startupi

The first Monday of this year a new virtual store called Ninui was launched. I spoke to Karina Rehavia, one of the founding partners of the store, to try and understand a little more about their business. Ninui works in market niches and explores products made by hand and vintage items. In the future they will launch a section dedicated to hobbies. It’s easier to understand all these areas by visiting the store.

Karina told me that she was always interested in vintage and handmade items. When she tried to purchase those kinds of things online, she couldn’t find anything, and that gave her the idea of developing Ninui.

Everyone who’s read the book about the long tail remembers that niche market items often give results as good as top sellers. This explanation was made based on Amazon, and in speaking to Brazilian businesses that pursue the long tail I discovered the conclusion is reliable.

This virtual store is all about the long tail. It’s vendors present - on infinite virtual displays - products made by hand or vintage items “potentialized” by the web as new possibilities for someone in some place who is looking for exactly that item. Each vendor registers and runs his own store within Ninui.

Ninui grew from the hands of owner Karina and another partner and was 100% funded by their own investment. I discovered this virtual store in a statement by Mackeenzy, one of the organizers of CP Labs who cited Ninui as one of the startups that had applied to the investor panels.

Karina was very excited to be part of CP Labs:

For us it is an excellent opportunity to be in the world’s biggest internet event. But also it’s an area where the focus of the activities is the entrepreneur. We hope to meet possible partners and investors. No other place is better for that.

We’ll see each other there!