#BuyChat: 50% Social Gaming + 50% Customer Engagement = 100% Moxsie

Forget Marc Jacobs Foursquare badges, we now covet “Buyer” badges at Moxsie!

One of favorite indie fashion etailers, Moxsie, is yet again innovating the way the more traditional areas of the fashion industry, buying and merchandising, interact with technology. #BuyerChat is a new marketing strategy for the online retailer that combines social gaming with social engagement activities via twitter. Partnering with Badgeville, Moxsie is rewarding style savvy Moxsie community members for their participation in #BuyerChat conversations.

“Fashion used to be associated with the unattainable,” says Moxsie CEO Jon Fahrner. “Moxsie takes an open, inclusive approach where anyone can come to discover their own personal style. And now, with #BuyerChat and Facebook badges, anyone can participate in the process of creating fashion and be rewarded for their insights and ideas. And, now designers who are under-distributed and lack brick-and-mortar stores can get in on the Foursquare-style buzz they’ve been missing.”

With #BuyerChat, Moxsie is inviting indie-minded style enthusiasts into their industry meetings: brands’ season previews, designer chats, photo shoots, and behind the scenes moments with the Moxsie buying team. The first #BuyerChat was an experiment. Moxsie met with their Kelsi Dagger rep and showed off what’d be en route to Moxsie store in a couple months (do I smell the day the idea for Moxsie was first born?).

Moxsie was amazed at the customer feedback and thus decided to continue the exercise. We sat down with an interview with Director of Online Marketing for Moxsie, Julia Kung, to discuss the potential for buyer chat from a business standpoint:

FMM: It seems the focus of #buyerchat is not only Moxsie’s shoppers; the potential of #buyerchat to engage industry professionals — buyers, retailers and merchandisers — in the online conversations has huge potential. Historically, these groups have attended tradeshows, set appointments with retailers they already have existing relationships with and very rarely move out of their comfort zone to find new brands.

FMM:  This community conversation tool and social rewards system aims to change this established routine. Why did you create it? What have been some surprising results from it? How can this help students interested in careers as buyers and merchandisers?

Julia Kung: Despite the proliferation of uber bloggers and an avid fashion online fashion community, fashion retail has been surprisingly slow to adapt and profit from some of the larger social trends, with very few exceptions. This world has traditionally depended on relationships, privacy, and trust. Social media could seem very threatening for that reason.

However, Moxsie is a young retail company that’s still defining itself. As soon as we launched, we found that social media in the form of bloggers, twitter, and facebook, were wonderful and fun ways to help get our message out. To grow this world we wanted to create content that our small new community would find interesting. We found that people loved our behind-the-scenes glimpses. Gradually this became something that we tried to incorporate into our social media as often as possible. It got people excited about Moxsie, excited about the designers we carry, and excited about the new merchandise.

The first time we did a full BuyerChat just a few months ago, we honestly didn’t know what the response would be. We thought, “Let’s just sit down in a buyer meeting with a designer and record everything, and see what twitter thinks.” Luckily, positive response was overwhelming. Not only did people love our BuyerChats, but we got so many job requests! Clearly there were people out there- students, young professionals, who wanted to live the life of a buyer vicariously. There are very few buyer positions available, however, and our BuyerChats are a way for them to see what it could be like.

This is the reason we decided to work with Badgeville, a white label badge company, to reward our participants with badges and levels earned, such as Buyer-In-Training, Junior Buyer and Buying Mentor. As we build BuyerChat out, our goal is to offer internships, and paid positions to the most advanced BuyerChat participants. It’s not unreasonable to imagine that people would put their BuyerChat rank on their resumes when they apply to positions within the fashion industry.

We’ve also found that designers are very open to the idea of BuyerChat. We like to start with the designer’s story and the inspiration behind the lines and products so that people get some real insight into what their looking at. When we start showing the line, questions can be as simple as “Here’s a dress and a romper in the same material- discuss.” And our community will air their opinions, oftentimes telling us how they’d wear it, whether it’s on trend, or too trendy, etc. Obviously, this informs our buying decisions and we learn so much more about our community. Every buyer, from novice to super experienced, can make mistakes, BuyerChat ensures that we stay completely relevant.

We’ve also had designers come in with samples and ask our audience manufacturing decisions. For example, a designer from Matiko, a shoe company famous for wedges, came in and asked what color their perforated leather loafer should come in other than black and white. A type of blue was a popular suggestion, so that’s going into production!

A local menswear designer named Alley Collection had our audience help them give input on the details of a sample men’s jacket with military details. The designers truly love this kind of feedback- they’ll know what to produce more of, they’ll know what to recommend to other buyers. Occasionally a designer will be worried about showing their inventory too early, for fear of competition. In those cases, we’ll focus on the more abstract; details, close-ups, discussions of materials and colors.

Let’s Face It, This Tech Upstart Lives Up To Its Name…They Simply Have Mox(s)ie!

So, Moxsie has not only raised the bar for social media savvy e-commerce sites like ModCloth and Kaboodle, but has also created a win-win-win situation for all parties involved. #BuyerChat participants will be rewarded in a fun and modern way for their consumer engagement, independent fashion designers will have a better chance at being discovered, and Moxsie will enjoy satisfied shoppers, happy designers and hopefully increased sales. Reap the fashionable reviews by visiting BuyerChat Badge Central and stalking Moxsie on Twitter @Moxsie.

As a buyer, merchandiser or anyone at the retail store level, what do you think of Moxsie’s BuyChat? Will you participate?