How one Chinese e-commerce site turns its shoppers into models

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As confirmed by a recent study, many women like to check out other woman?s appearances. Whether its hair, clothes, or possessions, it apparently stems from some primal desire to get ahead. The Chinese e-commerce site Vancl has long realized this, encouraging its own customers to model clothes they?ve bought from the site.

Vancl ? which sells its own brand of clothes, a bit like Japan?s Uniqlo ? puts all this into its Vancl Star portal (pictured above), an interesting social commerce experiment where women can browse through photos of fellow customers wearing items from the site. It?s a mix of a social media site and e-commerce. While it does have a few male users, it seems mostly geared to female shoppers.

If you click on an photo on Vancl Star, you see the user?s own photo accompanied by a traditional e-commerce listing for the feature product, including the price and an ?add to cart? button

The social side of Vancl Star is a bit like Twitter or Sina Weibo ? you have fans/followers, ?likes?, favorites, and a gallery of your own images. It also connects with Chinese social networks like Sina Weibo, Tencent?s QZone, or Renren for easy sharing of a good-looking product ? or person.

Vancl Star has been around as a web app for a while, and this weekend launched as a mobile app for Android, with an iOS version in the works.

Despite this interesting engagement with its female user-base, Vancl is still struggling in China?s cut-throat e-shopping sector. In the latest market share figures for Q2 this year, Vancl seems to have lost market share, dropping a few places to become China?s tenth biggest e-commerce site. While it?s still the biggest clothing-only e-tailer in the country, it?s a tough industry. Vancl is aiming for 50 percent growth this year, but its much-vaunted IPO seems unlikely.

(Editing by Paul Bischoff)

Source: http://www.techinasia.com/china-ecommerce-site-vancl-encourages-users-to-be-models/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=china-ecommerce-site-vancl-encourages-users-to-be-models

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