Otto Group has Supermodels on Display: Tatjana Patitz, Eva Padberg

The Otto Group, the second biggest online retailer worldwide (guess who is the biggest?), anounced recently that their main print catalogue for the spring/summer season of 2007 will feature supermodels Tatjana Patitz and Eva Padberg.

Tatjana Patitz follows Eva Padberg as the cover girl of the print catalogue, while Eva Padberg gets her own segment within the catalogue, calles “Evas Favorites”.

From the press release:

On the cover and inside pages of the catalogue and on www.otto.de, committed environmentalist Tatjana Patitz presents stunning fashions in skin-friendly fabrics – making the wearer look good and feel good. Top model Tatjana Patitz was particularly attracted to work with OTTO by the sustainable product range. Her commitment to organisations such as Greenpeace and the WWF identify her a genuine and credible symbol for the “Feel Good Season”. “What I really like about the new OTTO catalogue is the way it brings the pleasure of shopping and an awareness of the environment and social responsibility under one roof,” she explained today at a press conference for the launch of the new catalogue in Hamburg.

(via Das WebShopBlog)

Recommended Reading 2006-11-20

From my Blogroll:

• Flickr and Delicious Usability Review (via Google Blogoscoped)
• Do Customer Communities Pay Off? (via Exciting Commerce [german blog]))

One more reason to buy online – less “Dealer Direct Contact”

Michael Arrington over at TechCrunch blogged today on his latest experiences with buying cars online. He recently bought one via CarsDirect, which I haven’t yet tried out myself because

• I do not buy new automobiles on a regular basis, since they tend to be expensive, and
• I do not live in the US, and CarsDirect does not (yet?) cater to us European buyers.

So, why do I write about Michael Arrington’s new car? Good question, answer follows:

Michael writes that he hates the hassle of negotiating a car’s price and possible upgrades with a car dealer, that he wants to limit the time he has to spend with a car dealer to an absolute minimum – and CarsDirect helps him with that.

And there it is, one of the most overlooked reasons why shoppers prefer to browse and buy online: they feel better without direct contact to a salesperson!

And this not only when shopping for products like condoms or Viagra that few people like to carry through a supermarket, where all those snoopy neighbours are lingering about.

I can relate to that. And if you are running a shopping website, you should keep that in mind, too. Do not be intrusive, try not to up-sell too obviously, because people don’t like that, and they find other ways to get what they want.

Like Michael Arrington did when he bought his new car.