Bluefly.com aims to help consumers dress their best with its discounted designer apparel and accessories. Now it hopes to make its customers smell – and see – better with two separate extensions to its product line.
Bluefly launched an online fragrances boutique on its website Thursday. And earlier last week, it announced it would sell designed prescription eyewear through a website it will co-own with manufacturer A + D Labs.
Both fragrances and eyewear are natural extensions of its existing product line, which consists of designer clothing, handbags, shoes and jewelry, says Brad Matson, Bluefly’s chief marketing officer. Though Matson says the merchant used “intuitive understanding of its customer” to expand its product offerings, comments on its blog, on Facebook and Twitter helped fuel the decision.
“We’ve learned that people who buy fashion apparel also buy jewelry, and we think fragrance will also be a big add-on,” Matson says.
The 661 fragrance SKUs (430 for women and 231 for men) are not in the site’s recommended products engine. Matson says that’s because Bluefly is not looking to push fragrances in that way yet. The category has its own tab on the Bluefly home page, and is also being promoted in its carousel.
Meanwhile, the Eyefly.com partnership with A + D Labs is expected to launch in the second quarter, says Matson. Bluefly will own 52% of the site, which will sell men’s and women’s designer prescription eyewear for $99, and link back and forth to Bluefly.com.
“People own dozens of pairs of shoes to go with their outfits, but they only own one pair of eyeglasses,” Matson says.
The site, which will offer 440 styles of eyeglasses, will include a social selling element, Matson says. The customer can upload a photo and see how a selected pair of glasses will look. That photo can also be uploaded to Facebook so the customer can get feedback from friends.