EXTRA, EXTRA – You can now shop at Express without leaving your Facebook account!
Express began selling its entire catalog of merchandise on Facebook yesterday, becoming one of the first major fashion retailers in the U.S. to do so.
Users can now visit the Shop Express tab on Express’s Facebook Page to browse, search save and purchase Express’s inventory of apparel and accessories for me and women. The publicly traded company has also baked in many social features, including the ability to “Like,” pieces, post comments, recommend items to friends and post their purchases to their Facebook Walls. One needn’t even “Like” the Page to have access to all of this functionality.
Inventory, pricing, wishlists and comments are automatically synced across Express’s other web and mobile sites, creating a seamless shopping experience across platforms and devices.
The goal, Jim Wright, senior vice president of Express’s CRM and ecommerce team says, is to make shopping for Express merchandise as convenient as possible. “We continue to look for ways that the customer can interact with the brand on their own schedule and at their convenience, so that we bring down as many barriers as possible,” he says.
Thus far, U.S. retailers have lagged behind their UK counterparts in offering full ecommerce on their Facebook Pages. UK apparel retailer ASOS made its entire 150,000-product catalog shippable on Facebook in January, complete with product search and secure checkout, followed shortly by another UK fashion retailer, Young British Designers.
We expect many other retailers, both large and small, will quickly follow suit.
