I am new to blogging, this is my first foray into sharing tips and information with the blogging community. My purpose for setting up this blog is to share my experience in buying clothes online from popular American stores. Are you "jilak" with the merchandise you found in Singapore and baulked at the prices? Well, I am and have not bought anything for quite some time until I stumbled upon online buying. I have heard about online buying but shunned it because I thought it was too troublesome and harbored many unknown factors like no deliveries shown up or shoddy goods delivered or visa cards information stolen, etc.
I had been avoiding online purchases until Black Friday came to my attention. I first read about it last December and curiosity brought me to check up the promotions offered in US departmental stores.
Then, I was totally hooked to the excitement of Black Friday. Everything and all the fashions that I was looking for was in America. The prices were fantastic, they were what I could afford.
The problem was how to buy them? Scouring the internet gave me some information but they were just that - information only. I took the plunge and put information into practice. After some hiccups in the initial learning curve, the rest is rather easy. So for those of you wanting to buying online in American stores, here are the steps -

1. Register for paypal as most American stores dont accept non-American visas for online purchases.
2. Register for www.hopshopgo.com  account. Some stores dont ship internationally, even if they do, a minumum purchase of over US$200 is usually required. So you need hopshopgo to buy for you and accept your purchases. I bought from different stores and got them delivered to hopshopgo that will store my purchases free for 30 days. Once you are registered for hopshopgo you will be given an American address to accept your purchases. The address is something like this 17146 NE Sandy Blvd, c/o SGP-xxxx, Portland, Oregon 97230.
3. Wait for all your purchases to arrive and then click to shipped. Read hopshopgo shipping rules to get the best value for shipping. Sometimes you need to request repacking into smaller package to save on shipping. Its advisable request the stores to pack clothes in plastic envelope-type packages when ordering. There was a time my purchase of 3 tank tops (about 1/2kg) was packed in a box and I was charged the volumetric weight of 1.5kg when shipped.

There are more to share on how to be a savvy shopper but for now I have to close.
The next time I will tell the best place to shop for blouses, skirts and dresses.

My favorite - a Narciso Rodriguez blouse and surprisingly cheap. Its very well made and comes with a finely tailored camisole which was an added bonus.