Sintez-rus, a traditional and online retailer of Sony electronics products in Russia, has opened its first online retail outpost for Sony-branded products on Russia’s largest social network, Vkontakte.ru.
The news was announced yesterday by e-commerce solutions provider Magazinga, which provided the software platform for the new outlet. Magazinga, launched last April, is a joint venture between local investment firm Softline Venture Partners and Russian firm Creative Development.
Founded in 1993, Sintez-rus currently operates 10 official Sony Centre brick-and-mortar outlets in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kazan, and Samara, as well as an online store. The company had revenue of one billion rubles ($36 million) in 2010.
The new online Sony Centre sells some 1500 Sony products in 20 categories.
This is the retailer’s second experiment with social networks. Sintez-rus previously launched a Facebook store, which now has more than 1100 “likes” on the world’s largest social network.
Both social network outlets are built upon the AJAX-based Ecwid platform developed by Creative Development. Ecwid enables users to easily set up Web shops on any site.
One by one, Russian retailers are coursing to social networks. On February 15, Groupon Russia made its offers available in “Cool discounts,” an application of Odnoklassniki.ru, another leading Russian-language social network owned by Mail.ru Group. In March, M.Video, a leading Russian specialized retailer, announced that it will soon make electronic products and home appliances available for purchase on Facebook and Vkontakte.ru.
