Aprizi is the “Pandora for Shopping”
Unless you have a particular aim and target in sight, shopping online can be a rather painful process. Sifting through pages and pages of shoes on Zappos.com or unique, handmade bags from independent designers hosting their craft on Etsy will quickly reveal just how difficult it is to separate the good from the bad.
Finding Things On The Internet Is So Easy; So Why Isn’t It For Shopping?
Aprizi startup founders Giff Constable and Liz Crawford identified this same hindrance in online shopping. They recognized that while valuable pieces and sources certainly exist on the Internet, it was difficult to stumble on with currently available boutique networks. Aprizi, however, functions off of an upvote/downvote system to gauge your taste and appropriately suggest other fashion choices based on your individual using of the software.
What Does Aprizi Do?
Selections on Aprizi are composed by the 11 curators, and you can even search based on a particular curator’s other finds. Aprizi even hosts a My Finds tab and a bookmarklet tool to save your favorites. Users can select shopping categories ranging from shoes to tech to home goods. Results can be browsed by a general database, a particular curator, price range, or previously selected favorites. By using the same bookmarklet tool used by the curators, you can add to your database with your own findings.
What We’re Wondering
Aprizi’s stated mission is as follows: “Aprizi started with a question: why is it so hard to discover wonderful independent brands on the Web? There is so much incredible talent and quality out there, but discovery is neither easy nor fun. It should be both!” This is a wonderful goal, and they’re certainly making a run at presenting users with unique or formerly unheard of brands and products.
However, the curation has a strong female-oriented bias. While having a niche is often desirable for a startup, Aprizi neglects a huge, attainable market: the guys. As a guy, I didn’t feel compelled to continue my use of the platform. As a user in general, Aprizi seems to demand a lot of the user to build their stock of “liked” or “unliked” products enmasse. I feel like I am training Dragon Naturally Speaking just to get relevant product notifications.
One particular thing missing from this Pandora for shopping model is an even more powerful and growing database through the users themselves. What better way to expand your database of trendy online finds than to enlist in the fashionistas already perusing Aprizi? This would increase the appeal of Aprizi two-fold: 1) users would be more interested in engaging if there was a community available, and 2) the database would grow and be more reliable.
The Wait and See
Although Aprizi is a great idea with an already sleek interface, the founders will have to start getting concerned about growing and expanding both the database, reliability of it and potentially a community. I suggest they create strong verticals that appeal to personalities. I don’t want a white-washed, Apple-like buying experience. Frankly, that has become boring. Instead, I would suggest that the team curate products and present me with great content, too.
I’d be really interested to see a partnership with someone like feedly. By learning my “likes” through my content consumption on a passive basis, they can create an intelligent algorithm that gets to know me. Rather than having to analyze my selections like another work inbox, I want to see the cool, unique attributes of these products surfaced; I want to see the personality. Aprizi is still an early service, and I see the value in a “StumbleUpon for products” kind of service. Now I’d like to see them push the labor of work out in favor of more fun consumption.
Of course, all of these efforts will amount to nothing if there is no business plan. Currently, Aprizi’s plan is to analyze their data of what trends are formulating via the site, and to use that information to sell limited edition products to those deemed interested. We will have to wait and see if this model is successful, and whether or not Aprizi can continue to grow and monetize.
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