Online shoppers rejoice, for there’s a new player in town! FaveChic, a new online shopping site that curates products from Asian marketplaces, has now joined the ranks of online shopping sites, a medium that is increasingly becoming more popular in recent years.
With the aim to simplify the at-times tedious online shopping experience, FaveChic seeks to eliminate the common problems an online shopper may face, hoping to provide an online experience of “shopping without barriers”.
Since the soft launch of their website and mobile apps only in April this year, FaveChic now has over 30,000 products listed on their site, and has serviced more than 2,000 shoppers during this time. The fashion products are helpfully grouped into very detailed categories, and are distinguished by small but recognizable icons.
With the rise of online shopping everywhere, you may spot similar items in different shopping sites at different prices. Potential buyers who do not want to lose out on prices may compare one single item across several sites, a difficult task given the currency differences and postage costs.
FaveChic aims to eliminate this barrier by aggregating deals from across various marketplaces, displaying items in your local currency, and even including the shipping fee to boot! Users can then choose from a variety of payments; Singaporean users can choose to pay with eNets or Paypal, while Malaysian users can use their credit cards as well.
Also read: Lazada is the latest online shopping site in Singapore, and it has ambitious plans!
Missing the shopping experience with your friends? Fret not; as FaveChic prides themselves for being a social shopping site, allowing users to simultaneously share their desired item in real time with their friends. Now your friends can stop your wallet from bleeding before a bad buy, or push you into a worthy purchase you were deliberating on.
We at Vulcan Post had the chance to ask Founder and CEO Mr. John Wong some questions, and he shares with us some of his insight with FaveChic.
1) Why did you decide to establish FaveChic?
I was based in China in the last 8 years, primarily focusing on e-commerce selling on marketplace platforms such as eBay and Amazon. Over the years, we see the trend for these marketplace businesses slowing down as individual retailer e-commerce sites grow and flourish.
South East Asia as a whole presents a large potential market given the rising affluence and increasing smartphone/internet penetration. In the last 10 years, we saw the domestic Chinese e-commerce and online marketplace businesses grew by leaps and bounds, and believe the same will come eventually for South East Asia. That is why we decided to establish FaveChic.
2) Have you encountered any challenges/difficulties establishing FaveChic in the competitive online shopping market?
Our biggest challenge comes to marketing FaveChic. If we were positioned as just an e-commerce outfit, merely spending on marketing dollars and competing on pricing, then we are no different from other shopping sites out there.
FaveChic is creating a new online shopping movement in pursuit of differentiation and innovation. We hope the local investor community will look beyond traction, and believe in our idea of building a community that is growing organically, one that is spurred on by our curation efforts by the bloggers and community itself.
3) Compared to the other online shopping mediums, what is the one trait that makes FaveChic unique from the rest?
Rather than establishing a marketplace or typical e-commerce site, we leverage on our sourcing skills, and the affordable yet advanced logistics to build an e-commerce aggregator and facilitator. Aside from the lower investment costs due to not building warehouses to house inventory, our competitive edge is the curation by our team and the fashion blogger community, which in turn will build a larger social community of fashion enthusiasts.
4) How do you foresee FaveChic expanding in the future?
At present, we have launched FaveChic in three countries, namely Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. We are working with the region’s leading fashion bloggers to curate the fashion for our community to discover on our platforms. We hope to build a community of fashion enthusiasts in these three countries before taking on other countries and regions.
With the website and its apps still growing and introducing new content, it will be exciting to see where FaveChic can take their brand from here. If you’re interested to see what they are about, you can find their website here, or download their Android or iPhone app from the attached links.
Happy shopping!
Also read: Singapore’s Bugis Street Goes Virtual With New Online Shopping Site!