FYI

Clozette joins forces with Rakuten to launch discovery shopping channel

O Share logoFashion and beauty online sales house Clozette has struck a deal with Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten to launch O SHa’Re, a new discovery shopping channel.

The announcement:

Singapore, 03 July 2013 – Clozette Pte Ltd (www.clozette.co) today announced that it has partnered with Rakuten Ichiba Taiwan, Inc., a subsidiary of Rakuten, Inc. to launch O SHa’Re (www.oshare.com.tw), an exciting new social discovery shopping destination enabled with state-of-the-art visual fashion search and recognition technology.

O SHa’Re is Clozette and Rakuten’s latest initiative to scale up its presence in Asia. It aims to reach out to at least 1 million online fashion enthusiasts in Taiwan and become the number one fashion trend site in the country within a year.

Combining Clozette’s fashion-based social network and Rakuten’s suite of e-commerce services, O SHa’Re will redefine fashion lovers’ online experiences. Clozette’s cutting edge visual fashion search tool, powered by Visenze, allows users to “shop that look” – to search and buy similar fashion items that they see in user generated photos, fashion websites and emagazines. It makes scouring for fashionable items more fun by searching using images instead of words or discovering where they can buy similar fashion items contained in celebrity images.

Regardless of category, style, or design, O SHa’Re aspires to revolutionise the online fashion discovery experience and enhance fashion lovers’ demand for personalised browsing. Through the large-scale visual mining of shoppers’ interests, the visual search technology will also deliver valuable and comprehensive insights to brands and retailers on shopping behaviours in greater detail than ever before.

Mr Roger Yuen, CEO of Clozette, said: “With online shopping as ubiquitous as is today, e-commerce has reached a tipping-point. The era of discovery shopping is emerging – online shoppers are moving beyond the current transactional click- and- buy model to seek a new set of personalized experiences. Social commerce will remain pervasive over the coming years and O SHa’Re will be at the forefront to captivate online consumers.”

For Rakuten, O SHa’Re will be a pilot project for its’ Taiwan market- a market dubbed to have one of the highest penetration of fashion and tech-savvy fashion lovers in Asia. As one of the world’s leading Internet service companies and global pioneer of the B2B2C marketplace, Rakuten, Inc. sees Clozette as a great fit to offer shoppers a curated, better-informed and personal shopping experience.

Through customised recommendations, merchants on O SHa’Re can now better attract and engage like minded community of fashion enthusiasts. This unique feature will lend Rakuten Ichiba Taiwan a competitive edge over other e-commerce sites.

Mr. Yuichi Ejiri, Executive Officer of Rakuten & CEO of Taiwan Rakuten Ichiba Inc. said: “Our strategic partnership with Clozette realises Rakuten’s motto that ‘Shopping is Entertainment!’ Rakuten is all about creating platforms to offer personalized, online fashion discovery experiences. This is why we have an expanding loyal fan base who appreciates our differentiated offerings and approach. O SHa’Re has a real opportunity to marry users’ online discovery journey with fashion commerce. This will be a powerful e commerce solution and Rakuten is pleased to be part of it.”

Mr. Toru Shimada, Senior Executive Officer of Rakuten & CEO of Rakuten Asia added: “Rakuten is always on the look-out for like-minded partners and we are very excited about this partnership with Clozette. Taiwan plays a very important role in Rakuten’s global business strategy as it is our success indicator for new, innovative Rakuten services. We look forward to expanding this concept to the rest of Asia and beyond.”

The visual search and recognition technology is expected to roll out across all of Clozette’s satellite networks in the next year ahead. Clozette is now operating in five countries – Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Japan.

Source: press release

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