CozyCot is a social networking website for women from East Asia and Southeast Asia (especially Singapore). It was founded by Nicole Yee in 2001, as a hobby website dedicated to Asian women. Subsequently, the concept of sharing product and service information and opinions gathered a steady community, turning it into a venture business. CozyCot users interact in the forum and by reviewing beauty products (the review system produced reviews for over 35,000 products), also in the live events organized by the staff. The importance of its review database is increased by an iPhone scanner software developed by CozyCot, which allows users to pull up product reviews from the website by capturing the barcodes with cameras in their iPhones. In April 2010, CozyCot launched the newspaper with the same name.

History

CozyCot started in November 2001 as an Internet portal based in Singapore, where members could post reviews and share shopping and fashion tips and opinions.^[4] As the online community grew, the founder Nicole Yee began organizing live events for members, in order to get together. Several fragrance brands took notice of the growing community and offered to support her in terms of providing event venues.^[3][5] There followed other commercial projects (workshops, product launches, online shopping etc.), which (together with a presence of the website in the top 100,000 Alexa ranking) mooted the decision to turn it into a venture business. In 2002, Nicole Yee founded CozyCot Pte. Ltd., as the managing company of the portal, in 2007 she hired the first employee,^[2] then, in 2008, she invested $100,000 in the website.^[6] Its revenue exceeded US$1 million in 2009, with a 115% growth.^[3]

The community kept expanding, as readership of Singapore women’s magazines continued turning toward online content,^[7] developing the portal into Singapore's largest online women community for beauty, fashion and lifestyle, with over 500,000 unique visitors each month.^[8] It expanded also geographically,^[2] in the rest of East Asia and among Asian women from USA, Australia and New Zealand, CozyCot becoming one of the local websites "putting Singapore on the global map".^[4] Since 2006, forums.cozycot.com ranks first every year in the Hitwise Singapore 'Lifestyle - Womens Sites' industry (and from January - June, 2010 also in `Lifestyle - Beauty' industry) based on monthly average market share, at Hitwise Singapore Hitwise Top Ten Awards.^[3][9][10]

In October 2009, MindShare announced the launching of an online reality show on CozyCot. The show, named House Husbands, is focused on a group of men looking to prove they are equally adept in the boardroom as well as in the family’s baby room. The cast would compete in various parenting tasks for prizes.^[11]

The company developed also an offline presence, opening Ninki-Ô,^[12] a 1000-square-foot retail outlet in Orchard Central^[3] and launching the newspaper CozyCot.^[13]

In May 2010, CozyCot appointed Nielsen for web analytics and audience measurement^[14][15][16] (the website is audited by Nielsen since 2005).^[17] This produced Asia-Pacific Region’s first real time CRM database profiling and tracking, its results showing increasing orientation of the public towards online content, both in researching and in voicing opinions about products.^[18]

Community

The users of CozyCot, named "Cotters",^[19] interact in the forum and by reviewing beauty products, also in the live events organized by the staff. A system of accumulating points (according to the activity in the site) is enabled for giving rewards for members' support. A reward (featured also in The Straits Times^[20]), consisting of a $16,000 Birkin bag, has been offered to the member having the most points by the time the millionth person signs up.

Forum

The initial forum in the early years was mostly dedicated to sharing shopping and fashion tips and opinions. It expanded then to cover home and living, motherhood, career, finance, technology and weddings.^[3] These themes are termed "channels" (28 as of April 2009).^[6] The forum has been remarked for its diversity of topics, some (like those on spas and fragrances) noticeably missing from most other forums.^[19] The main language used is English, but there appear also (partial) postings in Chinese. A CozyCot debate on plastic surgery, with over 1000 comments and 8 million hits, has been covered in Hankook Ilbo, regarding the specific Chinese views on this topic and their cosmetic tourism in South Korea.^[21]

Reviews

CozyCot has a product library of over 35,000 products, which are available for members' reviews. An iPhone scanner software allows users to pull up product reviews from CozyCot's website by capturing the barcodes with cameras in their iPhones.^{[3][22][23][24]}

Events

CozyCot plays host to events that allow members to interact with one another, through workshops, focus groups, road tests etc. In collaboration with Citibank, CozyCot organized the CozyCot Holy Grail Private Party on 6 - 7 September 2008, to celebrate her 7th year anniversary.

Related publications

In April 2010, a newspaper named CozyCot was launched as a 25-pages free monthly publication with a print run of 200,000.^[13]

Awards

CozyCot has won Singapore's First Women's Site Award at Hitwise Singapore Online Performance Award for four consecutive years since 2006.^[3]

References

External links

• Official website