Retail Education #101 : Save Money By Avoiding Blogshops.

Pretty Lass, Lovely Dress.
The actual dress is a mess!

Blogshops have been mushrooming on local shores for quite some time. They thrive on marketing 'Korean' clothing and accessories to the hapless consumer. For the non-initiated, these products are actually from Taiwan.

That said, consider why you should not shop online :

• The products are often of inferior quality, despite what the pretty lass donning the outfit in the photograph would like you to believe.
• What you see may not be what you get. Every purchase is a gamble. Think of it as Retail Russian Roulette. I'd fallen prey to these blogshops thrice and finally threw in the towel on the third purchase - The lovely dress that I'd ordered turned out to be a 'bag'. Trust me. It's not a hyperbole. 5 of us had ordered the same dress and all of us wondered what on earth that 'bag' was.
• With the lure of low prices ($10+ for a top, $20-$30 for a dress), you'll invariably chalk up more purchases, thereby spending even more than what you would in a mall. Should the outfit be a disaster (as they often are), it translates to money being frittered away for nothing. Literally.
• Texture, Colour and Workmanship make or break an outfit. What you pay is what you get. So, if you were to fork out $12 for a blouse, it figures when hems and such are found at the wrong places.
• The items in these blogshops are often sold at inflated prices. If you are in the loop and know the actual suppliers, you'd be aghast. I'd once bought a dress from a supplier at $13. It was priced at $39 in various blogshops and subsequently, I caught sight of it at a mall and by then, it was $69.
• If you're petite like me, these clothes are often way too big as most, if not all, items are labelled 'free size'. Right.

Hence, I refrain from shopping at blogshops or shops without labels, for that matter. Who knows where that nondescript dress may have emerged from?

Be a savvy shopper.

Purchase from reputable brands which allow refunds or exchanges on defective items.

After all, a quality product lasts longer than an inferior one that fades in a few washes.

Being petite, European labels like Armani, Miss Selfridge, Topshop, Warehouse, Dorothy Perkins, Zara, etc are found predominantly in my closet. Only Zara has skirts that come in XXS!The occasional American brands that fit me are Calvin Klein, Guess and Forever 21.

So there you have it, Ladies.

That's my take on blogshops.

Whenever I spot a pretty dress in a blogshop, the horror of that which had started out as a dress and its eventual appearance in the form of a 'bag' never ceases to quell all notions of clicking 'Buy Now'.

X marks the spot indeed - With trepidation, I close the offending window and flee!