To some, especially ladies, shopping is a wonderful experience.
It is a time to mingle, to imagine possibilities, to enjoy spending your hard-earned money.
As an introvert, to me, shopping is always a nightmare, especially when there are sales in crowd-infested popular shopping malls.
Now, I know the importance of interacting with others as an introvert, but… whew… just the thought of having awkward conversations with sales staff, squeezing my way through waves of bodies in the malls, and worst of all…
Being pressured to make a purchase after troubling the retail staff with requests after requests.
A simple solution with the advent of the internet age is to bring all my shopping online.
You see, the problem is, most of the times I only notice clearance sales in physical shops, the brick and mortar kind.
In fact, I don’t think I’ve seen a clearance sale on any online store, which brings me to a new dilemma…
Do I confine my shopping to online and lose out of these “sales” or do I prepped myself to face the exodus of shoppers at the mall?
The New-Age Clearance Sales
Naturally it makes sense that an online web store isn’t going to have a clearance sale, after all, they’re already… ONline.
That means they don’t have a physical presence, and thus… they aren’t “clearing” anything.
Thankfully, they have their own version of clearance sales, which in many cases, the savings could be much more.
All this was made apparent to me when I needed to shop for a new cabinet.
Nothing too fanciful.
But at the same time, I thought, I should explore different options, or risk turning my place into a live walk-in Ikea catalogue.
Direct from the Manufacturer
Unlike a physical store, there isn’t much to clear since there’s no walk-in showroom.
This gives them more opportunities to pass their savings on to the consumer, in this case, me.
As a result, many of these websites gave much better discounts, oftentimes even greater savings than the physical store’s clearance sale.
This became obvious as I browsed through the wide range of cabinet offerings from Amazon, possibly the largest online retailer in the world.
There were countless interesting cabinets that were going for as little as $100 or less.
I have to admit that I was shocked to discover how much margin and mark up many of these physical stores were pocketing.
Well, to be fair, they do have a higher overheads to cover, office lease, employee salary, and other fixed and variable costs.
But as a consumer, all I cared about was the savings I could leverage on.
A First-World Problem of Online Shopping
As I ventured around the digital shopping aisle of Amazon, it struck me that there could be other shopping outlets like theirs.
Perhaps even a mall which was a little closer to home, digitally speaking.
It occurred to me that there is a popular shopping place many Singaporeans like to visit…
If I thought Amazon was cheap…
Then this site had to be dirt cheap.
There were simple fabric shoe racks going for as little as SGD$6.
It was like a shopper’s dream come true.
As I got excited browsing through cabinet after cabinet, before I knew it…
A couple of hours had gone by and a sudden realisation came into my mind…
I had no real idea what to buy.
Ironic when you think about it.
Here I had plenty of choices and options, but I suddenly couldn’t decide.
In a sense I was paralysed by this vast sea of options laid in front of me.
Quality Cabinets Over Cheap Prices
This got me thinking…
Sure, I could save a couple of bucks (perhaps even a few hundred) but are these “savings” truly worth the value I’m getting?
To help me make a firm decision, I had to visit at least one more online store…
An online retailer specialising in cabinets.
I wasn’t sure if there was such a site so I did the most basic thing…
A Google search for “Cabinets Singapore”.
Immediately on the top were the sponsored results, which I skipped, and went down the rest of the page.
There were a number of options here but one particular site stood out…
Most furniture sites I browsed, were sort of a general store that sold all kinds of furniture.
This site was different.
For some reason (they didn’t state at this point of writing) they only sold cabinets. Or at least a range of cabinets.
A Specialised Shopping Experience
In terms of variety, they had fewer options compared to Amazon or EzBuy. Not surprising as it isn’t an online marketplace where anyone can sell anything.
Instead, their range of products were more focused and specialised with unique Product Series like their Marrone, Ricco, and Legna series, to name a few.
The website also encouraged first-time visitors to register for a FREE membership which gives a personalised shopping experience.
Seems to me that many people are browsing from their mobile devices and completing their shopping on the desktop – which would explain this feature.
But beyond that, I wanted to know if I could find what I needed quickly, and whether I would be receiving value for the price I’m paying.
And there at the top of the website is a rather simple to use navigation.
Immediately I could dive right in to the various online catalogues whether it is a series of bookshelves or exploring their latest range of shoe racks.
Needless to say, the products here were pricier than many of the options from the online marketplace.
Partly because many of those were used cabinets or manufactured using lightweight materials and fabrics.
Looking closely at the materials at World Mall, you could see that every item displayed there were made of wood, despite that, the price point weren’t that much higher.
In fact, if you were to compare the prices with those you find in a physical furniture store, they were definitely very competitive and comparable.
Final Thoughts
As I was browsing to find a suitable cabinet for my needs, I was wondering about the entire shopping experience.
Don’t get me wrong… it was fantastic as I could find what I needed without feeling overwhelm.
Yet at the same time, I couldn’t help but wonder if this was a marketing ploy to get me to continue shopping more. After all, I did cover about a real estate priming tactic previously on how agents prime their unit viewers into loving an apartment.
But at the end of the day, perhaps that is truly the goal of any great marketing and sales campaign today…
To make the shopping experience a truly amazing one.
Especially for introverts who don’t want to interact and mingle with too many people.
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