Go Fashion Shopping, Socially!

Online shopping is almost becoming second nature to most of us. We’ve all come from an age where product reviews and user ratings were the only features that gave a social element to our virtual shopping experience.

Co-founders, Nayan Kumar, BITS Grad and Ankur Gupta, met at Startup Leadership Program, Hyderabad and decided to capture this growling market. Launched in June, 2014, violetstreet.com now plans to take online social shopping to a whole new level. Performing much better than many of its traditional counter parts, this portal allows its users to shop-real time with friends, create fashion looks and browse occasion based looks and matching products.

Social shopping attempts to use technology to mimic social interactions that are typically found in physical malls and stores. Thus, the amount of social engagement that takes place between shoppers and their peers satisfies three aspects that drive purchase:

• affirmation,
• information and
• inspiration

These have always been the missing links in the online world and violetstreet.com realises how much opinions matter for that intangible satisfaction you get from retail therapy!

Surfing violet street.com, shoppers can create an entire look using their chosen products from different sites and spreading it across various Layout options. The number of boxes can be changed, depending on the number of items/ accessories in your cart! You could also share products with friends by simply dragging and dropping your options to get their feedback. The shopper’s Facebook friends using violetstreet, automatically get added to the user’s chat list. You could also chat and exchange opinions with people you follow. It’s as real as it could get while having a whole community of opinions at your fingertips.

Hyderabad based Start-Up Violetstreet.com has scaled fast to cross 20,000 unique visitors a month. More than 100 fashion looks are created everyday by users who also regularly engage in real-time product sharing with their friends. Violetstreet.com uses a matching algorithm to help users find complementary products while viewing each product. Hence, unlike regular e-commerce stores where a user is recommended similar products while viewing an article/piece of clothing, it recommends matching products for each item. For example, while viewing a top, the site recommends which jeans would go well with it or which accessories would add to the look.

They’ve also integrated the concept of ‘crowdsourcing’ and ‘gamification’ by LIVE contests with prizes and chances of earning points by introducing more people to the website. Recognition on the leaderboard and constant updates on trending fashion helps users make an informed decision while feeling important.

In May, 2014 violetstreet.com won the TiE Smashup Techstock event at Hyderabad and Rs. 10 lakh in seed funding. They aim to become the Top Fashion Product Discovery Platform in India in two years and go global soon after. They also plan to include men’s fashion and lifestyle products by the end of this year and to cross  million user milestone towards the end of next year.

By putting more power in the hands of people, violetstreet could lead to a totally new group of online sales staff, including you me and everyone we know!

For more, check:

Website: http://www.violetstreet.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thevioletstreet

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