Shopatplaces – Need your feedback on our venture

Dear All,

I am new to The Rodinhoods and have been following and reading posts here for more than a month now. Want to seek feedback for our startup from you all. Am sure your advice will help us improve our venture further.

The one main area in which we seek your advice is Marketing. Ideas for both online and offline marketing are welcome. So are the ways in which we can improve the site and the shopping experience of the customers. So, here is our story!

We have started an e-commerce firm called Shopatplaces (www.shopatplaces.com) which delivers authentic products from places famous for them at the doorstep of the customers.

You do not have to travel to Lucknow to possess authentic Chikankari apparel, to Kashmir for Pashmina shawls or to Hyderabad to get Pearl jewelry any longer.

We are trying to solve the problem of unavailability of such authentic products, lack of guarantee of their authenticity and the exorbitant pricing charged from customers when such products are actually available at retail outlets.

Also, we sell the products at a price which is lower than even the retail price of that product from the place we source them from. For instance, you can buy genuine leather belts from Kanpur at a price which is not even available in retail markets of Kanpur. We are able to do this as we eliminate the too-many leakages in the supply chain.

We launched the Beta version of our site in October, 2012 and have been received well by customers and have received free press coverage as this is the first time ever this concept of ‘Famous Places. Best Buys’ has been executed. Our value-add is that we deliver authentic products which are not to be found elsewhere with great pricing and at the convenience of the end-users.

The founding team is comprised of two, Sherfur and myself. Sherfur has worked in Cadburys (now Kraft Foods) in the Supply Chain department while I have worked in Investment Banking and Private Equity earlier.

Please let us know what is the first thought that comes to your mind on checking out our site and ways in which we can do marketing. Also, we are bootstrapping this venture from our own funds.

Looking forward to your replies!

Best Regards,

Zuhaib,

A young entrepreneur

Adding this snippet after the original post today (20th April, 2013)

Happy to tell you that Shopatplaces is on the cover page in the print edition of Outlook Money, which came out two days back. Thank you all for your great advice. Please keep poring in your knowledge and ways we can improve and market Shopatplaces.

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UPDATE: JULY 25, 2015

Shopatplaces raises seed round from IAN!

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