What's in My Handbag

I'm torn about this site.

It's a beauty site that's trying to take a fresh approach to shopping for cosmetics and makeup. They use magazine layouts to display the contents of the handbags of various beauty aficionados, with clickable links to the products they contain. They used to use this to sell a handful of brands; now, they're focusing on providing samples instead.

On one hand, I find this really compelling. The layouts are much more attractive than, say, Space NK, and I understand that they're trying to add a social networking aspect to the site, by encouraging customers to register the products they already have, and those that they'd like to have.

However, this is where it falls down, too, because I simply don't have time to commit to interacting on yet another site. This would be fine, but What's in my Handbag asks me to apply for samples, and it's a competitive process. Because I don't interact much on the site, I never receive any samples. Therefore, I can't be bothered to look at the site anymore.

I think this is a great idea that needs adjusting - the owners of this site need to realise that being an enthusiastic social networker is not the same thing as being a committed buyer of high-end cosmetics.