Showing posts with label Multiply. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Multiply. Show all posts

Sunday, June 17, 2012

Multiply Transformations [updates]

This are some updates about the transformation of Multiply into an e-commerce site.

From: http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/260742/economy/business/multiply-com-launches-new-dashboard-for-online-sellers

Multiply.com launches new ‘dashboard’ for online sellers

June 5, 2012 6:25pm
What used to be a social networking site, Multiply.com is now claiming to be a ‘social shopping’ hub for online marketing.
 
To provide online entrepreneurs with technology solutions, Multiply on Tuesday said it launched “Merchant Dashboard” to “do the dirty work” for online sellers.
 
“Through a Merchant Dashboard, sellers can easily view traffic trends and get a view of the most visited product listings, get an easy to digest sales report with status on all orders, and run even promos on their Multiply shops with a discount code creator,” Multiply said in a statement released on Tuesday.
 
The new platform likewise provides detailed product listing, inventory management, and order tracking.
 
To strengthen buyer confidence, Multiply installed a “Buyer Protection Program,” which provides reliable merchants with a ‘Trusted Badge.’
 
Aside from credit card payment, it also added other payment gateways such as Paypal, GCash, and over-the-counter payments at Banco de Oro, and Bank of the Philippine Islands.
 
“There seems to be reluctance on trade through the Internet due to a lack of accreditation and guarantees…” said Jack Madrid, Multiply Philippines country manager. “We wanted to retain the shopper-seller interaction while providing a simple and secure way to pay online.” 
 
According to Multiply, the most transacted items online include gadgets and electronics, fashion apparel and accessories, shoes, cosmetics, digital cameras, mobile phones and accessories and even discount vouchers and tour packages.
 
Philippine online shopping is still in its infancy but there are strong growth trends in Internet usage among the upscale class under 30 years old who live in key cities like Metro Manila, Cebu and Davao, the social shopping website said.
 
Of Multiply’s 5.5 million users in the Philippines with, about 130,000 are online merchants.
 
“There are several e-commerce trends and opportunities that Filipinos need to bank on. In the future, we will see a more liberalized retail market that is borderless and certainly bigger,” Stefan Magdalinski, chief executive officer at Multiply Global, said in the same statement. —Rouchelle Dinglasan/VS, GMA News
 
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Multiply.com Philippines Merchants Base Soars to 130,000 During First Year

In the Philippines, many small business owners are managing their own flourishing companies with the click of a button. And they’ve found a unique business partner to drive customers to their shops and make money: the Multiply Marketplace.

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Albert Uy of Posh Living enthuses that he and his wife now own their time, thanks to Multiply’s Merchant stockroom that has automated the process of receiving orders and accepting payment.
Albert Uy of Posh Living enthuses that he and his wife now own their time, thanks to Multiply’s Merchant stockroom that has automated the process of receiving orders and accepting payment.
Quote startMultiply will help you manage your time well because of the different features and the interface, and the free marketing mileage you get when placing your product in the Marketplace. It’s really a nice, efficient way to start your businessQuote end
(PRWEB) June 05, 2012
In the Philippines, many small business owners are managing their own flourishing companies with the click of a button. And they’ve found a unique business partner to drive customers to their shops and make money: the Multiply Online Marketplace.
With its dedicated Philippine team to ensure a friendlier and more convenient online shopping experience for both sellers and buyers for over 5.5 million users and growing, the company’s merchant base has soared to 130,000 during its first year---officially making Multiply Marketplace the Philippines’ largest online social shopping destination which provides an easier, safer, and more exciting selling and shopping experience.
Virtual Biz for Real Rewards
A physical address for one’s business? A thing of the past. A lot of Multiply.com’s entrepreneurs have discovered that they can build and operate profitable businesses online, without ever having to give up their primary source of income.
Jane Iridale, owner of Sole Sister, a company which sells locally-made shoes targeted to young, stylish women, calls their breed “the young weekend entrepreneurs”, and praises the wonders of the site in assisting her kind: “Multiply will help you manage your time well because of the different features and the interface, and the free marketing mileage you get when placing your product in the Marketplace. It’s really a nice, efficient way to start your business.”
For Anne Brigitte Santos-Baluyot, proprietor of beauty products store Digital Traincase, Multiply’s new e-commerce features has enabled them to skip dated business processes altogether. “If not for Multiply, it would still be old school for us - Sending manual order forms, talking to clients every day… We won’t make money until after we talk to them, give them the payment instructions, the payment details… Now, people just click the add to cart button and then pay in an instant and it’s instant money for us.”
Albert, of home store Posh Living, also expresses appreciation for the highly efficient e-commerce platform. “When I got into Multiply, things became a lot easier. Our customers doubled—actually not just doubled, it’s more than quadrupled. We get a lot of unique hits a day, and a lot of repeat customers—and we get to spend more time with the family since we don’t join bazaars as much anymore.”
The Entrepreneur’s Enabler
As the dominant and unique Social Shopping destination in the Philippines, with thousands of shops and millions of product listings housed in a fully functional e‐commerce platform, Multiply connects shoppers and merchants in a convenient, fun and secure environment-- proving to be a powerful business enabler for aspiring entrepreneurs.
From its beginnings as a social networking site aimed at linking people with family and friends, Multiply.Com, led by its loyal community in the Philippines, organically evolved into a virtual marketplace with a network of over 5.5 million users.
With its upgraded e-commerce features, Multiply provides sellers the convenience to target the right products to their consumers, and takes over the selling process entirely.
“What we like about Multiply is that we can easily see what our customers are interested in,” says Albert. “It gives us a boost…we know which ones will sell.”
Anne adds: “I really don’t have talent in selling because I’m shy to approach people. I’m afraid to do sales pitches and get rejected. But with Multiply, I just post my items for everyone to see, and then they get to pick the products….I just post the pictures, the product description and the price and that’s it.”
Thanks to Multiply’s new Buyer Protection Program and several modes of payment (including credit card, Paypal, Gcash and over-the-counter bank deposits at all BDO and BPI branches nationwide) merchants are guaranteed smoother transactions with their shoppers. And because everything is virtual, store owners need not fret missing an opportunity to sell a product to their market---making it a truly flexible shopping experience for both buyer and seller.
Without the burgeoning numbers of merchants in the platform, the Multiply Marketplace is a testament that the Filipino entrepreneurial spirit is alive and kicking.
 
 
 

Interview with MULTIPLY CEO

This is a followup on the earlier articles about Multiply becoming an e-commerce community.

From: http://www.mb.com.ph/articles/361669/netting-it-big-in-the-wild-west

Netting It Big In ‘The Wild West’

Social networking site Multiply has evolved from being an online venue for people to connect and interact with each other, into a powerful business enabler for aspiring entrepreneurs
June 11, 2012, 2:30pm
Stefan Magdalinski, global CEO of Multiply.
Stefan Magdalinski, global CEO of Multiply.
Social networking site Multiply is staging a renaissance.

What began in the mid- to late-2000s as an online venue aimed at linking people with family and friends has organically evolved into a thriving online marketplace when a growing number of members started using such features as photo sharing and advanced customization to create storefronts for their budding online businesses.Today, with a network of over 5.5 million users and over 106,000 storefronts across 16 product categories, Multiply has become the largest online marketplace in Southeast Asia and a powerful business enabler for aspiring entrepreneurs.

Interestingly enough, its loyal community of Filipino members led Multiply’s evolution. Upon its acquisition in 2010 by Naspers, a media conglomerate with a strong presence in South Africa, the company noted the number of growing members using the photo album feature to set up online shops. “Originally, doing commerce in the social network platform was against the Terms of Service (TOS), and when we realized that this was what people wanted to do with the platform, we decided to change the TOS and increased the focus on e-commerce,” shares Stefan Magdalinski, global CEO of Multiply.com.

Empowering Entrepreneurship

When asked what made Naspers decide to acquire Multiply among other social networking sites in the Internet today, Magdalinski shares that Multiply fits Naspers’ philosophy of investing in emerging markets. “When we’re looking for companies to invest in, we’re not like venture capitalists who invest in the very early stages of business. We look at a business that has a good idea [behind it] that’s gaining traction in emerging markets, and if we invest in it, we can make it grow a lot faster,” he explains.

What Multiply is doing now, “and what I’m going to continue,” Magdalinski shares, “is a process of keeping all the social networking features that members love but also making it the best platform in the world for people to run a small business on.” With upgraded features for both shoppers and merchants, Multiply users can now enjoy the convenience of a virtual shopping cart that enables them to shop from multiple merchants and pay in a single check-out transaction.

Security issues are addressed via the Buyer Protection Program, which guarantees purchases from Trusted merchants. “Anyone can sign up in Multiply to open a store, but if you sign up, we do some vetting on the business to give us more information about you,” explains Magdalinski. Once verified, he adds, a merchant will be awarded a trusted seller badge. “There are more stringent controls in place,” he assures.


Competition

In ‘The Wild West’

According to Magdalinski, his new post as global CEO of Multiply feels, in some ways, like going back to his roots. “I come from the U.K. and I was involved in the early days of the Internet there—the early days of e-Commerce, and this market (Southeast Asia) is still very much about getting people to transact online for the first time. And that requires delivering a different kind of site and experience from someone who’s making their fiftieth or hundredth online purchase. Here [in Southeast Asia] it needs to be much more about building trust,” he shares.

With a market that’s far from reaching saturation, Magdalinski says that going head to head with other e-commerce websites is not an issue—yet. “It’s the wild west out here,” he says. “It’s the very early days and there’s a huge market opportunity for all the players. In a few years time, when the market gets saturated, then we’ll all start competing with each other for the same audience. But now, for all players, it’s really about growing the market,” he explains.

What e-Commerce players are really competing for, Magdalinski asserts, is a share in people’s disposable income. “I tend to look at competition in a bigger picture, because when you look at the Philippines where about one percent of all commerce is done on the Internet, and I’m worried about competing [with another company] for a share of that one percent, I’m leaving 99 percent on the table,” he says.

Multiply’s current agenda is just to deliver a seamless online buying experience that will get users to keep coming back. “E-commerce is really simple—it’s all about price, selection and convenience; and as a company, we have to address these aspects,” Magdalinski states. “Price and selection is easy,” he adds, “because they’re very straightforward. Everybody wants prices to be cheaper so you want to make them as cheap as you can without getting [your business] into trouble. And everybody wants more selection so that’s also very easy—you just have to attract the right kind of merchants who are selling in areas where you have gaps,” he says.

Convenience is where it gets complicated, and is also where Magdalinski believes all the competition will eventually happen between commerce players. “This makes up the user’s experience, which covers how good your checkout, payment methods and delivery are, how you make it easy for them to repurchase, etc., and a big part of that is really building trust,” he says, “so as a company, it’s about making sure that we do a better job at all those components than the competition.”

With the e-Commerce market expecting to grow at more than 40 to 50 percent per year, Magdalinski says it is essential that Multiply’s year-on-year growth exceeds that number. “Given how fast people are joining the Internet, growth in itself is not enough. Because if the market is growing at 40 percent per year, and you’re growing at 20 percent, you’re still losing market share. So,” he concludes, “you have to be outstripping everybody else.”

Monday, January 30, 2012

Multiply Indonesia Expands Further into Indonesia

Multiply is to online selling what LiveJournal has been to blogshopping in Singapore.  This is a mirror article to the one a few weeks back about how re-purposed social selling has changed LiveJournal.  SO now we see how social media platform providers are beginning to respond to the blogshopping phenomenon which is now arguably fueling growth of these social media sites.

As they recognize the significance of this industry, they are starting to take steps to develop these platforms into social commere structures.  What this presents to blogshop owners is that it offers an option for them for growth and legitimacy.  Whereas previously blogshops had to convert to shopping carts to gain acceptance, they now can remain hosted on these sites while gaining a measure of recognition as e-commerce destinations as more proper selling tools like shopping carts and payment facilities are enabled.  Thus it is possible for blogshops to now be permanently hosted on social sites like this.

From: http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/bisindonesia/multiply-indonesia-eyes-more-expansion-in-indonesia/441732

After establishing itself in Indonesia earlier this year, one of the world’s largest social networking sites wants to expand its workforce by four times and bring 100,000 local merchants into the site by the end of this year.

Multiply, which combines social networking and an online marketplace, has about 2 million active users in Indonesia and more than 35,000 merchants on its site. It brings in about 20 million unique visitors each month, about 7 million of which come from Indonesia.

“We just released Multiply Commerce on May 10, and within a week there were already 1,000 transactions happening through our payment gateway,” Daniel Tumiwa, the country manager for Multiply Indonesia, said on the sidelines of the Multiply Commerce launch on Wednesday.

“This year is the time for online transactions to take off in Indonesia,” he said. “On average, we have about 2,000 new merchants every month who upload about 50,000 new products per month.”

Multiply, launched in August 2004, was started as a social networking site for families and friends before Facebook existed.

Once users began utilizing the site to sell their products online, though, it decided to expand into an online marketplace. In September last year, the Myriad International Holdings unit of Naspers Limited acquired a controlling interest in Multiply.

It established a subsidiary in Indonesia last March and currently employs 37 people. The company plans to move to a large office in South Jakarta next week, in line with its plan to hire 150 employees by the end of this year.

Peter Pezaris, co-founder and chief executive of Multiply, visited Jakarta in February and said the US company was committed to make Indonesia its anchor market.

“By next year, Indonesia will be our biggest office, even bigger than the one in the US,” Pezaris said. Multiply’s office in Jakarta is its third after the US and the Philippines.

According to Daniel, more than 90 percent of the transactions in the site took place offline.

“I don’t know exactly how many transactions happened so far, but based on our internal survey, the average value per transaction is about Rp 150,000 [$17.50],” he said.

“One of the keys of ecommerce is trust and recommendations,” said Andy W. Djiwandono, vice president for marketing and business development at Multiply Indonesia. “That is why we established ‘trusted seller.’ ”

Although users can register as members for free, the company provides several options for premium accounts.

“At first I was selling stuff in Multiply just for fun. Within a short period of time, my business grew and now I am more serious about selling baby products and eco-friendly products,” said Anita, one of Multiply’s sellers who joined the site about two years ago.

Most of the sellers on the site, Daniel said, are women and people trying to earn extra income despite already working full-time jobs.

Multiply’s revenue streams come from advertising, premium memberships and commissions for each transaction completed through its payment gateway.

“We charge 3.9 percent for every transaction that is using our shopping cart,” Daniel said, adding that the most popular payment system was KlikBCA.

The site also supports other bank transactions and credit card payments through PayPal.

Another article:

Blogshopping is HUGE in Indonesia, although it is not called blogshopping.

Social shopping site Multiply has announced plans to relocate its global headquarters from Boca Raton, Florida, to Jakarta, Indonesia, according to a report from Daily Social.

The move is a rare example of a company choosing an emerging market over the US, as it is typically made the other way round, but there is much sense to the reshuffle which will bring the company closer to the majority of its users.

The service, which is reportedly the largest of its kind in Southeast Asia, has “more than 100,000 online merchants across the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam”, and CEO Peter Pezaris explains that the move is driven by increased opportunities:
We chose Jakarta because the opportunity is so large. It’s such a fast growing economy. So many people are using Multiply in Indonesia, it’s such an important market for us.
Multiple is not new to Southeast Asia and its existing Jakarta office houses more than 50 of its 126 global staff, while it also has a presence in the Philippines. Indonesia is its largest market, as it told the Jakarta Globe, and statistics from last year showed it drew 7 million monthly visitors to its 34,000 Indonesian sellers. These number are now likely to be significantly higher, particularly given that the company saw 2,000 new sellers from Indonesia joining each month.

In addition to the move, which was announced on location in Indonesia, Multiply is giving a nice perk to customers by waiving all shipping cost and transaction fees until March. It also has news for Indonesia, where it is expanding payment options to allow XL Tunai customers to make transactions via mobile operator XL Axiata, and Prima ATMs are also supported.

The company is not shy on making bold moves and it actually began life as a photo sharing social network which rivalled Facebook and others.

On noticing that its personal pages feature were increasingly being used to build online shops, it revamped its offering with the introduction Multiply Marketplace and moved down a completely new avenue as a social shopping service.

It has placed significant emphasis on Indonesia in the past and it ran the beta version of Multiply 5.0 exclusively in the country, before a wider pilot in Southeast Asia preceded the global launch of the enhanced platform in June 2010.

In spite of its pivot, Multiply’s photo sharing service still remains popular and, according to the company, it is the second largest social network in Southeast Asia — behind Facebook, of course — while it has “millions of additional users” in the US, Brazil and India.

The relocation of Multiply’s global office will be completed over the next 12 months, during which a number of personnel and positions will be relocated to Indonesia, the company said.

Image credit: Shutterstock user Russ Beinder

Yet another article on Multiply:
What started as a social networking platform for photo and video sharing has evolved into a social shopping site that connects the sellers in a virtual world with eager spenders. Multiply 5.0, the photo-sharing social network turned robust e-commerce platform, is currently in the works and is being tested in Indonesia.
The beta version of Multiply 5.0 is initially available at Indonesia.multiply.com and according to the Multiply blog, the new platform will integrate an e-commerce catalog store, shopping cart and payment system designed to simplify the process not only for buyers but inventory and order management for sellers as well. Multiply’s high-resolution photo upload facility will still be present.
Screen shot 2011 04 11 at 11.34.38 AM 520x255 Multiply 5.0 e commerce platform being tested in Indonesia
There is still no official date when Multiply 5.0 will be released to the public, but Multiply Indonesia will put the various facilities and features in the new version to the test in the real world.
Multiply recently expanded in Jakarta, Indonesia, which is expected to be the second largest office after its main headquarters in Florida, USA. Multiply Indonesia has 34,000 sellers network (with 2,000 new sellers every month) and is being graced by 7 million visitors each month.

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Multiply looks to Southeast Asia for growth

Blogshopping  and social commerce are very strong in SE Asia.  Where Blogspot, Life Journal, Word Press and Facebook are the preferred social platforms for commerce in Malaysia and Singapore, other social media brands like Multiply rule in other parts of the region like The Philippines and Indonesia.

From this article, it appears that these other social media are being used to support very similar modes of business that we see with blogshops in Malaysia and Singapore.  for instance, they usually do not have standard payment facilities like Paypal or credit cards but they make use of simpler facilities like bank transfers and orders through email, text messages, etc.

From: http://e27.sg/2011/02/07/multiply-southeast-asia/

 

Multiply staffs up in Philippines and Indonesia, looks to Southeast Asia for growth



Also-ran social network Multiply is trying to staff up in Southeast Asia as it tries to reshape the network into an e-commerce platform followingthe opening of its offices in Jakarta and Manila late last year.
Multiply, which calls itself a ‘social shopping’ site, is looking to fill a range of vacancies in Indonesia and the Philippines, according to postings on its website. The company is trying to fill full-time positions ranging from sales representatives, software developers, all the way to executive levels.
The Indonesian jobs post says that Multiply hosts 90,000 stores worldwide and has 20,000 unique users. That second figure seems to be a typographical error as Wikipedia puts the number at 20 million users worldwide, with 5 million from the Philippines. It is a far cry however, from Facebook’s 34 million Indonesian users, many of whom use it as a place for social shopping as well.
Thousands of Indonesians use their Facebook profile pages as store fronts for home industries and online shops. While this is no different than what some do at Multiply, Facebook isn’t focused on that particular user behavior and it’s this opportunity that Multiply is hoping to take advantage of. In fact, from the outside it looks to be what local site plasa.com wants to become — a collection of online stores.
Multiply, realizing that it has lost significant global traction, appears to be trying to move in a new direction, with Southeast Asia as a new outpost for future development. Indeed, the site’s ‘about’ page says that it is Southeast Asia’s “biggest marketplace”. Indonesia and The Philippines have been identified as strong regional bases from which Multiply will formulate its strategy for the Southeast Asian region. The company claimed US$124 million in transaction value annually from the Philippines alone, according to a piece in Entrepreneur Philippines magazine (link to a blog that republished the story) last year.
Transactions on Multiply tend to be more traditional in nature, often completed by phone calls, SMS or email. Merchants disclose their bank account numbers and buyers would transfer their payments accordingly, although more tech-savvy merchants may choose to use PayPal.
Multiply offers free listing and use of its general facilities and it also does not collect any fee from any transaction. Instead, it has a three-tiered trusted seller program which is renewable on a yearly basis and an advertising program.
Multiply’s big move in Indonesia has been to hire Daniel Tumiwa from Indonesian BlackBerry app development company 7 Langit as its Indonesia country manager. Tumiwa had previously been involved in the digital space with local tobacco giant Djarum, Universal Music and Soundbuzz, as well as running MTV Indonesia in its early days. He also held consulting positions with Air Asia, Yahoo, and CNBC in the past.
Tumiwa told us about his joining Multiply at the BlackBerry Devcon Asia in Bali last month but requested that it be kept private until now. In late January however, he tweeted that he was looking for executives to join a foreign internet based social shopping company though he wouldn’t name it publicly.
It’s clear that Multiply is looking to Southeast Asia for new growth. The company seems to to be following the steps of fellow early social network Friendster – now owned by Malaysian company MOL – in developing a new base in Southeast Asia, hoping to reinvent itself. With the explosion in social media usage and rapidly growing mobile internet adoption, who could blame them for giving the region a shot?

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Filipino online boutique- StyleBreak

Here is a Filipino online boutique, hosted on Multiply which is a sort of a social networking site that allows users to share, blog, etc.

Some things here sound familiar with Malaysian and Singaporean blogshops:

1.  This store is run by a young adult, a female about college age.

2.  The store is on the Multiply site (a type of social media), which offers FREE HOSTING.  There is no shopping cart but they do manual processing of orders and payment is via bank transfers (looks like a blogshop!)... for some reason, Multiple looks to be a popular option for Filipino online boutique owners (see more examples at the bottom of this post)

3.  It has a Facebook page which serves as a marketing tool, although no sales occur here.

4.  The owner has added a brick store.

5. The business leverages multiple channels and contact points- blog, Multiply site, main store, Tumblr, Plurk Facebook, etc.

I think we see a common theme here in that these are YOUNG WOMEN who are leveraging all kinds of social media to set up fashion businesses.

In Malaysia, blogs and Facebook are huge, so are Lelong, eBay and Lowyat.  In Singapore, blogs are the main outlets, while in the Philippines, Multiply seems to be big.

So the choice of these channels are probably due to contextualization factors.

The online store: http://stylebreak.multiply.com/

The Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Stylebreak/111268595563694?v=info

News article about Style Break
http://www.mb.com.ph/articles/280931/online-stores-are-seeing-wisdom-bricks-and-mortar

Online Stores are Seeing the Wisdom of Bricks and Mortar

OFFLINE SHOPPING
By LIZ ANNE BAUTISTA
October 7, 2010, 2:51pm
Online shopping can be tricky business, not just for the entrepreneurs, but especially for the consumers. Of course, not every transaction is a disaster, but although convenient for the most part, there is however the possibility of going through a few of the following hassles: the items don’t fit, the items don’t look as nice as they were on the photo, or, at the very worst, the items just don’t arrive at all. Some stores have come and gone, but there are some good ones who seem to thrive and, amazingly, evolve.

StyleBreak has been one of the online boutiques that have done well. Through its trendy, affordable, and limited pieces, as well as its reliability in its transactions, the store has built a cult following from the young crowd, celebrities, and fashion industry regulars.

Last year, the Manila Bulletin interviewed one of the owners, Laureen Uy, youngest sister to Preview magazine’s Liz and Vince, about her then up-and-coming online store. Still in college at that time, Uy mentioned that they had no plans of opening a boutique. Recently, though, we’ve met up with the young and stylish entrepreneur at StyleBreak’s new showroom in Eastwood, something the owners Uy and Katina Loring have opened as a supplement to their online boutique.

Manila Bulletin: What made you decide to open a showroom? I remember last year you mentioned that you have no plans of putting up a physical boutique. What has changed?

Laureen Uy: Well, we don’t want a drastic change like putting up a store right away, but everyone was asking if we had a store that they can visit to try on our clothes. Of course it’s hard to know the sizes if you only have an online store, right? So, we thought putting up a small showroom would be the best for now. Now, it’s super convenient for everyone.

MB: Do you think that putting up a showroom in support of your online boutique helped the business in one way or another?

LU: Definitely. Rather than shipping the items via Fedex, more people prefer to just visit our showroom and try on stuff. And they usually end up buying more! For example, one customer likes only one item, goes to our showroom, and buys five items instead!

MB: Except for the showroom, how is StyleBreak different then from now? Do you have people now helping you out? Or is it still you and Katrina taking care of everything?

LU: Before it used to be really just me and my business partner doing all the work. Now, we have a supplier. Of course, we still design and make the clothes, but since were trying to expand, we have more items available now. What’s good about StyleBreak, though, is that we only make limited pieces per item, so that you won’t go walking around the mall thinking you’ll bump into a girl wearing the same thing.

MB: What can we expect next from StyleBreak?

LU: Our next collection will be the bomb! Just wait for it!

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 Other Filipino online boutiques on Multiply:

 http://redzville.multiply.com/

http://parnellaboutique.multiply.com/photos/album/174/Payment_Mode

http://mlafashionsupplies.multiply.com/

http://ukaymanilastore.multiply.com/

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Some info about the popularity of Multiply in the Philippines:

Multiply is a top 5 site in the Philippines, and 39% of Multiply's traffic comes from the Philippines.  Over 3.5 million Filipinos are on Multiply out of the 12 million or so users.

From Techcrunch: http://techcrunch.com/2007/11/07/multiply-big-in-the-philippines-lands-ad-deal/

Multiply Big In The Philippines, Lands Ad Deal
Nick GonzalezNov 7, 2007
Multiply has been growing rather quietly internationally. The social media aggregator now has 7 million registered users and 10.5 million monthly unique visitors according to their internal numbers, nearly triple their 2006 traffic. Comscore’s most recent numbers show 12.5 million uniques for September.
The service acts like a meta social network where users can collect and share content from multiple social sites (photos, video, blogs). See our earlier comparison with Vox. Users post 1.25 million photos, 16,000 videos and 55,000 blog entries daily. However, while the U.S. is home to the largest share of their registered users, most of their traffic is international.
The Philippines is one of the most pronounced examples of their large international following. Alexa ranks Multiply as the 5th largest site in the Philippines – with more than 2 million unique monthly visitors. We had earlier reported that 39% of the site’s traffic comes from the Philippines. Therefore it’s no surprise that they’ve managed to land a multi-year ad deal with one of the Philippine’s largest networks, ABS-CBN. ABS-CBN has 67 televisions stations, 19 radio stations, 30 websites and reaches 97% of the Filipinos with televisions. Under terms of the agreement, ABS-CBN interactive will sell advertising and mobile services for Multiply’s Filipino users, with the two companies sharing revenues.
The deal highlights the importance of international markets U.S. press often take for granted. Sites like Friendster and Orkut have found large international followings while their U.S. markets are dormant. With a global internet, foreign markets are expected to become even more important in the future. According to research firm Datamonitor Plc., by the end of this year, Asia will account for 35% of the world’s social networking users, with 28% of users in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, 25% in North America, and 12% in the Caribbean and Latin America. Once again, startups concerned about getting big may want to get international.
Another article from: http://pinoybusiness.org/2009/03/29/multiply-another-popular-online-social-network-for-filipinos/

Online social networking? Name it and chances are Filipinos are in it, and Multiply is no exception.
In fact, according to Multiply founder Peter Pezaris, out of Multiply’s 12.5 million subscribers worldwide, 3.5 million are based in the Philippines. He said that the Philippines is the second largest market for Multiply in the world, next to the United States.

For this reason, tech whizzes from Boca Raton, Florida, thought it is a good idea to make the Philippine a key market for social networking and content sharing site Multiply. They have already set up an office in Manila and is working to further beef up its presence in the country as it enters into a partnership with ABS-CBN Interactive.
“We’re working more closely with ABS-CBN and we’re setting up a Manila presence. We’re also ramping up promotions for Multiply Mobile, which will now feature an MMS posting capability,� Pezaris said.