A review of nupinch.com - the online apparel search engine
nupinch.com claims to be an apparel search engine, that helps you find the best apparel and accessories, from a variety of top online retail stores like myntra.com, Jabong.com etc. There is no more pain involved in searching from a wide range of websites, before you choose the best dress for you. Read the review to find out, how nupinch.com works and how to get designer advice on fashion suitable for you before you shop.
Online apparel sales, as a sector, is booming in India and this has boosted up a lot of entrepreneurial energy in this sector. As a result, apparel sites are mushrooming by the dozen, with each one offering newer ways to find that perfect option and deal. The fallout of this rat race is that, customers are bombarded with so many options and deals that cutting through the clutter, to find out the perfect dress at the best price is a back breaking effort. This is where Nupinch.com comes in and attempts to play a very important role, that of an online comparison site exclusively for apparel, which helps you buy apparels and accessories from a wide variety of shopping websites. While the idea isn't new, the category it operates in makes it a fresh idea.About Nupinch.com
Nupinch.com was founded by two IIM graduates Ankur Sethi and Vivek Jhorar in 2013. It operates on a concept, where they do not sell the apparels or accessories. But instead, they help you buy from hundreds of shopping websites like snapdeal.com, myntra.com, pepperfry.com, sareez.com and so on. The online apparel retailers pay nupinch a commission for the orders that are generated through them. There are currently 17 online apparel retailers that are tied up with nupinch.com. It is still under beta phase. They are targeting growth by building an user interface that display search results based on review, delivery, brand, locality of the warehouse etc, so as to enhance the user experience. Since nupinch.com does not actually sell products, apart from the core value proposition of being a comparison site, it is critical that the customer gets a really good experience when using the site.
Categories on Nupinch.com
Products are categorized into three main categories on the site and they are:
Women's Categories
There are a wide range of sub categories for women's wear on Nupinch.com like sarees, ethnic wear, shirts & blouses, kurtis & tunics, lehengas, trousers, denims & jeans, nightwear, innerwear etc. Accessories are another important segment and there are a lot of attractive accessories available for women like trendy hair bands, traditional sandals, watches and much more.
Men's Categories
There are also a wide variety of options for men, such as shirts, kurtas & sherwanis, blazers & coats, T-shirts, trousers, jeans, shorts, innerwear, bermuda & capri, shoes, sweatshirts & jackets and accessories.
Designer Wear
Nupinch.com is projecting their designer picks section as a killer feature. The idea is simple, their in-house designers choose a combination of dresses and accessories which go well together and information on where the same are available is provided. This allows the customer the option of not only being given fashion advice but also where to buy it from and at what cost. One such combo currently available on the site is, a designer saree and a matching pearl jewellery set which comes at a deal of Rs. 5638.Features on Nupinch.com
Nupinch.com works in a simple manner, customers can check the latest fashion and pick the hot trends in the market from Nupinch and purchase accordingly. Once the customers select their product, they will be directed to the page of the corresponding retailer. Nupinch enables this by being an affiliate marketer for those websites. In order to ensure sufficient traffic is generated, Nupinch has tried to provide a feature that would make its site stand out from the others. Such features include the option to check out the attires worn by their favorite Bollywood celebrity and buy one for themselves. For example, you can get similar designer sarees worn by Vidya Balan or pretty dresses worn by Katrina Kaif on Nupinch.com.
Another important feature is getting advice from fashion designers. Very often, you might have have wondered what dress you should wear for occasions like weddings, cocktail parties, freshers parties, college parties or interviews. And most importantly, whether it suits you. Nupinch has taken this into consideration and has well known designers to help you for free. You just have to fill a form with details like Name, e-mail Id, Phone number, gender, occasion, choice of color, height, waist size etc and complexion and comments if necessary. They will get back to you within 48 hours. The key designers of nupinch are Astha Sethi and Sidharth Arora. They have been featured on Lakkme Fashion Week. Nupinch are also inviting designers to their designer panel in their "Join Nupinch" section.
Nupinch also has a crazy deals section, where you can check the best deals currently available on apparel websites. The idea is to provide the customer, information from a wide variety of sites before he/she starts shopping, thus enabling the best deal for the customer.
Also Read: Top 5 online stores to shop at from IndiaIs nupinch.com really worthy?
Yes and No. Nupinch.com is not an online comparison site. It does not provide you search results of the same product compared across multiple sites. In that sense, it does not allow you to search for the best deal of a particular item of your liking. What it does is that, it throws up a variety of choices fitting your search along with the price and site it is available on. For example, if you search for a woodlands shoe, it show multiple woodland shoes across different portals. So, from the perspective of seeing multiple products' availability across different sites, nupinch works. However, it does not tell you whether the price you are getting for the shoe of your choice, is the best or if the same product is available on another site cheaper. Nor do the search results show the same products, a search for a brown shirt will show different brown shirts from different brands and sites. And since retailers have their own product codes, it is difficult to search for the exact same shirt across multiple sites.
Another interesting question that waits to be answered is how will nupinch.com guarantee stock availability. The current search results indicate that the engine simply pulls our details from the partner websites. It remains to be seen if nupinch.com is allowed to integrate into the partner backed systems and show stock availability. A third interesting issue that crops up refers to the nupinch workflow - the site redirects you to the master retailer where you have to login each time to place the final order. This means that a customer who wants to shop for multiple items will have to log in multiple times at multiple retailer sites to place an order. In other words, a single sign on facility is missing at nupinch.com.
nupinch.com is working on an interesting premise with a definite value proposition to the customer. However, whether customers flock to the site would depend on how nupinch.com manages to provide true comparison options and manage other critical operational aspects. After all, they have set out to provide convenience to the end customer and convenience must cut across all aspects of the user experience. The site is still in Beta test stage and we are sure they would be working on many new features as well as addressing the problems we have highlighted among others. Let's wait and watch.
You can visit the Nupinch blog to get their latest updates, styling tips, combos and other information on apparels and accessories. You can also get more details by writing to support@nupinch.com.
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