Magazines Archives - 2009 August

ShopTogether at Charlotte Russe’s portal
Story 12 - E-commerce

CALIFORNIA-BASED fashion retailer Charlotte Russe Holding Inc has incorporated the ShopTogether application into its portal to allow shoppers to interact with each other while making purchases online. D eveloped by Washington-based D ecisionStep Inc, the application that combines social networking with online shopping at the retailer’s portal (www. charlotterusse.com) helps to “remove obstacles to online buying and decisionmaking”, said the company’s CEO , John Jackson.

“Until now, one of the biggest barriers has been the inability of shoppers to easily and quickly get second or third opinions from their trusted peers on important purchase decisions. [This] is frustrating for them and is detrimental to the retailer.

“With the new ShopTogether interactive shopping application, we’ve eliminated that barrier — now, a friend’s advice is a click away.

“As one of the innovators in online retailing and the first fashion retailer to implement the latest version of this technology, Charlotte Russe is again setting the bar for the industry,” Jackson asserted.

Leveraging popular social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, as well as e-mail and instant messaging applications, shoppers can send and receive invitations using a ShopTogether toolbar at the bottom of the website to view products, share ideas and chat, all while browsing the portal’s selection of fashion apparel and accessories.

“Shopping is a fun, social event for our customers — they want to play with different looks and get one another’s opinion,” explained Charlotte Russe’s president and chief merchandising officer, Emilia Fabricant. “With the Shop- Together application, we’ve improved our existing social shopping feature, making it easier for [the person] to connect with friends while connecting with our brand,” she maintained.

Charlotte Russe, which has over 500 stores in the US and Puerto Rico, reported a third-quarter net sales increase of 4.9% in its fiscal 2009 to US$202.7 million.

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