Why the future of luxury fashion is on WhatsApp and WeChat, this start-up believes
- Backed by investors including Hong Kong’s Adrian Cheng, millennial-focused Threads Styling allows users to shop what they see on social media - via chat
- Founder of chat commerce start-up says the two most important things for a millennial are curation and convenience
Many people won’t understand Threads Styling. Is it an app? No. Is it an online store? Not really. The London-based fashion start-up, which sells to 100 countries, is the pioneer of chat commerce in the luxury retail space.
What that means is that, instead of browsing a website, adding your chosen items to a basket, and then going through the process of typing in your card details before checking out, you simply … talk to someone.
“In Hong Kong, the end transaction could be either in WhatsApp, iMessage or WeChat – within mainland China it's obviously focused around WeChat,” explains founder and CEO Sophie Hill.
“Our mission is ‘inspire, acquire, deliver’. So if you see something on Instagram, you would then swipe up through a Story, start chatting to one of our sales team and then all payment and invoicing would happen within that conversation.”
And it’s not just Instagram. It’s Snapchat. It’s Weibo. It’s Little Red Book.
