The document analyzes the online shopping experiences of The MoMA Design Store, Opening Ceremony, and Fab.com. It finds that Opening Ceremony and Fab.com integrate designer stories and recommendations to enrich the experience, while MoMA offers a more simplified experience. It recommends MoMA leverage social media like Opening Ceremony and Fab.com to personalize the experience and drive more traffic to their site.

1. Competitive Analysis
October 29, 2012
Research & Insights
Consumer and| Industry Research
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2. Summary
The MoMA Design Store, Opening Ceremony and Fab.com each integrate the
designer’s stories behind their products into the online shopping experience through
in-depth product descriptions, brief biographies, and quotes from designers or
influencers.
The OC and Fab.com also offer expert product recommendations and unique
promotions via official blogs and social media.
While Opening Ceremony looks to leverage social media to drive traffic to the brand’s
site, Fab.com offers a unique, “live” browsing experience that fully integrates other
social media platforms.
The MoMA Design Store offers a simplified, segmented experience on its site,
isolating its social media pages and content.
MoMA could benefit from strategies employed by OC and Fab.com by leveraging sites
like Twitter to drive traffic to momastore.org, enriching conversations around
products through Facebook, and personalizing the shopper’s experience at the online
store.
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3. Opening Ceremony
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4. Opening Ceremony.us adopts a multinational approach to
retail in addition to stocking both iconic and emerging
homegrown designers every year.
Opening Ceremony is a retail environment
comprised of shops, a private label
collection, and a showroom.
Each year, the unique commercial and
cultural character of a visiting country is
represented at OC by capturing the essence
of the country’s consumer experience.
This year, OC's featured country is Korea.
OC transforms the shopping excursion based
on four different perspectives--established
designer, emerging designer, one of a kind
vintage pieces and select items from the
open-air markets.
Taking its name and mission statement from
the modern Olympic Games, Opening
Ceremony applies these elements of business
and global participation towards fashion.
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5. Opening Ceremony’s Facebook page largely looks to promote
products and drive consumers to the brand’s online store, blog, and
live events.
The company’s Facebook page currently has 51,800+ fans, with 1,700+
conversations.
OC’s Facebook page promotes new products and events along with the latest
OC blog posts, staff picks, fashion photos and reviews.
While customer feedback and support traffic is slow, OC is responsive to
those that turn to the brand’s Facebook page for assistance.
OC looks to take advantage of their Facebook page’s “Notes” feature to post
job openings at its various retail locations across the globe.
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6. At OpeningCeremony.us, customers are presented with the
designer’s unique background as it relates to the product
featured.
Users browsing OC’s online store can
find out more details about the designer
behind the product along with a series of
relevant images on the product’s page.
On the OC blog, potential consumers
can browse through bloggers’ favorite
products and custom collections. Here,
readers can also catch up on the latest
trends and media related to this year’s
visiting country.
Here, users can read
more on Luciano Castro,
the Argentinean designer
behind the coat.
OC’s official blog posts
custom collections and
blogger favorites, here
featuring the latest in
Fall coats.
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7. Fab.com
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8. As of September 2012, Fab.com greatly boosted its user experience
by no longer requiring people to sign up as a member to view
products on the site
Visitors and consumers are now free to surf for products Fab.com, only
needing to login to make a purchase.
Earlier, in December 2011, Fab introduced its “Live Feed”, which enables
users to share what they are buying, liking, and tweeting on Fab.com.
Live Feed surfaces what products other Fab.com members are buying, liking,
tweeting and sharing across the Web.
Fab.com made the live feed on this new feature completely opt-in. You can choose
to reveal your username whenever you purchase something, or not.
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9. Fab.com Inspiration Wall — a public social mood board for
sharing design inspirations.
Fab.com members get a public profile
which shows all their design inspiration
favorites (added and favorited).
Every product page has a Favorite Button
and Comment Button. Favoriting a
product adds it to the user’s Inspiration
Wall.
Once added, users can see who else
favorited the design, along with other
images they have recently “faved,” or
added.
Information about the product is
automatically brought over to the
Inspiration Wall when it is faved,
including: The description, tags, sharing
options, and counts of how many times it
has been viewed, faved, and commented
on.
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10. For various products and collections at Fab.com, users are
presented with a brief story of the designer and summary of the
spirit behind the collection.
For example, users interested in vintage items,
furniture and apparel can browse collections at
“The Vintage Shop.”
Here, users can purchase, browse, favorite,
comment on, or share various vintage-style
items to Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr.
Every collection has a dedicated page that
includes a short story and a quote from the
makers or an influencer in the industry.
Users may feel more comfortable browsing
Fab.com in this way, as they can better
customize their shopping experience by being
presented with only the product categories they
are interested in.
The Archive collection’s
dedicated page gives a
synopsis of the brand
and a quote from
Founders Marianna
Maurer & Nicole Tafur.
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11. Fab.com’s Facebook page posts multiple times per day that generate
thousands of conversations by highlighting products and company-
related media.
The brand’s Facebook page boasts over
247,000+ fans and 12,000+ conversations.
Fab.com’s Facebook page posts multiple
times per day, that generate thousands of
conversations by highlighting products
and company-related media.
Fab.com is highly responsive on the
brand’s Facebook page, deriving feedback
from consumers and replying to customer-
service and product-related posts to
provide answers and solutions.
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12. MoMA Design Store
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13. Through the MoMA Design Store, the Museum extended its
educational mission, exemplifying well-edited product design and
curation.
The MoMA Design Store products highlight the latest in materials, production, and
design concepts from around the world.
All of the products at the MoMA Stores are reviewed and approved by MoMA’s
curators, some are represented in the Museum’s design collection, and many are
MoMA exclusives.
The MoMA Store’s unique offerings include:
MoMA Membership Incentives: Shoppers can become Patrons of the Museum to receive
discounts at MoMA Stores along with exclusive Museum-related benefits.
The MoMA Design Store Gift Registry: Shoppers can reflect their modern style and
celebrate life’s special occasions with distinctive gifts from the MoMA Design Store.
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14. The MoMA Store online offers a conventional user experience for
shoppers to browse across product categories and tag favorites.
Users can browse the MoMA Design Store
products by category and create a private list
of “favorited” items.
On product pages, the store includes an in-
depth product description, a brief biography
about the designer behind the product, and
other recommended products.
These recommended products are generally
unrelated to the current item the user is
browsing.
The MoMA Design Store online could
benefit from better curated recommended
items on product pages and based on a
shopper’s “favorited” items and past
purchases.
The products recommended
when browsing items
designed by Alvar Aalto do
not take into consideration
the shopper’s expressed
behaviors and tastes.
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15. The MoMA Design Store’s social media pages, while active, do not
play an active role on the Store’s official site.
The MoMA Design Store’s greatest areas of
opportunity lie in social media.
Users do not have any opportunities to share their
favorite products publicly across social media beyond a
Facebook “like.”
The official MoMA Design Store’s Facebook page,
with 19,700+ fans, generates little conversation and
almost no user involvement.
Despite a library of 20+ videos on Facebook, they are
not easily accessible or well-promoted to garner views
and traffic through sharing.
Further, the Store has not posted a video in six months.
On Twitter and Pinterest, the MoMA Design Store has
just 1000+ followers despite consistent activity.
This video profile of
MoMA’s online social presence may be going unnoticed designer Alexis Bittar’s line,
as they are not promoted on the official store site or while well-received, stands
across other social media platforms. as one of the only videos of
its kind in the last year.
Better curated content as it directly relates to the
MoMA Design Store along with means for shoppers
to share their experiences across social media
platforms may result in increases in their fanbase,
followers and online conversations.
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