The Story Behind Marsplay
Building the most human way for millennials to shop online
When Ashley moved from her small rural hometown to London for a new job she admits she went overboard shopping for new clothes.
“Everyone around me looked so stylish. I had to get new stuff. I really felt so much better when I’d come to office in a great outfit. It boosted my confidence and that made everything so much better for me.”
In the current times more than ever before, our identity has started to depend on how we ‘appear’ to the outside world. The result is that today, there is an immense pressure that every single person feels to ‘look’ good.
And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The desire to look your best and investing in yourself is probably the best thing you can do.
Every single person desires to look fashionable for this reason — because ‘looking good’ is strongly connected to ‘feeling good’.
We at Marsplay started with this simple problem statement in mind — Can we help more people feel good about themselves?
According to recent stats, the majority of women, or 96% believe that what they wear affects how confident they feel. Not only that, a large number of studies have pointed out to the strong connection between clothing and mood state.
We realised that through enabling every single person on this planet to ‘look’ their best and ‘feel’ their best, we could create a huge positive change in our society!
That day, we set out to build Marsplay.
We spent hours trying to understand everything that is wrong and broken today about discovering the products that are the best for you.
We talked to hundreds of people about what they think should be fixed.
We tried to understand what emotions are triggered when a person shops and dresses up.
We closely studied the current online shopping behaviour vs the offline shopping experience.
Most importantly we tried to understand — Why despite so many options available for online shopping, enabling every single person to look their most stylish and confident selves remains an unsolved problem?
What is it that gets in the way of dressing well and feeling confident? Why is it still hard to find the products best suited for you?
And we uncovered three things —
1. Shopping is all about the experience
The experience around shopping and the validation of their choices is so important. That’s why people prefer to shop with their friends.
“Shopping with friends is such an event. You meet a girlfriend or two for lunch, then amble through the mall or down the street together perusing items and sharing opinions about what might look good on the other person.
I think it’s something about when your friends encourage you try and buy outfits that you yourself wouldn’t, it feels kind of great!”
— says a 19 year old female we interviewed.
It’s not just about the products you buy. The feeling you get after making a purchase is immensely gratifying!
Currently, this social experience is missing in online shopping platforms.
Online shopping is a much lonelier experience. All the social elements that lead to a great experience are completely missing.
2. Figuring what to buy is a BIG problem
Fashion trends, ideas and inspirations are crowd-sourced — derived from people rather than brands. Most purchases are inspired by a desire to buy something we spotted on someone — be it a friend, a celebrity or a fashion influencer.
Currently, the online shopping experience greatly misses out on the inspiration element.
“Maybe online shopping is great for people who know exactly what they want to shop. But for me, the biggest problem is to figure out what exactly will look good on me and what exactly is in trend.
When I shop online there is actually quite a big disconnect. It’s quite hard to imagine how those products will look on me. I see the outfits on models who look very different from me and don’t depict a personality I can connect with.
It’s nothing like seeing them on real people!
- says a 22 year old working professional we interviewed.
Seeking inspiration is one of the most essential element of shopping, and inspiration comes from ‘people’ rather than brands.
3. Fashion and the influence of social media
In earlier times, rise of trends used to be determined by what celebrities wear. In the current Internet-savvy world — where Mashable reports that adults in the U.S. spend an average of “11 hours per day with digital media” — things have changed.
With the advent of social media, anyone with a great taste in fashion is capable of influencing local fashion trends.
Innovators in fashion curate amazing styles and they inspire other people through their outfits that they share online. Fashion trends emerge from people like them because people are able to connect to their body structures, lifestyles and personalities so much better.
“I love decorating and styling outfits,” she told us. “The texture and colors — I can think of just the right thing to tie it together. It’s so fun to see what’s new, and share styling tips with my followers”
Nikki is also a widely followed fashion blogger. Her audience follows her styling advice and truly connects to her style stories.
There are thousands of style curators like Nikki. They are widely loved and followed by people seeking fashion inspiration.
Currently, there is no way for people to shop directly shop styles of people like Jules. And this is a huge disconnect between discovering products you love and buying them.
Wouldn’t it the best to be able to shop styles of people you admire? To see which pieces of clothing look great together? To be able to shop the looks created by people as worn by people like you? People with diverse body types, complexions and styling sense.
We built Marsplay on these thought points. We started on a mission to build a platform where fashion is about what it really is — the people, and not just the brands.
A platform where you don’t see products, but people you connect with sharing what they genuinely love.
Curious to know what Marsplay is all about?
Marsplay is a place for you to share, discover and shop styles as worn by people you love.
But, how do we do that?
As of today, there are visual storytelling platforms for almost everything.
But there isn’t a single platform that gives them the right tools to share their unique style stories. So we set out to build that.
A tool that enables anyone to share their looks and tag the products that they wear. Along with that, we built in social experience into the product.
People interact with these style stories, love them, share them and add them to their own collections.
They can discover and buy looks according to their taste and every time a purchase is made, the style creators earns incentives from the same.
At the heart of Marsplay, we have a vision of empowering creators by giving them the freedom to express their true style and monetize from the looks they post on our app.
This way they are always motivated and your Marsplay feed is always filled with the best looks that you can shop with a single click without leaving the platform.
On Marsplay app, you don’t discover products, you discover people that act like your online shopping buddies who guide you to make best purchases.
People like you and me, people from all walks of lives, people with all kinds of body structures, with all the varied forms of styling sense, with all of their unique and humane stories.
This makes it so much easier to connect with them than any model that you see online, making online shopping for you as easy as shopping at a retail store with a friend.
It is the most humanised way to shop.
Marsplay isn’t about any brand.
Because, we believe empowering every single person to be a brand of their own, to express their true style and identity, to share what they really love to wear and to share their own story.
On our platform, you are the creator, you are the brand.
Through these features and tools, we have tried to build in happiness into our product.
We feel it’s possible to create happiness and that is the mission we are on.
You can download our app from here
P.S. Be friendly! Reach us anytime at hello@marsplay.co
