Sunday, January 30, 2011

Blogshops in the middle

Blogshops have come under fire for a number of controversial issues, especially the sale of contact lenses, and especially in Singapore.

Here is another issue that could have far reaching consequences as it involves young consumers.

From: http://sg.yfittopostblog.com/tag/blogshops/

Posts Tagged ‘blogshops’

Beware of ‘bust-boosting’ cookies

Monday, January 24th, 2011
 
“Breast-enhancing” F-cup cookies, which contain plant hormones, might be harmful to consumers. (Screencap from http://www.f-cup-cookies.com)

Three 16-year-old girls fell ill after consuming made-in-Japan “breast-enhancement” cookies ordered from an online shop, reported The Straits Times.

One of the trio, Abigail Chua, first came across the shop. Soon, each of the three ordered two boxes of these “F-cup cookies”, which they ate for two weeks in place of their usual main meals, as directed by the seller, in the belief they could also gain the side benefit of weight loss.

However, all the girls got were gastric pains and diarrhoea. They have been treated and have since recovered from the ordeal.

Abigail, who recently received her O-level results and is waiting to enter a polytechnic, told ST, “I read online that the cookies would increase my bust size by at least one cup. They are not too expensive and also taste quite good, so I thought there was no harm in trying them.”

The cookies were found to contain pueraria mirifica, a plant-based oestrogen commonly found in bust-enhancement creams sold here.

A spokesman for the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority said the cookies were not cleared to be sold in Singapore as too little is known about whether pueraria mirifica is safe to be used in food.

ST understands from Abigail and her friends that the cookies were ordered from a local blogshop, which also sells Japanese “slimming” pills and “bust-enhancement” chewing gum.

The paper did a check over the Internet and discovered at least 40 such blogshops selling the cookies in raspberry, chocolate and soya milk flavours at between S$56 and S$60 for a two-week supply of 30 cookies. They tout the cookies a s a “fast, effective and tasty” way to bigger breasts. Sales of the cookies are believed to be very good.

Five blogshop owners ST spoke to claimed to have sold 40 to 50 boxes a month to new customers, with another 20 boxes bought by returning patrons.

They said their biggest buyers are teenagers who discover the products from Taiwanese beauty shows and online forums.

Blogshop owner Evie Tan, 19, whose stock comes from Hong Kong, told ST, “We know it’s not cleared for sale here, but what’s the harm? It’s just a cookie.”

She has eaten them too, and said that although they did not fulfill the promise of an F-cup chest, her breasts are now fuller and firmer. “There’s nothing wrong with me,” she added.

Doctors, however, expressed their concerns over the effect these plant-hormone cookies can have on girls going through puberty.

Plastic surgeon Andrew Khoo of the Aesthetic & Reconstructive Centre said that, in theory, the cookies could work, as stimulation of the breast tissue by oestrogen would enlarge the part.

But he also warned, “It has been documented that quite a number of breast cancers are oestrogen-receptor positive, which means they are hormone-triggered tumours. It’s not worth taking the risk of continually stimulating one’s breast tissue by ingesting plant hormones.”

Child psychiatrist Brian Yeo added that teens turn to cookies so that their parents would not suspect that they are attempting to enhance their breasts.

“The perception a cookie projects is that it is painless, looks safe and is a herbal product.”

He cautioned teens against eating them, “If they contain actual hormones, they may affect a teenager’s pubertal development. There are no quick fixes to problems in a normal growing process.”

Last October, the Health Sciences Authority (HSA) mounted a crackdown on illegal prescription drug and counterfeit product peddlers online.

In July last year, the HSA worked with SingPost to study the contents of suspicious parcels containing health products entering Singapore. They made an initial find that as much as one third of the products purchased online and shipped here contained dangerous adulterants.

These are usually products that cannot be bought here and could have erroneous dosage recommendations.
The most commonly-purchased products online are slimming pills and drugs used to treat sexual disorders such as erectile dysfunction.

The HSA said that consumers might have been lured into buying the products because of the social stigma associated with the problems that makes them shy to approach doctors.

Facebook Stores in Brunei

Facebook stores are increasing in popularity in Brunei.

Traditionally, Bruneians go over to Miri or even KK to do their shopping since shopping is rather lacking in the kingdom.

These days, however, e-commerce is gaining momentum with the advent of Facebook.

From: http://www.bt.com.bn/business-national/2011/01/30/have-internet-will-shop


Have Internet, will shop

Illustration: BT/Ray de Jesus
Sunday, January 30, 2011

NO THANKS to the Internet and the convenience of online shopping, Bruneian consumers still burn a sizeable hole in their wallets despite the limited shopping option in the Sultanate.

Bruneians are now expanding the scope of their Internet use to go beyond social networking, and into shopping.

"I never used to shop in Brunei, unless there was a really nice top, or if I urgently needed a dress for a wedding. Now, with quite a number of online stores delivering to Brunei, I find that it is cheaper to shop online than it is to drive to Kiulap or Gadong to buy clothes," says Christine Yang, a teacher in Tutong.

She says the convenience of shopping in the comfort of her own home, sometimes works against her, causing her to "overspend" on items that she says "are a steal".

Facebook shopping was also an important step in the transition that brought Bruneian shoppers to go from physically shopping to online shopping. The boom in local Facebook stores happened a few years ago, with enterprising Facebook users selling everything from cosmetics, clothes, paintings, electronic gadgets and even food. "Facebook was an easy way to shop, because the people selling these items are in Brunei, they deliver it straight to you, and most of the items can't be found in Brunei and are very cheap," says Khadijah Othman, an administrative secretary in the capital.

She says the downside to shopping through Facebook was the hassle involved in making payments into the seller's bank account and then fixing a time and place to collect the items. "The wait for each shopping 'trip' was also unreliable. Sometimes it was on time, sometimes it took close to a month, but it's always at least two weeks," she adds.

Men were more picky when it came to online shopping and not many of them would randomly browse through Facebook "stores".

In the case of Jimmy Yong, he says that his online purchases were mainly made up of sneakers, electronics and electronics accessories. "I don't think I have ever bought clothing online, because clothes shopping is not really something that I enjoy doing, but I do know some friends who do their online shopping and ship it to Singapore because not a lot of these stores ship to Brunei," he says.

Yang, the teacher, says that this month, most of her Chinese New Year shopping was done online, as she found it cheaper to buy her dresses and clothing online, rather than make a trip to Singapore or Kuala Lumpur, just to buy a few items of clothing. "I save on the air ticket and the hotel costs, just by shopping online," she says.

There are increasingly more stores that are now shipping to Brunei, and shoppers don't mind the currency exchange of the items, as long as they get what they want.

"Of course, with clothes, and shopping online, the disadvantage is that sometimes the clothes don't fit, but after shopping online for a while, you tend to get an idea of the sizes that each country uses and the measurements, but it is of course still risky to make purchases for clothes online," she says, adding that she would never buy jeans or pants online, because those require her to try them on.

Khadijah adds that one of the best things about buying clothes online, is that Brunei does not tax clothes purchases and so when the clothing is delivered to her house or she has to pick it up from the post office, she doesn't have to present the customs officer with a receipt of how much her shipment cost.

Electronics, on the other hand, are levied a 20 per cent tax.

However, despite the great values and numerous outlets available online, does online shopping translate to savings?

"To me it depends on the shopper. For me, I do save, because the deals that you get online for electronics such as laptops and cameras is really much cheaper than buying in Singapore even, and I do not spend my money on clothes. Since I am not an impulse shopper, I do believe that online shopping helps you save money," says Yong.

Yang says although online shopping is much cheaper, it doesn't necessarily mean she saves money. "I tend to go a bit overboard, and the items are definitely cheaper, but it doesn't mean that I buy less. I keep thinking that if I save X amount, then it's fine for me to buy more items," she says.

Whether online shopping does lead to more savings, or whether it burns a hole in your wallet, one thing is definite Bruneians now won't complain about the "lack of shopping" in Brunei.

The Brunei Times

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Social network for teen girls focuses on shopping

More companies are jumping on the Facebook platform to build on social shopping.


From: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fiw-adv-teens-socialnetwork-1229-20110124,0,3943622.story

Social network for teen girls focuses on shopping

PlumWillow
Carla Larin, 18, was among PlumWillow’s first interns. Users of the site can put together outfits and share their choices with friends in their network. (David Bergeland, The (Hackensack, N.J.) 

Record / January 24, 2011)

Venture capital investor Charlie Federman took his daughters to a Paramus, N.J., mall one day and went home with an idea for an Internet business with the potential to deliver a coveted demographic: teenage girls who like to shop.

Federman, a managing partner of Crossbar Capital, is the founder of PlumWillow, a website that piggybacks on Facebook to create a social shopping network for girls.

Federman and Crossbar Capital provided the seed money for PlumWillow, and he put together a team of executives experienced in launching Internet and technology companies. He also formed a brain trust that guided the creation of the site — a group of high school interns from New York and Bergen County, N.J. One of his daughters came up with the PlumWillow name.


Save on daily L.A. Times deals powered by Groupon.

"I have hundreds of girls volunteering to help me on a subject matter that they are truly more expert than most of the people in the company because they are that demographic," Federman said.

Carla Larin, 18, a senior at Bergen Academy in Hackensack, was among the first group of interns. She advised Federman to drop his original idea of a site where girls could dress digital avatars and encouraged him to make something closer to the kind of shopping experience that girls like. Girls, Larin said, want to talk to their friends and socialize while shopping, a reason many online shopping sites don't grab teen girls.

"If I'm going to be buying something, I'd rather try it on at the mall and go with all my friends, but with PlumWillow, all your friends are on PlumWillow," she said.

Federman's initial inspiration for the site came when he was driving his daughters to a mall and asked them why they never shopped online.

"It occurred to me that the sites we have now have been built in a time … before social networks," he said. "For girls, shopping is a social experience, like slumber parties."

The business plan for the site, which launched in October, is to focus on building an online community first and make money later. Retailers don't pay to be linked with the site, but PlumWillow earns the standard online commission of 3% to 7% if a user clicks through to buy an item. PlumWillow executives said the site is already earning some revenue from such commissions.

PlumWillow takes advantage of a decision by Facebook this year to open its social network to other websites that want to build a community of users with a common interest. PlumWillow members log into the site through their Facebook accounts and can send shopping-related messages to friends in their Facebook network. On the PlumWillow site, users can create outfits on a virtual palette — picking, for example, jeans and boots that go with a certain blouse or jacket. They then can share their choices with their network.

The members also build virtual closets of their favorite clothes. The items they choose come from the online stores of the 20 retailers linked to the PlumWillow site.

"Here's the vision," Federman said: "We know the girl; we know the type of jeans she likes because she's built closets with us. We also know the jeans her friends have bought. We also know the jeans the community has matched with that shirt. At the moment she clicks on jeans, on a real-time basis, we'll be able to offer her suggestions," he said. "Companies will pay us to reach the girl just when she exposes her intent that she's looking for jeans."

Federman enlisted Elad Baron — who co-founded Internet security company Whale Communications Ltd., which later was sold to Microsoft — as chief executive of PlumWillow. Baron, who also founded BitWine Inc., an online network of lifestyle and spiritual advisors, initially resisted Federman's recruitment efforts. "I thought, I'm not the right person for it because I've never been a teenage girl and I don't have teenage daughters," he said.

Baron's strategy is to minimize any pressure on PlumWillow members to buy, and not to bombard them with marketing messages, in hopes of building a network of shopping friends. "We want to build a community where they are actually having fun and they come back," Baron said. "I don't mind if they don't buy today. It's much more important for me to make sure that they'll come back next week and they'll talk to their friends. Once you have a very loyal community, monetizing it is very easy."

PlumWillow has almost 5,000 members, and user visits total about 1,000 a day, executives said. Federman and Baron acknowledge that those numbers are small in the vast world of the Internet, but "it's a nice beginning," Baron said.

Larin, the Bergen Academy intern, said PlumWillow has started influencing her purchases. "I created an outfit on PlumWillow and it was so cute, I bought the dress," she said.

Verdon writes for the (Hackensack, N.J.) Record/McClatchy.

Fashion stores leading the social media charge

By now, it is very clear that the whole blogshop scene thrives on one major product category: FASHION.

From: https://www.mycustomer.com/topic/social-crm/fashion-stores-leading-social-media-charge/119096

Fashion stores leading the social media charge




Social networking logos

Youth-oriented fashion retailers still continue to lead the way in terms of having the strongest social media presence, with TopShop taking the number one slot on both Facebook and Twitter.

According to market researchers eDigitalResearch, Facebook remains the most popular site for retailers to try and connect with online consumers, with TopShop now engaging actively with well more one million users via the channel. River Island came next in the rankings, followed by New Look, Next and Amazon.

TopShop also took the top slot on Twitter, while pure play etailers Asos.com and Amazon came in second and third after investing heavily in the platform. They now provide numerous branded pages dedicated to various aspects of their businesses, including customer service.

Derek Eccleston, eDigitalResearch’s research director, said: "Consumers are increasingly using the platforms to communicate issues and ideas to retailers, and with Asos set to open Europe’s first Facebook store, it is vital that brands have a strong presence on these sites."

But they also needed to come up with an effective, and constantly monitored, social media strategy to ensure that they made the most of such "loyal and dedicated" online users in order to obtain feedback and create brand advocates, he added.

Some retailers still had either no or only a limited presence on social media sites, however. The majority of fashion retailers that targeted an older demographic as well as home and leisure brands obtained a particularly low score in this regard.

The Social Media Benchmark report evaluated the presence of the UK’s top 72 retail websites, which included fashion, electrical goods and grocery stores.

Mumpreneur in the UK

Becoming an online entrepreneur is a process and experience that is common in other parts of the world.

Although the means to sell is different (blogshop vs EC site), their motivations and rationale are very much the same, as can be seen in this article.

One particular note is that it appears that many if not most of the women who sell online in the West are moms!  This contrasts the younger aged females and teens in Malaysia and Singapore.

From: http://www.openpr.com/news/159698/Why-Did-Mumpreneur-Set-up-a-Children-s-Discounted-Clothing-Boutique.html

Why Did Mumpreneur Set up a Children's Discounted Clothing Boutique

Fashion, Lifestyle, Trends
Press release from: Bambino Boo
Mumpreneur sets up childrens clothing boutique
Mumpreneur sets up childrens clothing boutique
Store this image in big size
(openPR) - I class myself as one of the growing communities of mumpreneurs. I am in my late 30s and am married with 2 children under five years old.

I decided that I wanted to set up my own business around 6 years ago, but it has taken me a long time to decide the type of business to set up.

I set up Bambino Boo, a children’s online boutique in July 2010, so I have only been trading for a few months, and so far it is going well and I am really enjoying it.

Before I set up the company I was a freelance marketing analyst. I had been working in marketing for 15 years and I think that because I was already freelance it was easier for me to make the transition and set up on own business as I was used to not having a steady income.



My idea for setting up a children’s online boutique started when a few people started asking me about a pair of shoes my son was wearing, I had bought from a boutique on the high street. They were different to anything that could be bought from a chain store as they were 100% leather and hand-stitched and I realised that most people were not aware of brands other than those found on the usual high street.

I then came up with a few different types of company I could set up all around children’s clothing, and started to do some research to understand what people were buying and if there was anything they would like to buy that was difficult to track down.

I also found that quite often when I took my son to his pre-school there were other children wearing the same clothes as my son.

I then realised that most people were not likely to buy boutique clothing as it tends to be expensive and it is seen as somewhere to buy clothes for a special occassion. This is when I decided to sell gorgeous and luxurious boutique clothing at high street prices. I thought why not bring boutique clothing to the masses by selling them at Gap, Next prices. In this way, children will be almost uniquely clothed and you would be most unlikely to find other children wearing exactly the same clothing.

I have funded the business myself and promote the business in various ways. These include having a facebook page, putting flyers in independent shops, and search engine optimisation, so that I get a better ranking on Google. I also sell on Amazon and through Google shopping. I think the whole marketing mix that I use is important to my business.

My biggest challenge so far has been getting a good ranking on Google and this will take time but I am getting there! Google Adwords has been a great help in starting to drive traffic to the website.

I have found that this style of working is perfect for me. I am able to be flexible, which allows me to take my daughter to school and collect her. I can also attend any school event without problem, and am basically able to be around a lot more than if I was employed.

The buzz when a new order comes in is great as is trying to build the business up to aim towards certain goals on a month by month basis.

To anybody out there who is seriously thinking of starting their own business, who thinks they have a good idea and who can motivate themselves, I’d say ‘Go for it!’

Since I have set up Bambino Boo, I have had a number of friends that have decided that they could do it to and are now in the middle of setting up their businesses. It is really useful to then meet up and discuss how our prospective businesses are doing.

Bambino Boo is a family run business, operating in the UK. Our mission is to provide gorgeous and luxurious boutique clothing for girls and boys at high street prices. We specialise in clothing for toddlers and pre-school children from ages 0-5 years, although we do sell a small selection of baby clothes and clothes for children aged 6 years and over.

We offer British and European brands, including Petit Bateau, Lego wear, Kenzo, Indi Jo, Pomme Framboise and Mayoral. Our clothes are discounted by up to 70% off RRP.

How can our prices be so low? Bambino Boo stock is either last season, samples or liquidated stock. A lot of the stock comes from boutiques and our clothes are 100% genuine. We do not obtain our stock directly from the manufacturer. All items are tagged. We operate online only and are able to offer a large variety of brands. The vast majority of our items are washable and a large proportion of them are manufactured in Europe.

Bambino Boo
3 Edith Road
London
SW19 8TW

My frustrations with online boutiques

http://redangeldevil.wordpress.com/2011/01/27/my-frustrations-with-online-boutiques/

Here is another rant against blogshops, by a Singaporean buyer who resides in Perth, WA.

My frustrations with online boutiquesThe
 
January 27, 2011, 3:22 pm
Filed under: Uncategorized
 
I am very tempted to name. But I will not. I think I have harassed them to a point where I just gave up and paid extra postage fees to avoid anymore correspondence. Its not a bad case of bad customer service, its just a case of lack of communication. I guess that really frustrates me because everything could have been avoided had I been told and well informed of the situation.

I know I don’t make much sense at the moment. Let me summarise:

Before I went home for Christmas last year, I bought some items online and paid for local Singaporea postage because I thought the items would have arrived in time for me to bring them back to Perth. I mean local delivery times isn’t long at all right? So I got my parcel, with only 2 items (I bought 5) and so of course I sent off an email asking after my other 3 items, but they don’t quite respond because it was sent with the email that I bought the items with and it was work email. There was no response over 1 week plus, I guess yes festivities. It got down to a point where I was leaving for Perth that I still didn’t get a reply. So I came back to Perth, sent off a couple more enquiries about it. Finally, I had a response saying that the parcel was sent back unclaimed. And that if I wanted those items, I have to re-pay for postage or I could cancel my order (but wait for it, there’s a 15% charge for packing fees.)

I admit I’m griping a little, in the end I gave up arguing and just paid the extra postage to re send it. But surely, back of my mind, I’m thinking online boutiques are just as much liable to their customers as normal retail boutiques are. Its not just a matter of waiting for order, packing them and sending them out. Maybe its just unfortunate that I faced this situation. Oh wells.

This is why, shopping should be done traditionally, in the shops with the option to try them on and feel the material and see how it looks on you before the purchase is done. Conveniences in the end may just end up creating more hassles in the end.

*breathes*

Saturday, January 15, 2011

From: http://www.usanewstime.com/tracyeinny-blogshop-143.php
In Conversation with Jeannie Pang, Tracyeinny

With a few thousand blogshops in Singapore alone, it’s hard to stand out from the crowd. Tracyeinny manages to do that and is now one of the more popular blogshops in Singapore. We hear from one of the co-founders, Jeannie Pang and hear her thoughts on the business behind Tracyeinny.

What is Tracyeinny?

Tracyeinny offers women apparel that is inspired by the moment and inspired by our passion. It is a joint partnership between two cousins: Jeannie Pang and Pamela Goi. Both are graduates and doing this full-time.
Are all your items are designed and manufactured by Tracyeinny?

Currently we don’t design or manufacture our products ourselves. In an average month, we churn out about 200-250 designs. We try to update two collections in a week and each collection has about 30-40 designs.

Tracyeinny Blogshop
Tracyeinny Blogshop

What is the motivation behind building this business?

Initially was mostly about our passion for shopping and clothes. But now our passion has turned into a full time job. Money is always a strong incentive to keep us going.

Any figures to share? Eg, no. of people on your mailing list? No. of items sold since opening your business? No. of pageviews? No. of visitors on your website? Feel free to share whatever you are comfortable with.

Number of pple in our mailing list is about 15,000. And our new domain, Tracyeinny.com.sg has been live for about 1.5 weeks and so far we have about 78,513 hits. To date, including our old LiveJournal site,

Tracyeinny has attracted more that 1.9 million unique visitors and counting.

What is your biggest satisfaction in this business so far?

Biggest joy is to be recognized for our efforts. For one of our jacket designs, we managed to sell over a 1,000 pieces. So whenever we see someone wearing our jacket and we go up and asked, they would say tracyeinny and we would be beaming with pride.

If you have a wish for something to happen in order to help your business, what would you wish for? Eg, Singpost to have a tracking system for items sent? Internet banking to be more effective in some way? Mainstream media to cast blogshops businesses in a better light?

Singpost for now is quite an efficient portal to deliver mails. To have a complete tracking system also means that the postage would definitely increase and pass on to customers. We strongly advise customers to opt for registered mail. But here at Tracyeinny, we have a strong recording system. Customers are reassured that we do help them track their mails. We do call up the post office to enquire and consistently track their lost packages. 99% of our packages do not go missing.

http://sgentrepreneurs.com/
Tracyeinny’s Flagship Store is located at
3 Pickering Street #01-15 Nankin Row Singapore 048660

How to get there?
Operating Hours
Mondays – Saturdays 12pm – 9pm
Sundays 12pm – 7pm
Tel : +65 84484907

Tracyeinny storewide sale 15%
Tracyeinny storewide sale 15% starts today!!!!
everything at 15% off excluding items from latest collection
never seen before items on sale as well
tracyeinny vouchers available for purchase at 10% off
happy holidays ladies! :)


PRE XMAS SALES HAPPENING ONLY AT TRACYEINNY FLAGSHIP STORE
6 DEC 2010 MON – 12 DEC 2010 SUN
operating hours as usual
mon-sat 12pm-9pm
sun 12pm-7pm
http://www.tracyeinny.com.sg/

Tracyeinny’s Flagship Store is located at
3 Pickering Street #01-15 Nankin Row Singapore 048660

How to get there?
Operating Hours
Mondays – Saturdays 12pm – 9pm
Sundays 12pm – 7pm
Tel : +65 84484907

Sunday, January 9, 2011

Blogshops move to the real world

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.



Friday, January 7, 2011

Blogshops haven't closed eye to contact lens trade

This is the ongoing controversy about selling contact lenses on blogshops.


The fact that some blogshops do not hesitate to deal in goods that are illegal or unethical places them outside the mainstream of upright and appropriate business.  The ability to make good money explains this practice of selling contact lenses by S’pore blogshops.  This adds to the perceived LEGITIMACY of the blogshop culture.  In this case, the question is linked to the legality and ethicality of their practices.


From: http://admpreview.straitstimes.com:90/vgn-ext-templating/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=fcb692da9024d210VgnVCM100000430a0a0aRCRD&vgnextchannel=016fe84edfbf8110VgnVCM100000350a0a0aRCRD

News

Home > News > Home > Story

Jan 2, 2011

Blogshops haven't closed eye to contact lens trade

This is despite warnings from MOH to unlicensed online sellers to stop hawking cosmetic lenses


BEFORE Ms Novia Lim, 22, has been wearing cosmetic contact lenses for the past four years. They are larger in diameter ? 15.5mm ? than normal ones. She says wearing them makes her eyes 'look less dead'.


They are still eye-balling unwary consumers.

It has been more than a year since the Ministry of Health (MOH) issued e-mail warnings to unlicensed blogshops to stop selling cosmetic contact lenses.

But even as some blogshops complied, others have sprouted.

A Sunday Times online check has found more than 20 blogshops hawking such contact lenses.
Asked about the matter, an MOH spokesman said the situation is monitored on a 'periodic basis', adding that 'enforcement action' will be taken against those who break the law.

Only registered optometrists and opticians registered as contact lens practitioners are allowed to prescribe and dispense contact lenses.

Blogshops that run afoul of the law face a fine of up to $25,000 or jail of up to six months or both. Repeat offenders face fines of up to $50,000 or a jail term of up to 12 months, or both.

The cosmetic contact lenses hawked online are believed to come from South Korea.

These lenses can enhance one's eyes by enlarging them to create a doe-eyed look. They come in various designs and colours.

Ms Ruth Chen, 21, an optometrist at Pearl's Optical, which sells Coolcolor, a cosmetic contact lens brand from South Korea, said: 'We have to ascertain what colour print technology they use in making these cosmetic lenses.

'If the colour is sandwiched between the lens, it will be safer than a lens that has the colour printed outwards, as it could cause irritation to the eye.'

Mr William Choo, 46, an optometrist at Nanyang Optical, said: 'Most of these teenagers buy the lenses to be more trendy, but they are unsure of how to care for their lenses, which results in infections or discomfort.'

Most of these lenses can be used for about three months before they have to be discarded.

The MOH spokesman said buyers 'should always seek the advice of qualified contact lens-practice opticians before they start using any contact lenses, and avoid patronising contact lens blogshops'.

One blogshop owner, a 19-year-old student who wanted to be known only as Ms Siah, started selling contact lenses in November. She makes about $200 a month selling the lenses for as low as $12 a pair.
Those sold by optical shops usually cost $25 a pair. These lenses typically come from the United States, though a handful of shops do sell brands from South Korea.

Ms Siah said: 'My buyers often check their lens' degree at the optical shops before buying from me.'
And though she is aware of the law, she said: 'The lenses I sell are not fakes but are imported directly from South Korean manufacturers. I have tried out the lenses myself.'

But for Ms Chua Jianteng, a 19-year-old student, it is better to buy such lenses from an authorised shop rather than from online blogshops.

'I don't trust them. You don't really know what you are getting from online shops. I have only one pair of eyes, so I'd rather spend more money on a brand of contact lenses I can trust than risk it,' she said.

xhkon@sph.com.sg

Offlining blogshop

This is taken off the ABOUT US section of the Offline blogshop site:

http://offlineblogshop.com/about.html


About us   
Yes, you are right. We are Blogshops and yet Offline.

Offline Blogshops is a tangible market place consisting of the best and most ambitious blogshops in Malaysia. We believe that each blogshop is unique with very distinctive and different taste. However, it is undeniable that there are limitations while you shop online. For example, you can't try the products on nor can you be assured of the quality by looking at the pictures. Now, you can see and try your favourite blogshops products for 'real' before decidingto buy their stuffs!! In our shop that is built like a dressing room, you can also enjoy a brand new shopping experience. We believe that you will definitely like this experience of moving about the 21 cabinets in the dressing room and discover your favourite item.

Please don't be mistaken, although we are called Offline Blogshops, we do online services for our honourable shoppers too. On our website, we constantly give you updates about the new arrivals and best offers of our 20 unique vendors.

Offline Blogshops is indeed a one-stop shopping place for you, both online and offline.

Come and discover your new surprises here!

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Top 10 Reasons Small Businesses Fail

From: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Top-10-Reasons-Small-nytimes-3522435825.html?x=0

, On Wednesday January 5, 2011, 2:05 pm EST
 
One of the least understood aspects of entrepreneurship is why small businesses fail, and there's a simple reason for the confusion: Most of the evidence comes from the entrepreneurs themselves.

I have had a close-up view of numerous business failures -- including a few start-ups of my own. And from my observation, the reasons for failure cited by the owners are frequently off-point, which kind of makes sense when you think about it. If the owners really knew what they were doing wrong, they might have been able to fix the problem. Often, it's simply a matter of denial or of not knowing what you don't know.

In many cases, the customers -- or, I should say, ex-customers -- have a better understanding than the owners of what wasn't working. The usual suspects that the owners tend to blame are the bank, the government, or the idiot partner. Rarely does the owner's finger point at the owner. Of course, there are cases where something out of the owner's control has gone terribly wrong, but I have found those instances to be in the minority. What follows -- based on my own experiences and observations -- are my top 10 reasons small businesses fail. The list is not pretty, it is not simple, and it does not contain any of those usual suspects (although they might come in at Nos. 11, 12 and 13).

1. The math just doesn't work. There is not enough demand for the product or service at a price that will produce a profit for the company. This, for example, would include a start-up trying to compete against Best Buy and its economies of scale.

2. Owners who cannot get out of their own way. They may be stubborn, risk adverse, conflict adverse -- meaning they need to be liked by everyone (even employees and vendors who can't do their jobs). They may be perfectionist, greedy, self-righteous, paranoid, indignant, or insecure. You get the idea. Sometimes, you can even tell these owners the problem, and they will recognize that you are right -- but continue to make the same mistakes over and over.

3. Out-of-control growth. This one might be the saddest of all reasons for failure -- a successful business that is ruined by over-expansion. This would include moving into markets that are not as profitable, experiencing growing pains that damage the business, or borrowing too much money in an attempt to keep growth at a particular rate. Sometimes less is more.

4. Poor accounting. You cannot be in control of a business if you don't know what is going on. With bad numbers, or no numbers, a company is flying blind, and it happens all of the time. Why? For one thing, it is a common -- and disastrous -- misconception that an outside accounting firm hired primarily to do the taxes will keep watch over the business. In reality, that is the job of the chief financial officer, one of the many hats an entrepreneur has to wear until a real one is hired.

5. Lack of a cash cushion. If we have learned anything from this recession (I know it's "over" but my customers don't seem to have gotten the memo), it's that business is cyclical and that bad things can and will happen over time -- the loss of an important customer or critical employee, the arrival of a new competitor, the filing of a lawsuit. These things can all stress the finances of a company. If that company is already out of cash (and borrowing potential), it may not be able to recover.

6. Operational mediocrity. I have never met a business owner who described his or her operation as mediocre. But we can't all be above average. Repeat and referral business is critical for most businesses, as is some degree of marketing (depending on the business).

7. Operational inefficiencies. Paying too much for rent, labor, and materials. Now more than ever, the lean companies are at an advantage. Not having the tenacity or stomach to negotiate terms that are reflective of today's economy may leave a company uncompetitive.

8. Dysfunctional management. Lack of focus, vision, planning, standards and everything else that goes into good management. Throw fighting partners or unhappy relatives into the mix, and you have a disaster.

9. The lack of a succession plan. We're talking nepotism, power struggles, significant players being replaced by people who are in over their heads -- all reasons many family businesses do not make it to the next generation.

10. A declining market. Book stores, music stores, printing businesses and many others are dealing with changes in technology, consumer demand, and competition from huge companies with more buying power and advertising dollars.

In life, you may have forgiving friends and relatives, but entrepreneurship is rarely forgiving. Eventually, everything shows up in the soup. If people don't like the soup, employees stop working for you, and customers stop doing business with you. And that is why businesses fail.

Jay Goltz owns five small businesses in Chicago.

CASE on Blogshops Complaints in Singapore

This article on Safeblogshopper reinforces the idea that maintaining law and order in the blogshopsphere is main a task done by the participants as the authorities do not generally get involved.

From: http://www.safeblogshopper.com/2011/01/05/announcements/news-updates-blogshop-complaints-on-case.html


I saw this newspaper report yesterday on ShinMin regarding on CASE (Consumers Association of Singapore) receiving 41 cases of blogshops complaints. Let me do the translation on this article for you.

*Translation*:

Yellow Title: The rising trend of purchasing online

Purple Title: CASE received 41 cases of complaints against online sellers.

As more Singaporeans are shopping online, CASE received 41 cases of complaints against online sellers. The number reported is twice the number reported in 2009!

The complaints were mostly on sellers who did not deliver the items to the consumer or delay in item deliveries. Some of the consumers complained that they have received fake brands or damaged goods without any compensation.

One of the consumers bought a skirt costed $28 from an online shop last year June. After making the payment, the seller mentioned that the skirt is out of stock and requested her to chose another item. Despite that the other item that she chose was also out of stock after a month, the seller did not make any refunds.
The seller finally mailed the skirt to her after CASE was involved.

Currently CASE is resolving another similar case. As for the rest of the 39 cases, the consumers did approach CASE for advice, but decided to resolve it themselves.

The Secretary of CASE, Mr. Seah Seng Choon believed that there were even more people with these unhappy experiences. But they did not report to CASE as the money involved is not huge. "They may take this as a learning lesson and stop shopping from the online shops or websites."

Mr.Seah Seng Choon also said that it was difficult to resolve such cases as consumers did not have the contact name and address of the online shops. Some websites were even from overseas countries.

Advice from CASE: CASE advised consumers to meet the seller when purchasing items that are of high worth. Also, they must beware of websites which did not reveal any contact address or contact number.
Consumers should report to the police once they find anything amiss.

According to one of the marketing companies survey, Singaporeans spent $6,890,000 on online purchases last year. This amount is 15 times more than the amount reported in 1999. The most popular online items are apparels, shoes and electronic appliances.  ~ End of article

Note from Editorial:

I have personally called CASE before the report was out last month asking if they deal with complaints against blogshops. The customer service told me they do not deal with blogshops, except registered companies.

We all know the difficulties of nabbing online blogshops because of the lack of contact information. Therefore we need all the cooperation from the public to work together and form a strong community in defending our consumers' rights and pockets.

SafeBlogShopper already helped resolved over 7 cases and reported over 36 complaints and scam blogshops. We will continue with what we are doing even if is not easy to attain a perfect score.
We hope all shoppers will feel safe when shopping, knowing that we are always here to help. =)

Happy 2011!

With many loves,

Irish

Sunday, January 2, 2011

Facebook Commerce 1.0?

Some good thoughts here about turning Facebook into an e-commerce site.

From: http://www.openparenthesis.org/2010/12/28/facebook-commerce-1-0-jc-penneys-usablenet-app

Facebook Commerce 1.0? JC Penney’s Usablenet App

Last week I participated in two roundtable discussions at the PluggedIn Ventures Summit on Ecommerce.(There were lots of interesting tweets during the summit – search for the #pisummit hashtag). When the issue of Facebook for commerce (or F-Commerce) came up on the Social Commerce panel, I pointed to JC Penney’s new Facebook app store as an example of what’s wrong with F-Commerce. In this post I’ll expand a bit more on why I think that’s the case, and what that means to retailers looking to understand how Facebook fits broadly into their multi-channel strategy.
During the initial roundtable of the day, the discussion turned to Facebook, and its role as the new portal:

#pisummit – Facebook is the new AOL?Dec 21 via Twitter for BlackBerry®
While I can understand the impulse to draw parallels between the role AOL held for many (especially media) companies in the early days of the (commercial) internet, I think we’ve got to be careful to not miss the lesson the portals never properly learned: on the web, everything else is always one click (or one tab, or one window) away.

#pisummit People spend time in FB, but they also have 10 other tabs and windows open – portal isn’t the window through which I view the webDec 21 via TweetDeck
In other words, Facebook may be the new portal, but does the concept of a portal even make sense in a world of multi-tabbed browsers, multi-tasking users, and multi-device access? If there ever was a world in which a portal could truly be the user’s starting point and the window through which that user viewed everything on the web (already a questionable claim), that day has long passed. Many web users spend significant amounts of time “on” or “in” Facebook, true, but what else are they doing at the same time?
The question becomes more than just academic when you come at it as a large scale retailer trying to create a strategy for Facebook.

JC Penney’s store, which launched just before the holiday season, is a Facebook Application (powered by Usablenet) which enables the whole shopping experience without leaving the social network. As Consumerist put it:
JCPenney just snagged the “anchor store” spot on Facebook, becoming the first retailer to let shoppers purchase crap directly from their Facebook page application through a fully integrated e-commerce platform.
FastCompany was a bit more polite (not sure Penney’s PR likes the term “crap”):
Today J.C. Penney became the first major retailer to make its entire catalog available to shoppers within Facebook—not just to peruse, but to buy.
Starting now, you can purchase any of the 250,000 items that the department store sells online from its Facebook page. The company expects many sales will take place as a result of shoppers seeing items listed in their friends’ news feeds and then clicking through to the product pages, still within Facebook.
The application itself is really quite simple. It relies on approach familiar to most of us from Usablenet’s mobile versions of websites: minimizing / transforming the existing site (server-side) and providing the transformed content to the new context – in this case, presenting a transformed version of JC Penney’s ecommerce site in an iFrame inside Facebook. (So long as you are in a browser session in which you’ve already authorized the app, you can actually load it outside a Facebook context by opening a new tab and visiting https://m.usablenet.com/ma/jcpenney.com/index.html?auth=yes).
Landing Page of the new JCPenney Facebook Store application
When the user clicks on of the categories on the left, the app loads (via JQuery) new content representing the subcategories, on down to specific shelf page and then a product detail page, as you can see in this brief video:

The major problem with this approach is that the application never changes the top-most frame’s URL as the user navigates. Start on the landing page, drill down to Men, then to suits and sportcoats, then to a specific coat. Now, back up to the shelf page. D’oh! If you’re like me, your habit is to hit the back button in the browser (or even the keyboard shortcut for it), but if you do that here, you’re SOL. (If you’ve opened the store in a new tab or window, you may find your back button disabled, depending on your browser – but if the tab or window you are in has a history, back will take you to the last url you visited before entering the store).
The problem is that the app isn’t changing the original url you were on once you entered the store, so no new entries are created in your browser history. This was a problem with frames the first time around, and remains one with this approach. (Aside: in WPBook we handle this by targetting all links to top and creating fully formed apps.facebook.com/app/path style URLs).
Usability issues aside (and yes, there is breadcrumb / back navigation just below the top navigation – but it is easy to miss), my bigger issue with the application is just how non-integrated with Facebook it is. JC Penney doesn’t seem to be taking any advantage of the fact that I’m already logged in to Facebook and have granted the application all kinds of privileges in the process.
When you first load the application, you’ll get this permission screen:
Permissions Request for Shop JCPenney Application
So you’ve granted the app permission to access your name, photo, gender, and “any other information I’ve shared with everyone” – which for most folks is a lot of other information. But then if I go to the “store locator” within the app, it doesn’t offer to use my location from my profile (or ask for the extended permission user_location, which an application can specifically request):
Store Finder inside Facebook - doesn't leverage user_location
So maybe there isn’t much leverage in the store locator inside Facebook – or perhaps it might be better at that point to request the location from the browser rather than from Facebook. But the same lack of integration more glaringly comes up when you go to check out. For example, say I found an LCD TV I wanted to purchase. (The broken image icon in the screenshot occurs randomly throughout the app – seems to be something amiss with the translation into Facebook App in some cases):
Department page for House -> Electronics -> TV and Video
Clicking in to a TV, and adding it to my bag, I then proceeded to click on checkout, and get this screen:

Checkout Process - No Prefilling with FB info?
Granted, the email address I used when registering at JC Penney’s may or may not match the one I used as primary at Facebook, so it is a good idea to not assume they are the same, but why not request my email from Facebook and prefill it for me, so that I don’t have to start from scratch? More to the point, why do I need to register at all? You can check out without registering, and the only difference seems to be associating an email address and password with the account. But given that I’m logged into Facebook and granted the application permission to access my info, why not just allow me to then use my Facebook identity to later access my account? Why do I need yet-another-password at all?
Assuming I didn’t already have an account at JC Penney’s, and clicked Register, I get this (after an initial screen for email and password):
Billing Address page for Checkout
The only thing defaulted here is the USA, which I think is not because I’m in the USA but because it is the only allowed option. On to payment then, let’s use a credit card:

Credit Card Info
To me this feels very much like ecommerce circa 1999 – multistep checkout with a broken back button, no useful defaults (couldn’t we at least assume the name on the card might be usefully prefilled with the name I gave two screens ago? Editable, sure, but blank?), and changing look and feel – note that the buttons on the credit card screen are suddenly blue where they’ve been (somewhat) consistently red or grey.

E-commerce on FB? Currently e-tail experience is circa 1999. @jeckman#pisummit#gothammediaDec 21 via web
My larger point, though, isn’t just to critique the usability of the application. First to market doesn’t always mean best-to-market, and I’m sure the usablenet solution (which simply translates the existing store, requiring no significant platform effort on the retailer’s part) offers a compelling time-to-market advantage.
My point is that we need to question the very purpose of Facebook stores: Why is it supposed to be useful to me as a consumer to browse the entire catalog and make a purchase inside Facebook?
I get that retailers want to be where the audience is – and I’m a big proponent of distributing your digital footprint throughout the web. But what such stores fail to do is customize the experience to its context. What the user wants to do in Facebook is not the same as what the user wants to do on JCPenney.com, and (equally important) what the technology enables is different.
What retailers need to do in looking at Facebook as an opportunity is innovate: create opportunities for user experiences that take advantage of the Facebook ecosystem, both in terms of technology and user expectations. Just as mobile application developers have come to understand that what makes sense on a phone or a tablet isn’t exactly the same set of functionality that makes sense on a web application designed for desktop browser use, F-commerce developers and designers need to prioritize and understand that subset (or maybe it is a superset, entirely new) of functionality that makes sense in context.
We need, in other words, applications actually designed for use in Facebook, not more retailers putting their whole store in an iframe-based application just because they can. I think this is why virtual goods based applications have so far proven much more successful than real-world goods in Facebook: they’re native to the platform, and designed directly for it, not “adapted” to it.
Did you like this? Share it:
Related posts:
  1. Social as a Layer: Sears’ Social Commerce Experience
  2. Pecha Kucha Boston 4
  3. WordCamp NYC, WPBook, WordCamp Boston
  4. App Culture
  5. Facebook Changes, WPBook
 
 
1 Comment. Leave a comment or send a Trackback.
#1 • David Fishman said on December 28 2010:
 
John -
This is a great analysis. Very well thought out! The last paragraph really drives home your point.
“We need, in other words, applications actually designed for use in Facebook, not more retailers putting their whole store in an iframe-based application just because they can. I think this is why virtual goods based applications have so far proven much more successful than real-world goods in Facebook: they’re native to the platform, and designed directly for it, not “adapted” to it.”
I would appreciate it if you took a pass at our Facebook ecommerce appl.
http://apps.facebook.com/guessstylestudio/?ref=bookmarks&count=0