Are You Confused?

Because many people are, it seems. What with the many online blogshop directories, spree sites and, of course, Tarazz, we feel it's important to help everyone understand the differences between all the online shopping options available in Singapore.


Blogshops
These are online "shops" hosted on blog publishing applications, such as Blogger or LiveJournal. They've become more and more prevalent recently, but unfortunately many sell clothes sourced from the same wholesalers in China. If you see shops advertising "Korean fashion 200+ styles" or anything to that effect, they come from China and are not of the best quality.

However, there are real blogshops out there selling their own designer-inspired designs at bargain prices - often with quality fabrics and cuttings as well. As such, you have to search for the real deals in a sea of This Fashion-esque shops (no offence to This Fashion, some of their stuff and also the China wholesale stuff can be good). The best way to this is through word-of-mouth in lifestyle forums (NOT shopping forums).


Local Online Shops
Online shops are often bigger versions of blogshops. Wares are one-of-a-kind and of better quality. Expect slightly higher prices; these shops come with higher stock inventories and the convenience of shopping carts. However, everything is still cheaper than in a brick-and-mortar store! I've noticed that there are getting to be more good local online stores lately.


Overseas Online Shops
Here is where all spree sites and Tarazz.com come in. Shopping from overseas online shops in the US, UK, Japan etc. is expensive - not because of item prices, but because of international shipping. Sprees were therefore created to overcome this problem by having many people shop together from say, Victoria's Secret, and sharing shipping costs, since shipping costs per unit weight decrease with increasing weight. Some spree sites also order from Taiwan online shops, where items are cheap and fashionable but made for discarding at the end of every season.

The problem of sprees, however, are

1. Trust: organizers can easily take your money and run off with it.
2. Inconvenience: you can only order when there's a spree going on for the shop you want to order from, and only when enough people order for a reasonable shipping cost. When items arrive, you have to wait for them to be mailed to you from the spree organizer. So you might have to spree from 3 different sites at one go with 3 separate payments and orders to track. Often, you can only pay via bank transfers.
   

That's why Tarazz.com was created: to overcome the inconvenience of sprees. You'll enjoy

1. Trustworthy service since we're well-established, supported by major banks and have operations in 3 countries (for now!)
2. Convenient shopping of all our merchant sites in one shopping cart and checkout and prices in local currency with airfreight included. Just like in a spree, total airfreight costs become lower as you order more items - only you can order from different shops! Plus you get TarazzDollar rebates that act like real cash for your next purchase.
3. A butler service that can get you anything you see on online shops but are not on our list of merchants. For more info, see here.

This has been a lengthy post, but we hope that now you can find your way around online shops in Singapore. Click click hooray!

(This is a guest post.)