Luxury e-commerce sites like AHALife face the dilemma of increasing traffic on the web without compromising on their exclusivity. The luxury site has settled down and already has 45 employees. It has acquired financial stability after raising $19.7 million in venture funding. In a move to increase traffic, it has acquired Kaptur, a photo-sharing startup. The group photo sharing app has very quickly amassed 60 million users showing 250 million photographs. AHALife considers it a strategic acquisition as it feels it can leverage the startup’s viral sharing feature to boost up its membership and sales numbers. After merger the combined entity is expected to have 1.5 million users.
Shauna Mei Impressed by Kaptur’s Viral Marketing Expertise
AHALife stocks luxury goods from 2000 independent designers and develops relevant editorial content for them. The combination of these two entities may seem unusual but it could be beneficial for both as AHALife has revenue but limited users whereas Kaptur has many users but practically no revenue. They could complement each other and negate their weaknesses and leverage each other’s strengths. Shauna Mei, a luxury entrepreneur and the CEO of AHALife has been rather impressed by the viral marketing expertise of Kaptur. She is confident that they can apply their algorithm to anything and figure out ways to acquire traffic. Their expertise is not exclusive to photo sharing and they did it only because they were inspired by the success of Instagram.
AHALife Wants to Create a Window Shopping Buzz on its Site
Mei is confident that she can maintain the luxury site’s elite status despite the influx of window shoppers. She has previously worked as advisor and consultant to luxury brands like Matthew Williamson and firmly believes that window shoppers are just as important as the real shoppers as they make the real shoppers feel special. Window shoppers, even if they buy just one thing in a year, create a large base of people who start to appreciate luxury. The social and photo expertise of Kaptur will bring a window shopping buzz to AHALife. Photos are the new language of the web and using Kaptur’s expertise AHALife can create a new identity for itself that combines its elite luxury image with the freewheeling social media.
