Weekly News: Amazon’s “try it on and buy it”, Romanians like buying clothes, Mytaxi buys Clever Taxi
Amazon lets you try some clothes before you buy them
Amazon, in adding to its ever-expanding benefits for Prime customers, will now let customers try on clothing before purchasing it. The program is part of the new Prime Wardrobe, which Amazon announced Tuesday. The program is similar to many “box” services, like StitchFix and TrunkClub, where a few clothing items are sent to the customer, who then gets to try on the clothing before deciding what to keep and purchase and what to send back.
The difference with Amazon’s service is that customers get to choose their own items to put in their box, instead of stylists or algorithms. A 10% discount will be applied if customers choose to keep two to three items, while those who pick four items or all of them will receive a 20% discount.
➠ Read more at Business Insider
93% of Romanians buy clothes online at least once a month
93% of Romanians buy clothing online at least once a month, and shoes are the favourite article, according to a survey by Answear.ro and iSense Solutions. The true fashion enthusiasts end up by ordering six times in 30 days, the same source says. The document also shows that the ‘fashion online’ segment is growing rapidly in the local eCommerce, about 50% per year. Sport or stylish shoes are preferred by 71% of buyers, while 49% of them choose primarily dresses or bags and rucksacks. The survey was conducted on a sample of 604 urban respondents, mostly women, aged between 25 and 40 years. Most of them have university studies (59%) and an average monthly income of about RON 3,600. About 72% of respondents are married or live together with their loved one, having on average one child.
➠ Read more at The Romania Journal
Owners of Kenvelo will open an online multibrand shop
Montecristo Retail Group, the company that owns the fashion brands Kenvelo, Lee Copper, Time Out and Tom Tailor (in Romania and Bulgaria), will open an online shop for these brands, in October. One June 20th, at the recent Fashion Route conference (dedicated to the Romanian textile and fashion industries), Philippe Besadoux (CEO Montecristo Retail Group) said that he doesn’t trust the online in fashion. And that’s because, in a brick-and-mortar shop, e.g. in a mall, the buyer is more comfortable. Last year, Montecristo Retail Group sold 38-million euros worth of clothes and has approx. 100 brick-and-mortar shops, 10 of them being mixed (selling products from several of the group’s brands).
Mytaxi buys Clever Taxi
Mytaxi, the e-hailing player controlled by German car maker Daimler, has taken over Romanian company Clever Tech SRL, which owns the taxi hail app Clever Taxi, in a deal worth eight figures. Clever Taxi was founded in 2010 by Mihai Rotaru and Alex Dumitru. The app is operational in 20 Romanian cities, recording over 17,000 drivers and more than 600,000 users. Mytaxi was launched one year earlier and the app has been downloaded more than 10 million times. It has over 120,000 recorded drivers and it is available in 70 cities from 10 European countries. Following the acquisition, Romania becomes the 11th country where the service will be present.
➠ Read more at Business Review
GDPR is coming! Are you compliant?
The EU General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) comes into force in exactly on the 25th May 2018. The introduction of GDPR will result in a significant overhaul of the existing European Data Protection regime as GDPR will repeal and replace the current Data Protection Directive (94/46/EC). The changes contemplated by GDPR will place significantly more obligations on organisations and give more rights in favour of individuals. In Romania, this will mean that online shops will not be obliged anymore to register with Dataprotection.ro, but the companies responsible for the shops will have to ensure their customers’ privacy and data protection internally, otherwise they will face fines.
