Shopping and ‘fashion discovery’ startup Goxip raises US$1.62mil

• Other fashion sites are ‘search-heavy,’ it says
• Goxip marketplace to be open to e-commerce shops and Instagram boutiques

HONG Kong-based shopping and fashion discovery startup Goxip said it has raised US$1.62 million in a seed round led by Chryseis Tan, daughter of Malaysian tycoon Vincent Tan.
 
The other major investor is Ardent Capital, which has invested in e-commerce companies such as aCommerce, Orami, Bizzy, and Snapcart, Goxip said in a statement.
 
The company said it will use the funding to enhance its core product – a shoppable Instagram app – release an iOS version, and hire talent aggressively.
 
It will also optimise the existing Goxip website and Android app, while preparing to implement a marketplace for its growing platform.
 
The startup is aiming to enter the Malaysian and Hong Kong markets in the second and third quarter of 2016, aiming to acquire over one million users by the end of the year.
 
Goxip consists of two main parts: 1) Shopping and discovery; and 2) ‘Fashion fulfilment.’
 
Fashion discovery is enabled through celebrity style feeds and user-generated content called ‘snaps’ uploaded to the app’s image recognition technology that scans and recommends similar products from over two million items that can be purchased worldwide, the company said.
 
Fulfilment is carried out through Goxip’s affiliate partners’ third-party websites, which in total offer over 15,000 designer brands including Topshop, Nordstrom, and Shopbop.
 
Most fashion e-commerce sites are very ‘search-centric,’ according to cofounder and chief executive officer Juliette Gimenez.
 
“[This] works fine for commodities like electronics but is not ideal for fashion.
 
“If I’m scrolling through Instagram and want to purchase a shirt on an obscure Thai celebrity, I would have no clue how to find it. The journey from fashion inspiration to checkout is incredibly common but no-one has offered a viable solution,” she claimed.
 

 
The Goxip marketplace will be open to well-known e-commerce shops and Instagram boutiques to cultivate South-East Asia’s insufficient C2C (consumer-to-consumer) space, Goxip said.
 
It will enable both merchants and users to mix and match from a large variety of brands, share tips with a global community of stylists, and personalise the entire shopping experience, it claimed.

“We want to give C2C merchants another mobile channel to distribute their products because currently most transactions are done on media platforms such as Line, Facebook and Instagram, which inherently struggle with a broken fashion discovery process built on search,” said Gimenez.
 
“South-East Asia exhibits one of the highest social media penetration rates and consumers who are statistically shown to be more heavily influenced by celebrity-driven pop cultures than Western markets,” said Tan.
 
“It’s a demographic ready for an app like Goxip,” she added.
 
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