A retailer's primary role may be that of curator and tastemaker, but that doesn't mean that the crowds can't pitch in to help. Online indie clothing retailer ModCloth asks its customers to help choose which items to take into production.

ModCloth launched its Be the Buyer initiative two weeks ago. The voting process is reminiscent of t-shirt purveyor Threadless. But whereas t-shirts are almost a commodity from a manufacturing point of view, ModCloth sells dresses, shirts, jackets and skirts that are more complicated to produce. Which is where the virtual buyers come in. As ModCloth explains: "sometimes there are designs that we absolutely adore, but the designer can only put them into production if they make a large quantity. As a small company, it’s difficult for us to make these big inventory commitments without knowing if you will love the designs as much as we do."

ModCloth's fans currently have 61 designs to vote on. They're encouraged to add comments on each design, and to share their voting decisions on Facebook and Twitter, turning the voting process into a useful marketing tool for ModCloth. If a design is taken into production, customers who voted for it receive an email notification as soon as it's available, allowing them to be the first to buy and wear it. Winning designs will normally be for sale a few weeks after voting ends.

While the concept won't work for every retailer or manufacturer, it's definitely one that many could benefit from, both by making customers feel more involved and by taking some of the guesswork out of buying decisions. (Related: Furniture shopping with the crowds.)

Website: www.modcloth.com/storefront/products/be_the_buyer
Contact: support.modcloth.com

Spotted by: Margarita Barry

BrandNew Stores aims to turn fleeting pop-up shops into a chain concept, creating fixed spaces where brands can temporarily present themselves in a regular retail environment. Its first branch opened in the Dutch town of Amstelveen last month, where Alfa Romeo used the shopping mall space to present its new Alfa Mito model. It's all about experience marketing: companies can use a BrandNew Store for a few weeks to present a product or service, or to reach out to new and existing customers without going for immediate sales.

Targeting premium retail areas where unhurried leisure-shoppers are more likely to explore a client's offerings, BrandNew Stores will add locations in Groningen, Den Haag and Rotterdam later this year, with more cities to follow in 2010. The stores will be decked out with video screens, interactive floor projectors and other elements that make it easy for brands to present themselves.

Exclusivity has been a major element of the pop-up phenomenon, and brands have mostly limited their temporary attention-seeking abodes to major cities like London and New York. By creating a nationwide network, much of that exclusivity is lost, and the concept becomes more of a regular marketing tool. Which has its benefits: brands can reach a much wider audience, and being able to design once and then move everything to another city significantly brings down the cost per location. Since rents are still down in most malls and high street shopping areas, now's the time to bring this to other countries. (Related: Brands to take turns running airport store in Glasgow.)

Website: www.brandnewstores.com
Contact: info@brandnewstores.com

Last month, we reported on Milk Made: a Manhattan members club for artisanal ice cream. Operating on the same principle—food produced in small batches and delivered locally to pre-paying customers—is Dulcinea. The young baked-goods company, also based in New York, delivers 'a wholesome indulgence' every Wednesday. Customers subscribe per month, paying USD 28 per week.

Past deliveries include six jumbo rhubarb muffins, a blueberry lemon pound cake, and a half dozen strawberry scones. Dulcinea uses produce from local farms, choosing organic and sustainably produced ingredients as much as possible. Like the roaming restaurants we've covered, the subscription/members model used by Dulcinea and Milk Made is a great way for fledgling entrepreneurs to get a foothold in the food business, creating a steady income and a client base for other parts of their business (Dulcinea, for example, also does catering). Entrepreneurial foodies in other cities—what are you waiting for?! ;-)

Website: www.dulcineabaking.com
Contact: emma@dulcineabaking.com

Spotted by: Danielli Alejos

Real-time price search has arrived, and with it some unexpected bonus features for consumers. German site Apnoti claims to have the first search engine to index prices for the German, American and French markets in real time. Currently in beta launch, the engine crawls over 65 million items in more than 10,000 affiliated stores for each and every search request, presenting users with a comparison of products' price trends over the past four weeks and current prices, accurate (in theory) to the past few seconds. Apnoti differentiates itself from other price comparison services which usually rely on daily updates by their operators, claiming that these services cannot cope with the price fluctuations that often occur throughout the day.

According to Apnoti's creators, sudden price drops and fluctuations of up to 90%—usually due to retailer error—are a regular occurrence. To help their German users take advantage of these mistakes, Apnoti launched another purported web first: Preispanne.de ('price breakdown'), a free email alert service for huge price drops. Users enter their email address and select which product categories they'd like to monitor. When a price drop of over 50% occurs, they will be immediately alerted by email so they can pounce on the super-bargain before the retailer has a chance to correct it. Web store Otto.de recently learned this to its cost, when they received 6,534 orders for a EUR 2,000 MacBook mistakenly reduced to EUR 49.95.

Ethics aside, the services offered by Preispanne and Apnoti meet the demands of two powerful consumer trends: transparency and real-time everything. Online retailers will have to stay on their toes if they're to stay in the game! Meanwhile, opportunities abound for entrepreneurs who can make the most of real-time transparency. How about a cheeky webstore off the back of Preispanne's alerts?

Website: www.preispanne.de
Contact: www.apnoti.com/support

Spotted by: Susanna Haynie

UK consumers spend some GBP 315 million on sex products each year, according to retailer LoveHoney, but not all towns spend equally. Thanks to LoveHoney's new UK Sex Map, it's now plain for all to see which areas invest the most in their erotic lives.

In creating its Google Maps-based tool, LoveHoney began by taking an anonymous sample of more than 500,000 orders placed at its online store. It then aggregated that data into regions that match population statistics from the UK Census and added in data representing sales from other retailers and manufacturers. The result is the UK Sex Map, which shows annual per-capita spending on sex products for towns with populations of 10,000 people or more. The map is updated monthly, and all data are anonymised and aggregated, so no personally identifiable information can be seen. Instead, heat-map colours reveal a town's spending habits at a glance, with green representing areas that spend about the same as the national average, dark blue indicating those that spend a lot less, and red and white flagging hot points. Also visible, meanwhile, are the particular types of items the various towns are spending on—vibrators or condoms, for example—with links for quick purchase on LoveHoney's site. Users can scroll through the map for browsing purposes, or they can search by town name or postal code; included on the map, not surprisingly, are also sex-related establishments in each town. LoveHoney invites proprietors of such places to list their businesses for inclusion on the map, while users themselves can make their own recommendations.

Customer involvement appears to be an ongoing strategy at LoveHoney—it's also in the midst of a contest to design a new sex toy—but its sex map promises to directly increase sales as well, both its own and those of listed businesses. It's all thanks to today's sophisticated and cheap (if not free) online mapping tools and databases, which make it easier than ever to display information in map format. Time to see what Google Maps could do for *your* bottom line! ;-) (Related: Nightlife mapping tool uses GPS to reveal hotspots — Crowds create heat maps of hot gigs at music fest.)

Website: www.lovehoney.co.uk/sexmap
Contact: www.lovehoney.co.uk/help/contact-us

Spotted by: Judy McRae