Verishop is joining hands with Snapchat, introducing social commerce experience within the popular image-sharing app. This move highlights an escalation of an already intense arms race to grow e-commerce capabilities on social media.
With this partnership, there will be a new feature, Verishop Mini which will live exclusively within Snapchat. This will enable consumers to shop a rotating selection of fashion and beauty brands, for example- Bebe, Fifth & Nine, Kosas, and Blume, while also utilizing Snapchat’s augmented reality (AR) feature to virtually sample products and accessories prior to purchase. Moreover, to provide a quality social commerce experience, Verishop Mini will integrate directly with Snapchat’s chat feature so that users can share their finds with friends and family.
“The Verishop Mini makes it easy and fun for our community to shop fashion and beauty favorites expertly curated just for them, right alongside their friends on Snapchat,” said Alston Cheek, director of platform partnerships at Snap. In addition to this statement, Verishop Co-founder and CEO Imran Khan also said, “We’re passionate about helping independent brands be successful and building features to help these brands connect with the consumer. We’re excited to introduce Verishop to the Snap community, and will continue to extend our platform, as we have with this partnership.”
This announcement came into light just weeks after Verishop introduced Livestream shopping to its own iOS app, adding more than 125 Livestream shopping programs to provide users with 12 hours of live shopping per day. In late 2020, the e-commerce platform had also added new social features, such as Shop Party, to its app, enabling consumers to share content and interact with other shoppers and brands.
Not only that but Snap has also set high goals for itself in the context of social commerce with its evolution being observed from being a simple social media network to a super app that serves a multitude of purposes for consumers. Before the pandemic, Snap launched eCommerce developer tools and AR products to open a wider range of digital commerce for consumers. And in April, Snap acquired Screenshop, allowing Snapchat users to upload screenshots of outfits they like and get in-app recommendations for similar purchases.
