Increase Online Sales :: Clarins Launches Luxury Portal

In an effort to increase online sales, the French luxury cosmetics brand Clarins has launched a web 2.0 luxury portal; these types of sites seem to be poping up everywhere these days!

Their new site, OrSérie, is written completely in French, and is dedicated to those with a passion for beauty, well-being, and luxury.  A good concept, however, I for one, am not impressed with it. I don't like the name at all.  A play on words between "Hors-Série" which means "Special Issue" and "Or" which means "Gold," I feel like it leaves a lot to live up to and is not indicative of the site content.

Users of the site are free to register and exchange information about things such as their latest spa experience, their favorite luxury hotel, or their latest catwalk sighting.  There are editors that claim to read the contributions to make sure that there are no copyright issues, but I wonder how they can possibly do that  For instance, I can copy and past some content from another blog and say it is mine; how will anyone ever know? In addition, I personally do not like people editing my writing; after all, it defeats the purpose of speaking your mind about something. However,  it is now a common rule for a lot of user-generated content (UGC) sites because they want to get more quality content up, so I understand the move.

My take is this: I have read some of the content on the site and I find it very interesting, but I'm guessing that this content has been put up on the site by professional editors. My question as a user would be why should I use this platform, instead of its competitors? I have yet to see a competitive advantage.

As for Clarins, I am not sure what it brings to the site.  It is too wide and should have been focused only on beauty. Many readers who enjoy Clarins, and their luxury beautry proucts do not care to read about luxury hotels also.  If I want a one-stop-shop for that kind of general information, I'll head over to Tripadvisor because they already do it, thanks.