Ever wanted to buy everything in sight yet don’t have the cash? Yes, it’s an everyday problem for us too. So we are indulging in fantasy with the brilliant Fantasy Shopper website.

We quizzed co-founder Chris Prescott on the idea behind the site which is helping every fashionista to stay out of debt!

What inspired you to start Fantasy Shopper?
I had an idea similar to Fantasy Shopper around six years ago. The concept was to ‘turn life into a catwalk’ by rewarding fashion consumers with the ability to be rewarded for wearing the clothes they purchased. The more influential they were as trendsetters, the better rewards they received. It was an awesome idea and something I had brainstormed for about six months (which is a long time for me!) but it was a logistical nightmare and the technology didn’t exist to implement it. Subsequently, the idea was shelved.

Then one morning, literally in my sleep, even though I hadn’t thought about this old idea for years, I had something of a eureka moment and realised that if I just removed the real money transactions and based everything around Fantasy Shopping then the logistical problems became redundant.

I’m a bit of a mad inventor and I know it sounds cliche, but I literally bolted upright in the bed, got up, went to WHSmiths’, bought an A3 sketch pad and spent the next eight hours in a local cafe furiously sketching out Fantasy Shopper. That was back in April 2010. I polished and pivoted the concept for six months after that and then we started coding Fantasy Shopper in November 2010. We still have the original pencil sketches on the office wall today!

How would you describe the ‘Fantasy Shopper’ concept in one sentence?
Fantasy Shopper, your new online shopping addiction.

What do you think is the most unique aspect about the website?
The design direction that we took right from the start was ‘to recreate the emotional experience of real world shopping’.  While consumers appreciate the utility value of online shopping, they feel it lacks social and entertainment values which provide the more hedonic experience – an experience that 95% of females prefer. Fantasy Shopper solves this problem by centralising, socialising and gamifying online shopping.

Fantasy Shopper is not an e-commerce site with a gamification layer slapped on top to increase engagement, nor is it a social game with e-commerce slapped on top to increase revenue streams. It has had shopping, gaming and social all intertwined into its DNA from the start and that is what makes it unique.

The easiest way to answer this question is to simply try it and discover it for yourself. Our users are completely addicted to Fantasy Shopper already and even though we launched only 48 hours ago, there are numerous blog posts and tweets about their Fantasy Shopper addiction.

One of the concepts of Fantasy Shopper is that users collect Paydays which become available every hour. A Payday gives you more Fantasy Money to go shopping with. It’s completely normal behaviour for our users to collect between 8 and 16 Paydays PER DAY – that means they have logged into Fantasy Shopper for a range of between 8 and 16 hours in 24.

Here’s an excerpt from a recent blog post we discovered:

“What’s the first thing you do when your alarm sounds in the morning? Jump into the shower, arm yourself with a rather large mug of coffee. After you have discovered Fantasy Shopper that will all change. You, like me, will wake up and go straight to the laptop, clicking frantically on the ‘collect Payday’ and spend all your virtual money in the fantastic variety of real high street stores.”

There is no other shopping website that generates anywhere near this much excitement. That’s why Fantasy Shopper is unique.

What is currently in your Fantasy Shopper shopping basket?
Energy Jeans from USC, a while Herringbone Shirt from Harrods, a pale blue Luke knitted jumper from Footasylum and some All Saints Hi Tops.

How can a fantasy shopper unlock real vouchers to spend in stores?
Fantasy Shopper has some pretty nifty computer science running under the hood to identify who are the most influential trendsetters within peer networks. We also calculate brand affinity and sentiment. The more influential you are, and the more you love a particular brand, the better promotions you will receive from that brand – it’s all about personalised value.

Why do you think the internet plays such a crucial part in the fashion industry?
Because ultimately fashion is all about self expression and the internet is by far the largest platform to express yourself in the quickest possible way.

Finally, what advice would you give to budding internet entrepreneurs?
Believe in yourself. Even when all logic says you shouldn’t.

To see what the fuss is all about visit www.FantasyShopper.com