The ladies that brought you CafeMom, MamasLatinas and The Stir have launched a pin-based shopping experience called The Prowl. Although the site faces the reality of just being written off as another Pinterest clone, the decision to create it was a brilliant move that will boost the CafeMom network and digital presence even more. Here are three reasons why The Prowl works.
They saw a need and went about fixing it.
“We – Kate Ward, my co-founder, and me – settled on social shopping after spending a lot of time on the competitive sites out there. We recognize that it’s a competitive space, but we just kept coming back to the fact that we both felt like there was something lacking for us on those sites,” co-founder Tracy Odell told Techcrunch. They recognized that if it was an issue they were coming across, it was probably one that their friends and followers were also having. So, they set about finding a solution themselves.
They created a new way for their existing community to interact.
Thanks to the sites included in the CafeMom network, there is already an established community and audience that The Prowl can tap. More than that, though, it’s giving that community a new way to communicate and interact. Although the shopping experience is the main feature of the site, the focus is still on the community — finding items you like to share with others, asking questions to get help from other members and helping other members with their questions.
It appeals to a broader audience than just their normal readers/users.
Of course, the CafeMom network was a built-in audience for The Prowl, but the universality of the site’s means that it does and will appeal to members outside the CafeMom circle. The Prowl is intended to be “a groovy place to hang out with other women who love shopping as much as you do.” This stands to open up the network to even more readers and contributors, and bring traffic back to the CafeMom, The Stir and MamasLatinas.
Other brands have explored creating their own platforms and unique communities to give their followers a new place to convene. Coca-Cola did something similar with the online magazine Coca-Cola Journey, check it out here.
