In a previous post on
the new wave of e-commerce sites springing up in Dubai
, I mentioned
, the massively successful French dotcom that is expected to do
almost a billion euro of sales this year
.
Vente Privee works as a members only shopping club that announces special sales to its members each day. These flash sales typically have a limited timeframe and a limited amount of stock, and have become extremely successful internet businesses in Europe and the US.
A commenter to the post asked why I didn't mention
, a Middle Eastern version of Vente Privee.
The reason, readers, is that I'm a poorly dressed slob more at home in a shisha cafe than a shopping mall, and the only thing I know about fashion is that fashion is for those beautiful women who look at me funny when I accidentally stumble into the beautiful people section of a nightclub while looking for the bathroom.
Anyway, if you care about fashion, or like keeping track of who's doing what online in the region, have a look at Fashionation - from what I can tell, it's a pretty slick looking site that seems to have had some effort put in.
Here is a Q&A with the site's founder
, which is worth a read. It is basically a direct competitor to
, a similar members-only sales site run by Jabbar, the Maktoob spin-off.
We reported on Sukar earlier this year
.
And just a thought - it seems like if these sites want to be competitive, they need to make ultra-speedy delivery their core competitive trait. When trying to think about these sites, I called the best dressed / prettiest woman I know, and asked her if she and her fabuloso lady-friends knew about and used Fashionation or Sukar. She said both sites have some degree of awareness, but more interestingly, that she spends a lot of time on similar US websites like
, and just uses
Aramex's magical Shop and Ship
to have things delivered.
This is probably an issue for anyone trying to sell things online here - what do you do that is better than the combination of America and the UK's excellent e-commerce scenes and Aramex shipping? My guess is that the answer to that question needs to include delivery within 24-hours of purchase - and ideally, in a country as small as the UAE, delivery the same day.
