Kyle
A conglomerate of online stores is nothing new to the internet, heck Amazon’s been doing it now for over a decade, however WallShops, a Eugene Oregon based startup, has reinvented the online mall. We get pitches 24 hours a day here at nibletz and every single pitch is revolutionizing, re-inventing, has the best ever, the most ever, etc etc etc, so when WallShops said they brought the shopping mall experience to the web, we brushed it off as pure startup talk. That was until we started poking around.
Wallshops has literally brought the mall experience online and it’s really about one simple function, a right left arrow at the top of the page. This feature will most likely take the form of a swipe in a tablet or smartphone implementation of the experience but it’s like you’re walking through the mall.
For instance we started with the category “Action Sports”, first I got QuickSilver then with a swipe (well actually hitting the right left arrow) I was at Vans, Element, Volcom then so on and so forth. Now really this sounds really simple, and it is, but there’s no experience like it just yet.
If you go to any of the major mall companies like Simon Malls, you go to a local mall site and then you’re looking at a list of stores and phone numbers. Other online shopping sites with multiple branded retailers make you sift through back buttons,menus, categories and keywords. The Wallshops experience is simplistic, beautiful and makes you feel like you’re in a virtual mall.
We got a chance to talk with Patrick Millegan, one of the co-founders of Wallshops and actually the only one of the founders not in the Kersey family, the other founders are all brothers. Check out our interview below.