How Sonsi.com Can Take the Plus-Size Market to New Social Shopping Heights
Though it launched yesterday, Sonsi.com, a new social commerce site targeting plus-size women, is a concept that's overdue. After all 60 percent of American women buy apparel in sizes above 12. Careful branding and marketing are in order though. As a subsidiary of Charming Shoppes (CHRS) which also owns Lane Bryant, Fashion Bug, and other plus-size brands, Sonsi (which means curvy in Scottish) is competing against sister site Inside Curve.
Lane Bryant's social networking/shopping site Inside Curve debuted last summer and also merges fashion retail with social networking. Inside Curve took Lane Bryant's active Twitter and Facebook presence to the next level by offering dedicated shoppers a forum to squawk or squee about purchases and get special deals and discounts on Lane Bryant threads. The company isn't showing any signs of giving up on the site. In fact, plus-size fashion blogger Diana Rajchel told me she was at Lane Bryant HQ last week for a conference where execs heavily promoted the site and even encouraged her and others to pipe their blog feeds to Inside Curve.
Rajchel reports that Inside Curve has about 24,000 members currently, but she's not sure how the two will co-exist.
There's a law called Metcalfe's Law aka as the 'network effect' that states that the effectiveness of a social network system is proportional to the square of the number of users on its system. I'm confused as to where they're going by adding TWO networks, as that dilutes both.
Where Charming could win with Sonsi is by playing up the fact that it's designed to go well beyond the Lane Bryant brand and tout the availability of 80+ labels. Naturally, Charming's own Catherine, Fashion Bug, and LB are heavily featured, but other lines such as gowns by Alex Evening round out the offerings. Rajchel told me this puts the press on e-commerce competitor One Stop Plus which offers a similar range of plus-size brands, but not much in the way of social networking.
It also helps that Sonsi is going to have regular columns from well-known plus-size bloggers on a variety of topics from fashion tips to cooking. They include Megan Garcia, plus-size model and author of the first guide to yoga for plus-size women, and Susan Moses, fashion stylist to celebrities such as Wynonna Judd and Queen Latifah.
Finally, it doesn't hurt that the controversy surrounding Lane Bryant's Cacique ad being pulled from Fox and ABC for being "too sexy" is still swirling. Curvy sisters need a place to vent about the media's continued snubs against fleshy models, so why not add a little retail therapy to help that catharsis along?
Image via Sonsi.com
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