CuriousCatch, Tinytrunk and ArtKred: Startups that let you sell online with a human touch

E-commerce in the Asia-Pacific region is already huge, yet the potential for growth is still massive. According to the Asia Digital Marketing Yearbook 2012, the e-commerce market in Asia’s big four — India, Australia, Japan, and China — is expected to almost double to US$497.9B by 2016.

Yet the region’s overall Internet penetration is only at a low 26.2%, well below the global average of 41%. With so much untapped potential, it’s unsurprising that many new startups have arisen to plug the gap.

If you’re a merchant looking to dip your toes into the future of shopping, LiveJournal, Multiply, and eBay are some of the popular platforms to hop onto. But there are actually many other alternatives to consider. Here, we feature three of the newest e-commerce platforms from Singapore.

1) CuriousCatch.com: Curated flash sales + video shopping site for Asian designs

Launched today, CuriousCatch.com is bringing TV sales to the web and mobile era and making it ten times hipper.

Instead of selling tacky inventions, home appliances, and gym equipment, CuriousCatch’s video shopping site hosts products like electronics accessories, handcrafted stationery, and bags from emerging boutique designers. Each flash sale lasts for 72 hours, and buyers can enjoy a discount of 15% or more.

According to the company’s CEO Daylon Soh, their focus is on quality products that are well-designed and functional. As such, the CuriousCatch team will only pick items they think suit the site’s philosophy. The site currently has more than 20 brands from Singapore, China, Malaysia, and Taiwan.

The use of video as a main selling vehicle is certainly interesting. It adds a more human touch to the buying and selling process, and far from being gimmicky, Daylon cites an observation by e-commerce giant Zappos that video demos tend to increase sales by 6 to 30%.

These videos solve another problem for emerging designers: They can use the content for their own marketing purposes, hence saving the need to make their own videos, which require a lot of technical and creative expertise.

CuriousCatch says that it has around 500 early users so far. They are mainly from Singapore.

2) Tinytrunk.com: Self-serve web marketplace for indie fashion retailers