Reuters -
End in sight to Lebanon's crippling Internet problem
BEIRUT, Oct 5 (Reuters) - For Sara Darwiche, it has been more than problematic running her fast-paced Internet company out of Lebanon, a country with Internet access that is among the worst in the world.
The "invite only" website ChouChic.com gives its members the opportunity to buy surplus stocks of fashionable clothes at discounted prices. It works on the idea that the scarcity of the clothes coupled with the time limit on sales -- 48 hours to a week -- will nurture impulse buying and push up sales. The strategy is called flash selling.
But for ChouChic's main customers, who are Lebanese, there is nothing flashy about buying online here.
"Sometimes the website cuts and people think the sale is over. It really affects the quality," she told Reuters. "We open our sales everyday at noon and for some reason the Internet usually cuts out then for five minutes."
For a company aiming to sell the majority of stock in the first ten minutes of a sale opening, connectivity issues can be devastating.
"We needed a lot of modifications to compensate for the slow Internet," she said, adding that the website was now hosted in the United States. "For luxury fashion, it needs to look like the goods are in front of you so the resolution of the photos needs to be high. But we had to lower the resolution as upload speeds were too slow."