Facebook recently invested $40,000 in Coutloot, an Indian fashion startup. It's an end-to end re-commerce platform that the social media giant chose for its "FbStart" programme. For those unaware, "FbStart" helps developers grow their startups by giving them valuable tools and services. It also gives them opportunities to engage with the Facebook team and participate in worldwide events.
So obviously, this is no small thing for a startup. We tried to find out more about Coutloot and discovered that besides having a website, it's also available on both iOS and Android.
We used the app for a few days and here's our full review of the same.
Let's begin with the concept of the app. If you have ever used OLX, you'll find Coutloot's approach to be pretty familiar. You can sell your old belongings to people who are interested in buying them on OLX, and you can do exactly the same for clothes, shoes and accessories on Coutloot.
If you have used any online shopping app before, you wouldn't find Coutloot to be much different. At first, the only visible difference is the option for selling stuff, which appears the moment you open the app.
Apart from the 'Sell' button on the homepage, there are some categories that you can select to refine your search. There is one that segregates Men's section from Women's. Another common category only shows ethnic clothes.
But as we scrolled down, we saw a category called Blogger's Closet.This shows clothes from various fashion bloggers that you can buy. We found this category to be quite interesting, considering the increasing number of people turning to fashion blogging these days.
Another category is Top Looters. It has a few selected people in the list and you could buy clothes from their closets.
Coutloot has everything that you may need in your closet including clothes, shoes, accessories, bags, footwear, scarves and even mobile phone cases.
When you start browsing you'll see that unlike most shopping websites, where pictures of clothes are worn by models, Coutloot has pictures uploaded by owners. They may have owners wearing them or at times, just the picture of outfit hung somewhere. In our opinion, these images give a clearer picture of what the dress actually looks like.
When you add filters to your search, you won't see options to sort clothes according to colour or style, but just by size and product condition. Product condition further has four categories - hardly used, gently used, new without tags and new with tags. This is something we liked a lot. It is quite a useful feature, because it lets us know what to expect of the product when it arrives.
Another feature we really liked is that the app gives the option of negotiation. So you can actually request the owner of the product to sell it to you at a lower price, than the one stated in the app.
However, what you order via Coutloot takes at least 7 to 10 days to get delivered, which is more than most popular shopping sites.
Selling a product is also something that deserves to be talked about. You submit a picture of what you want to sell and the product gets reviewed by experts. Only then they approve or disapprove it. Once that is done, you can go with the option of direct listing, white glove service or bulk selling.
In direct listing you keep the product with yourself until it's sold. If you choose white glove service, Coutloot sends a concierge service that shoots your product and promotes it for selling. And if you have 10 or more items to sell, you can opt for Bulk Selling. A special concierge service is provided to those who opt for bulk selling.
The app only accepts products that are less than 5 years old and are made by upscale, midscale and luxury brands. Also keep in mind that you can only sell freshly laundered items. Anything damaged or dirty isn't approved.
Now, a word about the overall experience of Coutloot. We did not encounter any lags or issues with the app during our testing, regardless of whether we used it with Wi-Fi or cellular data. The content doesn't take any time to load and the user interface is easy to understand.
Even though there quite a few new features in the app, most users won't have any difficulty in understanding them..
Verdict
We really liked Coutloot. The concept is familiar, but the app is really feature rich. Not just that, its feature set is different as well. The app runs smoothly and is also fairly easy to use. So whether you are using it for buying a product or selling it, you won't be disappointed.
So obviously, this is no small thing for a startup. We tried to find out more about Coutloot and discovered that besides having a website, it's also available on both iOS and Android.
We used the app for a few days and here's our full review of the same.
Let's begin with the concept of the app. If you have ever used OLX, you'll find Coutloot's approach to be pretty familiar. You can sell your old belongings to people who are interested in buying them on OLX, and you can do exactly the same for clothes, shoes and accessories on Coutloot.
If you have used any online shopping app before, you wouldn't find Coutloot to be much different. At first, the only visible difference is the option for selling stuff, which appears the moment you open the app.
Apart from the 'Sell' button on the homepage, there are some categories that you can select to refine your search. There is one that segregates Men's section from Women's. Another common category only shows ethnic clothes.
But as we scrolled down, we saw a category called Blogger's Closet.This shows clothes from various fashion bloggers that you can buy. We found this category to be quite interesting, considering the increasing number of people turning to fashion blogging these days.
Another category is Top Looters. It has a few selected people in the list and you could buy clothes from their closets.
Coutloot has everything that you may need in your closet including clothes, shoes, accessories, bags, footwear, scarves and even mobile phone cases.
When you start browsing you'll see that unlike most shopping websites, where pictures of clothes are worn by models, Coutloot has pictures uploaded by owners. They may have owners wearing them or at times, just the picture of outfit hung somewhere. In our opinion, these images give a clearer picture of what the dress actually looks like.
When you add filters to your search, you won't see options to sort clothes according to colour or style, but just by size and product condition. Product condition further has four categories - hardly used, gently used, new without tags and new with tags. This is something we liked a lot. It is quite a useful feature, because it lets us know what to expect of the product when it arrives.
Another feature we really liked is that the app gives the option of negotiation. So you can actually request the owner of the product to sell it to you at a lower price, than the one stated in the app.
However, what you order via Coutloot takes at least 7 to 10 days to get delivered, which is more than most popular shopping sites.
Selling a product is also something that deserves to be talked about. You submit a picture of what you want to sell and the product gets reviewed by experts. Only then they approve or disapprove it. Once that is done, you can go with the option of direct listing, white glove service or bulk selling.
In direct listing you keep the product with yourself until it's sold. If you choose white glove service, Coutloot sends a concierge service that shoots your product and promotes it for selling. And if you have 10 or more items to sell, you can opt for Bulk Selling. A special concierge service is provided to those who opt for bulk selling.
The app only accepts products that are less than 5 years old and are made by upscale, midscale and luxury brands. Also keep in mind that you can only sell freshly laundered items. Anything damaged or dirty isn't approved.
Now, a word about the overall experience of Coutloot. We did not encounter any lags or issues with the app during our testing, regardless of whether we used it with Wi-Fi or cellular data. The content doesn't take any time to load and the user interface is easy to understand.
Even though there quite a few new features in the app, most users won't have any difficulty in understanding them..
Verdict
We really liked Coutloot. The concept is familiar, but the app is really feature rich. Not just that, its feature set is different as well. The app runs smoothly and is also fairly easy to use. So whether you are using it for buying a product or selling it, you won't be disappointed.
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