Zafu Followup - Loyalty from Honesty

Earlier last week, I posted about Zafu, an online women's jeans shopping guide. Surprisingly, my review managed to get a nod from Frank Pillar at Mass Customization & Open Innovation News. He highlighted a particular point that I think too few retailers realize. Consumers, particularly those that have highly specific needs and have a hard time shopping, really appreciate and have a positive regard for merchants that don't waste their time and resources in a run around. In turn, retailers gain the trust and therefore loyalty of the consumer - something that's not so easy to come by.

I, for one, value honesty when working with a retailer's staff. If you don't have something that fits, tell me, and I'll have a positive feeling about the whole experience. Maybe I'll come back, maybe I'll recommend the store to someone else. I certainly did with Zafu. Waste my time, and I'll walk out annoyed. The trust issue is one of the reasons why I really hate it when clothing companies are purposefully deceitful in their sizing chart claims.

I had also emailed a followup to Zafu's team regarding their size constraints, and received a quick and, to my surprise, somewhat personal reply:

Hi Amy,

Thanks for your email and the wonderful review on your blog (we would like
to include it in our press section if that's ok with you). We've been
working on zafu for fifteen months now and it's just great to be getting so
many responses.

We totally understand your questions and will be dealing with them very
shortly by expanding our size coverage. When we launched zafu we realized
that we had to focus somewhere and decided upon the current offering. Our
code is to start small, do a great job and then expand steadily. I guess
it's the whole walk before you run mantra.

Over the coming weeks and months we'll be adding new products and further
expanding the range of people we can help. By the way, you may be
interested to know that if you create an account we will send you an
occasional email telling you about new jeans that will fit you.

Again, many thanks for writing to us,

the zafu team

We'll just have to wait and see if Zafu really does pan out in the coming months!