INTERACTIVE: Fake
The whole point of shopping on the Web is the convenience of shopping at home, right? Maybe not.
Santa Monica, CA-based Virtual Emporium (www.virtualemporium.com) is making a name for itself by opening up bricks and mortar stores where people can shop virtually.
The flagship store in its hometown, with 25 computers, opened in November. In May, Virtual Emporium opened a location smack in the middle of consumer central – Columbus Avenue in New York City.
According to CEO Tuck Rickards, the Santa Monica store has been serving about 10,000 people a month. Plans are in the works for other minishop locations with three terminals and an international flagship store in either London or Tokyo.
But what’s the advantage of going to a store to shop online?
Access. Virtual Emporium has found that 40% of its customers aren’t otherwise connected. The in-store site is a souped-up, high-bandwidth, multimedia version of the Web site, which goes much smoother through the stores’ T1 lines rather than those ratty old 28.8Kbps modems many people have at home.
The stores also have live humans to assist Web shoppers, in addition to online help and a gift-finder service. Some products are also on display in-store, where people trade shopping tips and grab some java at the coffee bar.
“There’s a big difference between watching a videotape at home and going out to the movies,” Rickards says. “I’m convinced that the physical stores are the best place to shop online.”
Some major DMers are among the 180 sites linked to Virtual Emporium, including Gateway 2000, 1-800-FLOWERS, Spiegel and Virtual Vineyards.
According to Rickards, about 5% of the people who come in to the stores actually buy something, which isn’t too shabby. “We’ve got an environment that creates highly qualified leads for these marketers,” he notes.
To be included, marketers pay what Rickards calls “a pretty modest sponsorship fee,” which can go up depending on the level of exposure (e.g., in-store ads). He said eventually the service will move to a transaction model.
Consumers don’t pay to shop – except for what they buy, of course.
