Online retailer is serious about integrating Twitter in their buying process

One of their clients, Moxsie.com, an online fashion boutique uses Twitter to make their purchasing plan. “We’re leaning towards the grey”, is the tweet they send towards their followers. Of course, they add a number of pictures to it, so the followers can check what their preference is.

Within a few minutes, a number of followers support the choice for the grey dress. This fast feedback cycle helped them to get confirmation about their purchasing plans.

I believe this is a great use of Twitter. You’re not selling, you’re not really promoting your products, but your followers can choose the products you will offer in your store. It’s actually going to the next level of co-creation. A lot of companies thought that co-creation was only possible for the big companies with a big R&D team.

This is an example from a small store with limited budget. Still, they use the idea of co-creation in their day-to-day decision making. Next to that, it’s managing your own self-fulfilling prophecy. If people can decide what you will sell, it’s quite certain they will buy it. You can probably buy less and sell more, if you play this game all the way.

O, if you are wondering: they have more than 120.000 followers. It’s just a company with 20 employees, but they succeeded in having 120K followers! And more importantly: they manage it, they get benefits out of it and they only have 20 people in their staff. I guess a lot of companies should stop complaining about lack of resources, don’t you think?

And they even take it a step further. If you are serious about co-creation, you should give consumers a task that was previously taken care of by an employee. So now they give the most committed participants on Twitter ‘Junior Buyer’ and ‘Buyer in training’ badges. Next to that, they give these people vouchers of 50$ for their participation.

Let me round off with this quote: “It is getting to the point where we can almost match the dialogue with how something sells,” CEO of Moxsie.com