3otherthings: Social Product Discovery Platform offering User Experience Before Purchase

Who are we?

3otherthings is a social product discovery platform that allows customers to discover and experience the products before purchasing from both online and offline retailers.

It brings together all stores, products and people into a single social platform.

Launched by former Adidas (US), Burberry and Diesel employees, the '3otherthings' co-founding team believes that the best way to connect consumers with items they want to buy is through the “Word of Mouth” phenomena. Previously, there was no platform that solved this kind of a customer need from both store formats earlier. 3otherthings.com offers the traditional word of mouth endorsement tweaked with an online engaging experience before the purchase.

Whom do we cater to?

3otherthings is for everyone who is looking to buy their next lifestyle product as well as an glean some kind of experience, and look up some recommendations before purchase, or one who has embraced social media and spends countless hours looking for an emotionally appealing product.

This platform is meant for those teenagers looking for a new style statement, or that housewife who is looking to upgrade her living room, or even the young working adult who's pressed for time and is looking to buy something locally.

What do we offer to our consumers?

One of the major benefits offered by 3otherthings is the ease of buying fashion or décor products from both online as well as physical stores. Now the customer will be able to search and reserve products from physical stores before visiting them (Other industries have shown the importance of researching online and buying offline, this trend is inevitable).

Darshana Gajare, CMO of 3otherthings said that they are not an ecommerce platform, but are more of an aggregated platform whereby a customer can search products, get social reviews and experience style content from thousands of online and physical stores before they buy it.

It definitely saves a lot of time for customers who are searching for a unique product, at a time when product search is a major issue. As a result of this platform, a customer can get product info, availability, experience, and recommendations, all in one place.

What motivated us to start up?

Manoj Shinde, the Founder of 3otherthings said,

"The idea came along 3 years back and was an offshoot of my augmented reality concept while at Adidas, where I was working on bridging the physical and online store experience to solve real consumer problems such as product search, color, size and location. In that mix, I essentially wanted to save time and hassle for all those generic problems that many of us face while shopping."

 

What's in a name?

Whether it’s your product, company, or rock band, choosing a name is inevitably the hardest part.

When it comes to shopping, 3 things matter the most-- Product, Price and the Location. The new savvy shoppers are started looking beyond these 3 identifiers and paved the way for social shopping. We took that into consideration while building our platform, and added 3 Other Things--Ease, Experience and Accessibility. Thus, 3otherthings was born.

How do we see Social Media?

Traditionally we have always purchased an item with some suggestions and help from our friends, family or colleagues (statistics suggest that 82% customers buy products based on recommendations).

Social Shopping makes perfect sense, for customers would want to connect with other like minded people, get recommendations and hear them endorse a product, keep track of all online findings in one place so that the customer can never forget where he/she found that beautiful product. Social curation is a top layer over all online shopping where brands are specifically looking for engagement and want to capitalize the social sentiment about brands.

Currently we are....

Some of the top global retail brands are in conversation with us since our launch and brands like Forever New, Pepe Jeans, Tangent, are already onboard before the launch. That establishes a great confidence in what we are doing. We are a lean startup team and is currently looking to add members from content and digital marketing segments.

Our biggest challenge was..

A startup faces numerous challenges, common to any startup anywhere. Our biggest challenge was to put a strong team together and now finally we have one.

We want to dominate the world by..

I think we discovered a way to turn ordinary, everyday buying into a creative and stylistic experience captured in digital form. By doing so, we were able to translate online buying from being a monotonous "add to cart" event into a form of self expression and communication. I believe the latter innovation is the real game-changer for us.

We want to become the biggest consumer insight platform when it comes to a lifestyle domain.

We’re making moolah by...

Our current focus is on creating user engagement and bringing more brands on board to really become the most valuable platform from a customer's perspective. This done, money will follow.

Our What The **** Moment

When our startup, 3otherthings was chosen by TechCrunch to launch at their DISRUPT event in NYC.

Industry as we foresee

I guess, social media has largely changed or disrupted the way we communicate, engage with brands or consume content.

I see a couple of trends garnering major attention, one which our startup is working on, otherwise known as “BigData” and the second will be an “Internet of things.” This is mostly the belief that connected devices will rule the next wave of social media in the coming years in India or across the developed world.

Lastly, Are you hiring?

As mentioned earlier, we are looking to hire savvy content writers and digital marketing individuals at this current junction. We are looking to hire a few interns to work on small campaigns.