Arabnet Arabnet

Co-founded by Sara Darwiche and Dina Azar, Chouchic is a flash sale website that offers top fashion labels. Flash sales websites represent a win-win situation for both sellers and consumers, allowing retailers and suppliers to sell surplus stock within a short period of time and buyers to benefit from highly discounted offers. This concept however is still nascent in the region, and the Chouchic team had to fine tune the model to accomodate for the local market.

One major challenge that faced Chouchic after launch was educating people on flash sales. Offers, for example, initially lasted 48 hours, but were later extend to a full week, as most people were still unfamiliar with the concept of flash sales and inquired about certain products after the offer was over.

Membership was also changed from invitation only to subscriptions, as the team realized that first option didn’t prove popular in the local market and resulted in a high bounce rate.

Other flash sales websites currently operational in the Middle East include Sukar and MarkaVIP, the latter having recently secured $5 Million in series A funding. Chouchic, according to Sara, differentiates itself by focusing exclusively on mid to high-end products and introducing brands that are not currently available in the Middle East, in contrast to the “mixture of whatever they can get their hands on” offering of competing sites.