As a fashion blogger I pretty much shop for a living (every girl’s dream, right?). That said, finding the best deal possible is important to me, especially when shopping online!
When I connected with the people behind the app, Mavatar, it was like I had died and gone to online shopping heaven! In a nutshell this app searches the web for the best coupon codes, deals, and sales, for specific online retailers. Want a little black dress, but don’t want to spend an arm and a leg? Just add the items to your virtual shopping cart and they will automatically be run through Mavatar’s system. Essentially you can compare lots of different items from different retailers in one place. I sat down to chat a little bit with co-founder and President of Mavatar, Susan Akbarpour, to learn a little more about this app and what it’s all about.
Mod City Magazine: First off, tell me who you are!
Susan Akbarpour: My name is Susan Akbarpour. I am the co-founder and President of Mavatar Technologies. I have over 20 years of hands-on experience in building successful and innovative businesses in media, management consulting and investment.
I received a MS in Management from Stanford University and co-founded Mavatar, an optimization engine for online shopping in 2011. As the founder of Mavatar, I oversee the strategic and creative direction of the company and bring my proven background in marketing, communications and business development to my areas of responsibilities in Mavatar.
I’m a mother of one cute 9 year old daughter that reports our apps’ bugs directly to my engineers, proposes marketing messages and gives me her feedback on our new features! She is completely integrated in my business and is not upset at me for working an average of 18 hours a day!
Ok, now tell me about your app!
For online shoppers, Mavatar is about the ability to have a continuous experience across brands, across formats and across devices for consumers who are digitally-savvy and already well-informed about a product’s features and prices, and expect online tools, apps and gadgets to do more than they can do.
For fashion influencers and trendsetters, Mavatar is the promise of a new way of thinking, content creation and monetizing their hard work at a click of a button.
For retailers is an efficient way of marketing and coming up with honest offers that are relevant to a specific real-time need of a “Connected Consumer” instead of the costly guesswork of analyzing user personal behaviors, purchase patterns, social network affinities, website visits, and other burdensome data mining techniques that annoys users to the extend that she ignores 93% of their offers and recommendations!
Mavatar is the only smart shopping app that helps consumers easily compare products from 20 top retailers like Saks, Bloomingdale’s, Gap, the Neiman Marcus family and Sephora and purchase with the peace of mind that they’re getting the best deals, every time. This is because Mavatar automatically applies and carries the highest value promo codes to items all the way through to checkout. Mavatar also alerts shoppers of price drops notifications and threshold discounts.
What do you want fashionistas to get out of your app?
We want to take the guesswork out of shopping for fashionistas. If they’re looking for a pair of red shoes, they can easily compare all red shoes from top retailers in one place from multiple devices and buy them at the best price without searching and validating coupons (iPad, desktop or iPhone.) Mavatar also allows fashionistas and all shoppers to easily share their shopping carts, Collections and any coupons with their friends and social circles.
You guys work with fashion bloggers too, tell me more about that.
First and foremost, we enable fashion Editors to publish their content easily, with just one clean link to their Mavatar Collections. These personal Collections also double as social shopping carts, with shoppable products they are recommending to their fans. No more wasting time posting multiple messy looking links in their posts, removing the dead links and getting paid only for a limited time since the promoted links are expired! We help them monetize their content forever, and there is zero maintenance required once a Collection is created; this means they can even continue to add or remove items after it’s created. Every time a sale is made from their collection, they get a percentage of that sale. They can also recommend and feature products through our searchable Editors’ Pick section in Mavatar marketplace and are welcome to contribute to the Mavatar blog.
To see Mavatar in action, watch this amazing video, produced by Sundace Film Festival award winning Producer and Director Ondi Timoner.
This is one free app that is definitely worth the 5 second download. It has changed the game of online shopping for me and I can guarantee you will love it too! Check them out on Twitter and Pinterest as well! And while you’re there, visit me too! Follow me on Twitter, Instagram, & Pinterest!
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