Today Kriyari, Inc., a Web 2.0 storefront network creator, launched their latest Online retail project, a unique personalized shopping service, called iStorez. Earlier this week I was able to get together with Kriyari’s CEO, Anand Jagannathan, to discuss iStorez in more detail. In addition, I took advantage of the special site launch preview and went through the steps necessary to create and publish my own personal storefront to shop from on iStorez.

The concept behind the newly launched site is wonderful and see all kinds of potential for an “opt-in, opt-out” shopping service like this within the Online selling space, for both merchants and shoppers, but especially for retailers who already run regular email marketing campaigns.

iStorez already has some biggest names in eCommerce participating in their unique shopping experience, including many of the hottest 100 retailers. With strategic partnerships, innovative features and a unique concept to create a more personalized shopping experience, it won’t be long before iStorez becomes a regular destination for today’s most savvy Online consumers. It’s certainly found a permanent home in my shopping bookmarks.

iStorez Personalized Shopping Overview:

Think of a glossy magazine featuring 1000s of current deals and trends directly from top brands and stores. Only this time it’s online, on-demand and one-click away from you. Think of a storefront as an extension of a retail store’s website. It is similar to the physical store window displays that you see as you walk through a mall. At iStorez, you can browse 1000s of storefronts from 100s of stores without ever leaving your warm chair and hot cup of coffee. And iStorez always presents the most relevant and newest storefronts based on what you are looking for.

With iStorez you can:

• Discover cool or trendy products
• Find the latest product releases or brands
• Shop from a wide variety of top stores
• Browse other shoppers’ personalized storefronts

Navigate your tabs to see the different store offers:

The iStorez tabs make it easy to browse the different store offers within your personalized storefront. Simply click from tab to tab and get instant offers from the stores you have chosen to include within your personalized shopping experience. Arrows to the left and right of the end tabs make it easy to navigate in either direction. High resolution graphics, new products, hottest offers and trendy brands are all part of the iStorez shopping service.

Enter search terms into the search bar or use tags:

Simply enter in words or phrases related to what you’re shopping for and get instant results from iStorez massive product, brand and store index. The results are very accurate, for instance I entered “shoes” as a search term and iStorez brought back results for Endless, Shoes.com, Nordstroms, Steve Madden, Shoemall, Puma, Zappos and more. The tags for “shoes” included leather, payless, styles, boots, sandals, fashion and more related to the original query term.

Browse by category or by store or brand:

Once you have created a custom shopping experience on iStorez, you can browse “your mall” by navigating your categories, stores, or tags. There is also an advanced search option to browse within your personalized storefront. Users can easy navigate between the store names, classification or even deeper through the use of personalized tagging. Easily search categories, sub-categories and alphabetically.

Creating Your Own Custom iStorez Storefront:

Some easy steps to help you create your iStorez storefront:

1. Sign in or Sign up to begin using iStorez
2. View the top right drop-down menu and select, “See all stores”
3. Click the “My Mall” menu and select “Manage My Mall”
4. A full list of available stores should appear organized into categories
5. Click any check boxes next to the stores that you shop at most and click Add
6. You have successfully created your personalized iStore storefront
7. View the top right drop-down again and select “See [username] stores” to refresh
8. Share your personalized shop with anyone (preview.istorez.com/m/stores/username)

Anand Jagannathan, CEO of Kriyari, Inc., Answers 10 Questions About iStorez:

How did the idea for iStorez come about originally? What’s your main mission?

The idea for iStorez came about when a mall-averse person like me found myself frustrated-to-death with online shopping. Why isn’t there an online equivalent to browsing through the shopping inserts in the Sunday newspaper? Why is it so hard to find out what’s really new and on sale? Email newsletters are great when I need them and can find them, but most of the time I don’t and I can’t. Having founded an e-mail marketing company previously, I thought to myself, how cool would it be if there was a way to intelligently collect, organize and search e-mail newsletters across hundreds of stores and brands? And along those lines, why not transform those newsletters into visual, impactful storefronts as well? And that was how iStorez was born.

Our mission? Simple. To introduce consumers to a brand new online shopping experience that’s just as fun as strolling through their personalized local mall!

How can shoppers benefit from using a site like iStorez?

iStorez combines a ‘patent in process’ storefront creation engine with Web 2.0 technologies to deliver continually fresh, timely and relevant content for shoppers. What that really means is shoppers no longer have to sign up for email newsletters to find out about promotions, or search their in-box for what’s new or hunt across the Internet for special coupons! An added plus is that many of our promotions are exclusive and not generally available on other sites. For those who read in bullets, iStorez gives you:

• Recency: only see what’s current, not last year’s trends and expired promotions
• Relevance: only see what you asked for, not thousands of product listings
• Personalization: only see content from your favorite stores, not everyone’s

What makes iStorez shopping experience different than a traditional comparison shopping engine?

Wow. A lot. For starters, it’s well known that comparison shopping engines (CSE) perform well for products with SKUs, like electronics, but rather poorly for soft goods like apparel, furniture, gifts, etc. This is because soft goods are less feature-based and you often want to know what’s in season or what’s hot, before making a purchase. CSEs, unfortunately, don’t have a strong notion of recency or seasonality. iStorez, on the other hand, focuses on making it easy for consumers to find out what’s new and what’s on sale across their favorite stores. It delivers a customized shopping experience that dynamically changes based on what a visitor to the site is looking for (e.g. handbags, iPod) or a season theme (e.g. valentines, spring fashions). No more looking through thousands of product listings of products you’re not really interested in!

What are some of the stores shoppers can expect to find within iStores?

You will find many popular favorites as well as niche stores in our network, like Coach, Burberry, Aeropostale, Nike, Puma, BabyCenter, Cole Haan, Aerosoles, Sony, The Apple Store and many more.

What are some of the useful features iStorez offers its users? Store partners?

iStorez users can:

• Build-a-mall: Select only the stores you like and build a personal shopping experience
• Share-a-mall: Share your mall with friends using an iStorez link that’s uniquely yours
• Tag storefronts: Tag products you like or even create a visual gift registry
• Search storefronts: Search the rich content by promotional theme (eg. Valentine’s), by product category (eg. women’s apparel), by product item (eg. handbags), by store (eg. Lancome) or term (eg. coupons, free shipping)

Store partners/retailers can:

• Target demographic groups: Advertise to the groups that are most likely to respond to your brand, eg. shopaholic SUSAN, wall street WILLIAM. (Edit by eCopt: I also built my own iStorez Storefront)
• Upload custom storefronts: Leverage our granular targeting to deliver different experiences to different shopper profiles, eg. male-targeted storefronts for male shoppers, etc.
• Get detailed reporting: Measure the effectiveness of your advertising real-time
• Get full-page advertising: Keep your merchandising message and advertise your brand in all its glory

In essence, retailers get a 3-in-1: the Branding of display advertising, the traffic of Search Marketing and the Conversion of e-mail marketing!

Can any store become a partner with iStorez? How can I include my store or products?

Yes, any store with an e-mail marketing program can partner with iStorez with zero effort on their part. Stores without an e-mail marketing program can also participate easily by leveraging the retailer tools that we have built. For more information on partnering with iStorez, please contact sales [at] kriyari [dot] com.

What future features can we look forward to seeing on iStorez? Anything in the works?

Lots. We are continually working towards our mission of making iStorez a shopping experience that’s just as fun (if not more!) than strolling through your local mall. Get on our newsletter list and we’ll keep you posted. Absolutely no spam.

Is there a way for me to network with other shoppers? See what they like?

Yes. Today, you can share your mall with friends and check theirs out to see what stores they shop at, what products they like and what tags they have added. We have some major initiatives to add to our social networking features as well as tie into the leading social networks!

How will a personalized shopping experience, such as iStorez, change the way consumers buy Online?

Well, consumers’ expectations are going to rise. They are going to expect to see store experiences that are relevant to them, not advertising. They are going to expect to see the latest and freshest content every time, not outdated trends and expired promotions. They are going to expect to get recommendations for new and interesting stores and brands based on their shopping preference. The level is definitely going to rise.

What are some of your favorite online stores? Which would you include in your iStorez profile?

Wow, that’s a tough one since it changes all the time. You can check out my current list (http://preview.istorez.com/m/stores/anandj), but then in a few weeks it can be different, and that’s the beauty. After I have bought my iPod and camera accessories, I don’t want to see electronic stores. Come to think of it, I better start looking for Valentine’s.

Conclusion & Final Thoughts:

It is so great to be able to preview and review new and innovative ideas like the newly launched iStorez personalized shopping service. I love it when someone sees a need for a particular product/service, or a need to make one better and creates a solution for it. In instances where this happens the solution is often times really beneficial since usually the idea is sparked from a passion or interest in the idea topic.

I see a lot of potential for a service like iStorez, it kind of blends high-resolution print or email ads, with deals, new items, promotions and trendy products within a social comparison shopping environment, very creative. I do have some recommendations for the layout, usability and some personal feature requests that I plan on sending through isTorez feedback form. I won’t be too picky since they only launched today and are probably still testing a lot of the main functions. If you have feedback, or just want to send iStorez your opinion, simply email feedback [at] istorez [dot] com or fill out their feedback form.

I can’t wait to see how iStorez’ launch goes and how they begin to improve their already useful shopping service in the future. I was really surprised by some of the stores who are already participating, there are many big names.

To Anand & iStorez Team: Thanks for the chance to get a sneak-peak trial run of iStorez guys, I think you have all done a wonderful job putting everything together in preparation for your beta launch today. Please congratulate your team and let them know to keep up the good work. Please don’t hesitate to keep us posted on upcoming iStorez improvements or feature releases, I would be happy to cover the service more in the future.

To our readers: I hope you all enjoyed this little interview style QandA with Anand from iStorez. Look for more eCommerce interviews like this one with other great shopping services, industry professionals and company founders. As always, you can subscribe directly to the interviews category feed or our main articles feed to get updates in real-time from any RSS feed reader. What are you waiting for, get feed already!