A new app has launched for retailers that love Instagram but can’t derive sales from it.
Instagram has become a social media staple for many Australian fashion retailers, including Sportsgirl, Zimmermann, and Show Pony.
Since debuting in 2010, it has become one of the world’s fastest growing social media channels with 100 million monthly users.
Together, this group of users posts a staggering 40 million photos every day and follow a huge range of brands.
Sportsgirl has 78,000 followers on Instagram, while local leggings brand, Black Milk, has a staggering 781,000.
Yet many labels still use the Facebook-owned app as a brand awareness tool, rather than a direct online sales driver.
This is primarily because Instagram doesn’t link users to websites on its posts, unlike Facebook and Twitter.
Enter a new Instagram-like app for retailers: Keep.
Keep debuted on the Apple app store last month and markets itself as a new way to buy what other people already have.
The web and mobile platform helps users figure out what other people are wearing and buy the items they’re wearing.
It works by prompting users to follow other Keep members, and the ‘keep’, ‘share’ or ‘like’ posted goods.
This leads to each user having their own ‘Feed’, which ends up looking a bit like a hybrid of Instagram and Pinterest.
Keep also promotes trending items and features a new guest stylist every week.
The app has been endearing rave reviews on Refinery 29, Glamour, and Instyle the US since its launch last month.
“Keep gives users the option of buying the same shirt (on Etsy), liking it (just as users do on Instagram) or keeping it,” says trend website, LSN Global.
If Keep takes off, it could be a useful tool for online retailers to reach audiences in a genuine space and actually make money of this interaction.
Brands currently featured on Keep include Free People, Valentino, Rag & Bone, Christian Louboutin, and Asos.
