AHAlife is an e-commerce site that specializes in exclusive lifestyle luxury products. The focus of the site is on curation and that’s what differentiates it from the rest of the online platforms that deal in luxury products. They manage to procure the hard to find exclusive products like a Swarovski crystal panther and make it available online. The founder and CEO of the e-commerce site and lifestyle entrepreneur, Shauna Mei explained that their focus is on quality and not quantity. The site takes help of celebrity curators to put up exclusive products and experiences on the platform. Celebrity curators on the site include Tim Gunn, Wendi Murdoch, Donna Karan Daniel Boulud, Cynthia Rowley, and Tina Brown.
The exclusive e-commerce site encourages daily visit by its customers as it introduces at least one new product every day. They inform everyone on its mailing list about the product in editorial format. They give a detailed story about the product, how it was made, who made it, and where it came from while allowing you to also purchase the product. Their product range is really diverse and not limited to fashion. Apart from fashion they have exclusive products and services in food, beauty, travel, accessories, home décor, tech, and travel experiences. The approach of the site is to help luxury brands who have never gone online and are unavailable to online shoppers and their aim is to help customers cut through the noise.
AHAlife.com went live in 2010 and was soon declared one of the top five Online Luxury Merchandisers along with big names like Louis Vuitton, Zenga and Net-A-Porter. It is not following the discounted or flash sale business model that seems to have become very popular these days. There business model is built on the basis of content, commerce and curation. The model seems to be working for them as they have managed to raise series B funding. They obviously have the potential to grow and become a money spinner as Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten, with DCM and FirstMark Capital have committed a large funding of $10.1 million. This brings the company’s total funding to $19.1 million. The new funding will be used to further strengthen the technology and merchandising team but more importantly it will help in the global expansion with focus on Japan and other Asian markets.
Via: techcrunch, venturebeat
