PARK SLOPE — Shoppers who want to support local businesses can now do so without ever leaving the house.
A startup called Shoppinhood is letting shoppers browse Park Slope stores' inventories online and then delivers purchases to their doorsteps for free in just 60 minutes. Shoppinhood aims to provide the swift delivery of services like Amazon Fresh while drawing its products exclusively from Park Slope shops and delivering only to local customers, said founder Jonathan Rosen.
“We're trying to create a way for people to easily search their neighborhood and drive more traffic to local businesses," Rosen said.
Rosen has recruited about half a dozen stores to participate in the recently launched service, including the small women's clothing boutiques Otto and Kiwi, and the children's shop Beva.
Shoppinhood charges a 5 percent commission to stores that use the service. Prices on the website are the same as they are in the stores.
Rosen, a 34-year-old computer programmer with an MBA, started Shoppinhood because he was "shocked" that there still wasn't an easy way to search neighborhood shops' inventory on the Internet. With no online presence, mom-and-pop stores often lose customers to big Internet retailers, Rosen said.
Lion in the Sun signed up for Shoppinhood as a way to promote itself, said Dave Morris, who co-owns the stationery shop with his wife. The store — which opened on Fourth Street off Seventh Avenue in 2002 and moved to the corner of Seventh Avenue around 2006 — sells some custom stationery online, but Morris said he and his wife liked the idea of connecting with local shoppers.
“We constantly have people that live in the neighborhood walk in that don’t even know we’re here, so there’s a market out there,” Morris said. “How do we tap into it, that’s the question. This might be the answer.”
Christine Alcalay, owner of Kiwi at Seventh Avenue and Carroll Street, signed up because customers often don't realize they can buy popular products such as Spanx, a top-selling shapewear, at her store.
"I hope that it becomes something that's a resource for the neighborhood, kind of like a local Amazon where you can search for things in the neighborhood," Alcalay said. "Anything more local is great for small stores."
Rosen named the service Shoppinhood as a play on the English folklore figure who stole from the rich to give to the poor.
"It resonated with me because it ties in with Robin Hood, taking from the big corporations and giving to the local businesses,” Rosen said.
So far Shoppinhood's only users have been Rosen's friends and a few other people he's asked to test the site. His next step is to market the startup to its target audience.
Rosen wanted to launch Shoppinhood in Park Slope because neighborhood residents like to support local shops. If Shoppinhood finds an audience in Park Slope, he wants to expand to other areas.
“Park Slope is our test neighborhood,” Rosen said. “It has a combination of a lot of cool small stores and people who want to shop local, so the thought was, if it will work here, it will work anywhere.”
