Three Rising Trends – Mobile Commerce, Social Shopping, and Ethical Consumerism; Each Provide Unique Ways to Bring Retailers and Consumers Together.

An increasing number of modern shoppers are using apps for their convenience, more customers are adopting ethical values when it comes to shopping and we all feel more comfortable buying new products based on recommendations from friends, family or existing customer reviews.

Ethical consumer spending reached an all-time high in 2019, with the total market reaching over £41bn according to The Guardian. Other rising trends include app retail and mobile commerce, which BigCommerce expects to account for 54% of total eCommerce sales in 2021. These trends coupled with social referrals to eCommerce sites growing by 110% in only two years according to eMarketer, outpacing all other types of referral, highlights how consumer behaviour is rapidly changing.

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Co-Founded by Alix Cope and Fin Cope, a new and exciting platform called Bazar is the latest name to ethical social shopping and they bring a new twist to the trend. Bazar is a marketplace app which brings together buyers and artisans, micro-sellers and brands committed to ethical, eco-friendly and sustainable products.

‘Bazar’s vision is to revolutionise ethical consumerism, enabling customers to explore and buy verified ethical, eco-friendly and pre-loved items within a few simple taps, in a unique single, interactive, social marketplace,’ says Cope. This revolutionary app was launched March and is now available for download on the Apple Store and Google Play.

Prior to the launch, Bazar underwent a significant technology undertaking working with Opace, a Birmingham web development company who specialise in open source platforms and technology. Speaking with David Bryan – the Founder and CEO at Opace, he commented ‘When we were first contacted by Bazar, they were part way through the app development and needed support with regards to the overall technology approach and strategy in light of our experience with open source. We were in talks for some time before the initial project with Opace commenced but we were all confident in the way forward and that our two family-run businesses could work well together.’

Delighted to work with Bazar, the project with Opace involved developing their corporate website, providing pre-launch digital marketing campaigns and undertaking a 12-month web development and integration project. The mission was to allow established shops and retailers to sign up to Bazar and carry out the end to end process of bulk managing products and sales using a secure web-based dashboard.

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Fully integrated into the Bazar app using a mixture of bespoke API frameworks and open source technologies, the Bazar dashboard went live in February this year, shortly followed by the app.

‘For Opace, this project has been a large and ambitious technical undertaking. Due to the ethical values and business model of the client and existing technical knowledge within their business, they opted to use open source for the dashboard development as this could then be integrated into the proprietary app code and APIs that had been developed previously. The end goal was to provide Bazar with an online solution that was flexible, portable and would mean that they weren’t tied into any one technology supplier or developer. Given our own values and philosophy, we were of course very happy to be involved with the project,’ Bryan continues.

What makes Bazar so different? It is built on the inspiration of family members Alix and Finley Cope who wanted to connect buyers and sellers to form a community of ethical consumerism, making the app the first of its kind.

‘The project, like most integration projects of this kind, was challenging at times. However, we pushed through the obstacles and were very pleased with the end result which allows retailers to upload and manage their products, bulk upload inventory, view and manage orders, get sales reports and much more. There will always be improvements based on user feedback, but we are very much committed to the project and we are looking forward to a long relationship with the team at Bazar,’ Bryan explains.

‘Bazar is one of a new breed of shopping apps, which are belief and values driven. Our marketplace app will be adopted by morally and ethically conscious consumers. These consumers, like us, believe in the principles behind the app which include the adoption of conscious consumer buying through ethical online shopping. Through working with Opace and our other partners, we’ve been able to meet key milestones and launch this year,’ says Cope.

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