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Interior designer launches e-store based on popular blog
[Tue 26/07/2011 03:22:25]
 An interior designer and shop owner’s blog has generated so much interest around the world its creator has set up an online store to give more people access to her one-off creations.
Anna Spiro’s Absolutely Beautiful Things is a web diary which documents her thoughts, inspirations and work for clients. Set up in 2006, it has had more than 10 million hits and led to many requests from fans outside Brisbane for access to the products displayed on the blog and available in the Black & Spiro shop.
“We have a growing readership from overseas and interstate and we get constant requests for pricing on things we put on the blog,” Spiro says. “We need to do the [online store] because we have a growing number of people who want to access our goods and products [which are] unique.”
Launching later this week the online store will also be named Absolutely Beautiful Things to reflect the readership of the blog. Unlike most web shops which have pages and pages of listed products, Spiro’s venture will feature a single room or table setting where customers can click on the item to find out price and buying information.
“We are interior designers primarily… what we do is pull things together for our clients. Our online store is going to be very similar to our bricks and mortar store… rooms done and beautiful things in the rooms that people can come in and buy and take home and they can see how it all looks. So our online store is going to be a series of seasonal vignettes.”
Spiro explains her online store is meant to reflect the feeling of walking into a bricks and mortar shop, something that is missing in most e-tailing ventures.
 “I’m hoping it will be something very new, very exciting and a different way for our online shoppers to shop, because I feel when I shop online you don’t have that amazing experience. You walk into a bricks and mortar store it’s all beautifully arranged and you go ‘oh wow look at this’, however, with online stores… it’s just page after page [and] you don’t get that amazing feeling,” she says.
Interest in the Absolutely Beautiful Things online store is very high. Spiro has already had many enquiries and while she admits she is nervous about the project she doesn’t believe it will take away too many customers from Black & Spiro.
“It’s all very much a learning process for me at this stage. I hope [it doesn’t take customers away] because we love seeing people and we love talking to people. This online store is more about our clients who can’t come to our store in Brisbane. I’m thinking about it as a place for our international readers and our interstate readers to access our goods.”
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