Indie fashion is a $40B business with at least 70,000 boutiques in the United States alone. This means we are talking about an industry that is bigger than toys and Blue Ray DVDs combined! To boot, online retail is a tough and high maintenance effort, especially when you are trying to figure out what the next big thing is going to be for any type of niche market. With apparel/fashion businesses ranging from small “mom and pop” stores to large retail chains spanning the U.S. and beyond, all of them selling online, the competition is fierce and puts even more pressure on retail buyers to be able to insightfully anticipate trends for the next six months to a year.
As a buyer, you are tasked with buying what you *think* will sell well in your retail storefront (online or physical location). If you decide to go big and make the investment with a new brand, you run the risk of missing your fashion mark and not moving inventory, forcing you to discount everything at a later date. Having owned a retail storefront myself a few years back, ending up in that situation is a major bummer. How do you know when to commit a risky amount of your fall budget to a fashion trend, a shoe brand, or a new denim line that you feel good about but aren’t sure if it’s gonna take off or not? To quell some of the future-of-fashion guesswork and narrow the margin of error when taking new brands online, companies know they have to do something different and creative to stand out and get ahead.
Moxsie launches the BuyerChat program
In early October of this year Moxsie.com, an online retailer with a focus on independent fashion, started their BuyerChat program, a crowdsourcing initiative that took advantage of their 115,000+ followers on Twitter. In doing this, Moxsie’s goal was “…to let people behind the scenes in a whole new way and create a new breed of fashion insiders who are over the alienating experience of traditional boutique shopping.” The program, using the #buyerchat hashtag on Twitter, is set up so that Moxsie’s online community can participate via Twitter and USTREAM in a real buyer meeting with actual designers. Moxsie has essentially created a community of virtual buyers that provide feedback in real-time on new apparel and accessories presented at these meetings.
Feedback from this community is now an integral part in driving purchasing decisions by Moxsie’s buyers. Influence at the ground level by large group of prospective customers that double as “virtual buyers”, the result is a huge potential increase of follow through purchases down the road, yielding a higher ROI from marketing campaign initiatives.
By operating this way and infusing customer feedback into Moxsie’s purchasing process, they are doing what all retailers and brands should always do - give the people what they want. The success of the BuyerChat program has given them a channel to successfully do just that. Having made the Internet Retailer’s Hot 100 List, plus having received several other online accolades, what is next logical step?
