Smartphones Are Doing to Websites What Amazon Did to the Mall
It took 20 years for e-commerce to bring on the shopping mall apocalypse. The next transformation will happen much faster.
By Kyle Stock
Young, distracted and styled just-so, Anissa Kheloufi is part of a growing genus of Instagram junkies. As the 21-year-old flits around the Paris suburb of Saint Ouen, she’s incessantly snapping photos and videos. Usually they’re of her friend Cynthia Karsenty, who preens for the camera in swanky clothes ranging from high-waisted shorts and pin-striped jumpers to big, fuzzy slippers.
It is, by all appearances, a parade of self-indulgence — a life over-edited and ultra-shared. But what the eye-rolling onlooker doesn’t understand is that Kheloufi is building an apparel empire one snap at a time, one that pulls in close to $40,000 a month. Her social media fodder sends a steady stream of shoppers to Belmiraz, the apparel company she founded after tiring of law school. It includes a web store as well as boutiques located in Casablanca and Paris. Mostly, however, Kheloufi’s customers purchase their items in the same way she sells them: by app.
“I think I have the phone sewn onto my hand,” Kheloufi told Bloomberg. “My loved ones are fed up with it.”
