At a time when many retailers are struggling to attract customers, online retailer Jasu is actively restricting its customer base by limiting access to its website to customers based on their Klout score.
Jasu launches on Monday and will feature fashion from Australian designers including Josh Goot and Romance was Born.
For the first 10 days customers will need a Klout score of over 40 to access the e-store.
Klout measures a person’s overall online influence on a scale of one to 100, with 100 being the most influential. Barack Obama has a Klout score of 99 while most average people score around 20.
Jasu content manager Brooke Davis told SmartCompany the web retailer aimed to “make the digital act of shopping social again” by using Klout for its launch campaign.
“We want to connect with social shoppers and it is the first time in Australia an online store has gated using Klout,” she says.
Davis hopes using Klout scores to limit access will create interest while allowing Jasu to test out its online store on a small group of people.
“It’s all about shopping with social currency, people who have a social community are able to shop on the site using that currency,” she says.
“The idea of having Klout was not to have everybody come to the store straight away. We hope to get key communicators in those platforms who will talk about Jasu.”
Davis was unable to say how many customers she is hoping to attract and how many will have the requisite Klout score to access the store.
“We hope a good number of people will become a founding member and they will get first-in exclusive deals and we will really look after those people,” she says.
“It’s more being loyal to those people who are loyal to us from the beginning, it’s more about us communicating with them and keeping them informed.”
Davis says Jasu is hoping to attract everyone from fashion bloggers to “professionals who enjoys looking at beautiful images”.
“Usually a person with a Klout score of 40 and above is someone with three platforms like Instagram, Facebook and Twitter and it is someone who engages in that social world,” she says.
“We thought it was exciting technology that could work today and we thought we could also use Klout going forward.”
