them.

“I like corsets but I realised you can only find them in lingerie shops and sex stores,” said Mok.

com. Economical venture: From clothes to shoes, the Offline Blogshop in Sunway Pyramid enables online blogshop owners to market their products without the high overheads of renting their own shops.

 

She said the colourful corsets was a fashion item that could be worn with jeans.

Sara Khong, 24, who runs www.zikkos.com selling accessories, said while online shopping was getting more popular, there were also a lot of people who were sceptical about buying things online due to Internet fraud.

“That is why having our products storefront at malls is a wise move to reach the people who do not shop online,” she said.

The Offline Blogshop is located at AV149, Asian Avenue, Sunway Pyramid, Bandar Sunway, Petaling Jaya.
For details, visit www.offlineblogshop.com.