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Friends, from left, Terri Saeed, Alex Hill and Suzanne Jonsen launched tellmegirlfriend.com in January, a Web site that offers women outlets to Internet shopping complete with site reviews and descriptions.
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Shauna Farnell
May 2, 2006
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The days of hiring personal shoppers are a thing of the past, but refined Internet shopping is a click away at tellmegirlfriend.com.
Three girlfriends in Colorado know how diluted and time-consuming online shopping can be, so they wanted to streamline the process, especially for women their age.
"We're really targeting the 35-54-year-old age group," said Terri Saeed, who, along with Alex Hill and Suzanne Jonsen founded www.tellmegirlfriend.com, a Website that features a number of hard-to-find items from candles to facial soaps, exercise equipment to travel planners.
"Everything we have on the site is something we have found, either through surfing on our own, things we've been told about from our girlfriends or subscribers or things we've read about," Saeed said. "The three of us compile our lists and exchange them."
While Saeed lived in Vail for a few years, working as a buyer for Vail Resorts, now all three girlfriends live on the Front Range. In the midst of motherhood and post-career pursuits, all three have a knack for the Internet, and have spent a lot of time isolating its better resources and lesser-known shopping sites.
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Tellmegirlfriend.com is a Web site dedicated to giving the best online shopping advice. Browsers can find recommendations on where to buy maternity clothes, like at www isabellaoliver.com, as well as other mom-and-kid topics like where to find retro toys or personalized Chuck Taylors.
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Best of the Web
"What we can do is deliver it in an interesting, easy-to-use method," Hill said. "Even if people are computer-aware, they just don't have the time to open a bunch of search engines and get lost. We specialize in finding sites that are a little more unusual - a boutiquey kind of site instead of a department store site. Everyone knows how to find The Gap online. We're trying to find things that are a lot of fun and a little more unique."
The boutique sites on Tell Me Girlfriend are largely run by women and are categorized by clothing, accessories, food and drink, personal care, books and cards, home decor, moms and kids, gadgets and travel. The site also features brand new sections on information resources and philanthropy opportunities.
Since Tell Me Girlfriend launched in January, the girlfriends say that the home decor section has been the most viewed. Each category offers descriptions and links to unusual products and sites. The food and drink site, for example, contains links to an online farmers' market, a site selling special vodka cocktails and a link to sites selling exotic honey, vinegar and teas.
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Tellmegirlfriend.com, a Web site devoted to online shopping advice, has an entire section devoted to food and drink. Browsers can learn where to order directly from farmers' markets to where to find organic honey.
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The moms and kids section guides shoppers to sites selling everything from a $5 Juiceator ? a device to stick directly into citrus fruits for fresh juice ? audible books and newspapers and sleek maternity clothing lines.
The resources section features links to sites providing information on interior design, stress management and even ways to get beyond robotic answering systems when calling large businesses.
"When we developed Tell Me Girlfriend, we filled a void we all had," Jonsen said. "Here's something where you go to shop online and everything had been reviewed. Everything had been tested for quality control. In the resource section, you find information for everything from finding if there are pedophiles living in your neighborhood to taking care of your aging parents, meal plans - lots of different things. We wanted to focus on smaller businesses."
Unsolicited, friendly guidance
As for advertising, the Girlfriends don't make any advertising dollars on the sites they feature. The sites are discovered independently and, if two of the three Girlfriends agree they're worthwhile, they're placed on tellmegirlfriend.com. The Girlfriends then send notices to the sites to inform them that they've been selected, and often times, the shopping sites set up their own links to Tell Me Girlfriend.
"Basically, we wanted the site to be pure," Saeed said. "We didn't want any reasons to put links there except that we love them and recommend them to our friends."
The Girlfriends' money will eventually be made through advertising, once the subscriber base is large enough, but any links added on the site will befall the same selection process as the rest. And, as a former Vail resident, Saeed knows that women in the Eagle County area will find the site helpful, especially those who want shopping options without the physical presence of big boxes.
"Living in an area where you don't have access to daily amenities like Park Meadows mall and Cherry Creek, Tell Me Girlfriend is perfect," she said. "There are cool boutiques in Vail, but a lot of them are really expensive."
While Tell Me Girlfriend doesn't promise the lowest prices on links it features, the site is intended for people not wanting to break the bank.
Not like eBay
"We try to strike a balance," Saeed said. "Our targeted demographic has more disposable income than other groups. We don't want to be the bargain basement, but we want to be middle of the road."
While any guy or gal on the Web might be interested in easily accessing Web sites focused on rare models of Converse shoes or a ski simulator machine, the Girlfriends primarily set out to provide easy Internet shopping for things that interested them, and therefore, their age group.
"We're not working exclusively to that demographic, but that's our target," Jonsen said. "We all want to consider ourselves to be hip and cool. We want to be contemporary. But we don't want to be 45 looking like we're 22."
Tell Me Girlfriend is also doing a writing contest, where individuals may submit a piece about a woman who is important in their lives. For more information, visit the writing contest section of www.tellmegirlfriend.com.
Staff Writer Shauna Farnell can be reached at 949-0555, ext.14632, or sfarnell@vaildaily.com.
Vail, Colorado
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