Hi there! Thanks so much for stopping by to check out my little blog. Here’s a little bit about me and why I decided to start the blog.
Like many women, I love the browsing part of online shopping. Checking out new drops, seeing the editorial pics, the endless scroll… It’s such a great distraction from the tedium of my day job.
However, again like many women, I have had many many struggles with online shopping. Here’s a brief litany of some of my biggest complaints:
- Comically inconsistent sizing across brands (sometimes within brands) – as a 135lb 5’6ish woman with a generally hourglass-ish figure, I can wear anything from size 2 to size 8.
- The model looks fabulous; me, not so much – the disconnect between the fantasy of what the brand is selling and the reality of my mirror can be a real bummer. On the contrary, sometimes I’ve had purchases that look great on actual women but I would never have picked out myself based on the product pic.
- Fabric or quality is completely different from the product pic – I remember a time when I thought I was buying a slinky peach silk dress. What arrived in the package was a neon orange monstrosity in cheap polyester. #gaslit
- “Easy Returns” – sure, in theory. The reality is we’ve all had moments where we missed the return window or had a fight with a call center to get our money back, leaving us with a purchase we don’t love that languishes in the back of our closet and eventually gets thrown out.
- The Final Sale Trap – this is the one that really gets me. I’m a total sucker for final sale items of my favorite designer items that I wouldn’t (couldn’t) ever purchase at full price. But I’ve been burned so badly by online shopping that it’s really tough for me to pull the trigger and actually buy the item. I’m sure the analytics teams at these brands hate me as I constantly add items to cart and then drop off.
- The sheer waste created by online shopping – returns make up some obscene percentage of all online clothing purchases. The environmental cost of constantly returning items, the inefficiency of brands producing items that shoppers don’t want… There must be a better way
I’m sure I’m not alone in this. My small way of trying to make this easier is by creating a mini-database of online purchases with IRL pics with helpful details like size and height. I’d love to see if this could be an actual useful resource for women before they make a purchase. And of course, if you could share and participate, that would be truly fabulous.
Please note – this is a total passion project for myself in my quest to make a small dent in the world of e-commerce. I always welcome any thoughts and suggestions.
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