Motilo Lets You Online Shop With Friends
A peek at new shopping site, Motilo
If you’ve ever tried to online shop with your friends, you'll know it’s a back-and-forth mess of links and often mismatched commentary.
For Sofia Barattieri di San Pietro, that just wasn’t good enough—particularly in this era of video conferencing and instant messaging. So she created Motilo, a brand-new shopping site that uses a Skype-like experience to bring you closer to your pals as you browse and buy.
“Motilo, as a concept, started when my best friend and business partner, Maysoune Ghobash, and I realized there was no online platform where friends could shop together,” Barratieri, the company’s founder and CEO, tells FashionEtc of her initial idea. “Once this idea came to our minds, we started a journey to build Motilo. It is the first platform where the shopping is fully integrated with the social media aspect and people can shop together in real time.”
Thought the site officially launches June 1, would-be shoppers can register now and try the company’s beta phase.
Current vendors skew to the high end, though the selection is vast: 3.1 Phillip Lim, Alaïa, Burberry, Balmain, Charlotte Olympia, Donna Karan, Equipment, Eddie Borgo, Jason Wu, Lanvin, Nicholas Kirkwood, Reiss, Roland Mouret, and The Row are just a handful of the 700-odd designers on offer on the site, aggregated from e-commerce outlets like Farfetch.com, Net-a-Porter.com, and Selfridges.com.
Motilo has also launched an online magazine, covering news, trends, and celebrity style, which is live now.
The site “recreates as closely as possible the offline experience of shopping together online,” Barratieri says, adding that Motilo is also “a shopping ‘aggregator’ with an applied technology and a highly curated edit of the best of the Web that aims to create a seamless shopping experience.”
“Shopping online until today was a solo activity,” said Barratieri. “Motilo's interactive element brings people together.”
That’s not to say the time-honored tradition of real-live shopping with friends will ever go out of style.
“I think there will always be a place for brick-and-mortar stores,” she adds. “[But] I think fashion, online, is just at the beginning of what will be a phenomenal growth.”
If it sounds a little Jetsons-esque, it is—but who knows? This could be the end of online buyer’s remorse after solo impulse purchases, and we’re on board. See you at the e-boutique!
In other online shopping news, check out Miu Miu's new E-store.
