Kim Kardashian must not have ever been a member of Columbia House, because she’s decided that it’s a good idea to start a shoes-by-mail company, ShoeDazzle, that operates under the same model.
Ahh, Columbia House. I remember thinking that it would be a totally awesome deal. Buying CDs at the mall was like sooooo expensive… But it takes a level of organizational skill that my teenaged brain had not yet developed to avoid being sent the dreaded (and usually awful) album of the month. There was a lot of ‘return to sender’ mailing happening. And, I had exhausted all of the non-sucky albums in their catalogue after my initial order. I tried to combat this with optimism, thinking that I could expand my musical repertoire by randomly picking a few interesting-looking albums each order. That’s how I wound up with the Skinny Puppy 12 inch anthology. But I digress.
Lets think about how this model will apply to footwear. Kim’s “monthly membership society” will charge you $39 and send you an “extraordinary” pair of shoes, each month, chosen for you by her and her army of “fashion experts.”
To start, you take a fashion survey, to help the computer robot experts determine which shoes you’d like best. I thought that was a neat idea. Of course, when it gets to the part when you give demographic information, things get amusing. For example, this question (which I thought I would put in super girlie PINK!):
In your free time, you like to: (pick one)
- Go to a movie
- Meet friends
- Talk on the phone
- Work out
- Go shopping
Like, omg, I like to go shopping and talk on the phone!!1 Do shoe-lovers not read books? (or um, fritter away their hours on the internet?) I’m just saying, some options outside of the total teenage bimbo stereotypes would maybe be a little more representative.
I looked at the “gorgeous” shoes they offered up as an example of the fabulousness slated to come your way should you subscribe, I can honestly say that only two of the lot don’t strike me as absolutely, heinously fug. I would not wear most of these if my life depended on it. They’re the oh-crap-I-got-a-Celine-Dion-belts-out-holiday-carols-album Columbia House equivalent, in shoes.
A new pair of shoes each month for only 39 bucks sounds good in theory, but I think it’ll have the same shortcomings as Colombia House: people are busy and forgetful. If they forget to cancel on a fug shoe month, too bad. If they end up not liking the shoes that come to them, they have to go to the trouble of boxing them up and mailing them back. Not to mention that it completely erases the fun and theraputic process of shoe shopping from life. Nope, I think I’ll stick with my spontaneous shoe therapy, thanks.
