Amuze Has Earned Viral Instagram Fame As The Home For Discounted Luxury Fashion

Founder and owner of Amuze, Jonathan Chesner, recently spoke to Haute Living about the rise of his business and its recent successful trip to New York.

Photo Credit: Amuze

When it comes to describing Amuze, forget everything you think you know about luxury online retail. “I would not put us in any other category,” says Chesner. “We are definitely paving our path in this industry.”

Amuze is a digital purveyor of luxury clothing, accessories and goods. You name the top luxury fashion house, Chesner and his small, yet highly competent team probably have something available in their inventory.

Chesner, who is based in Milan, has been operating Amuze completely from Instagram since 2019 on @amuzeinc. The shift to the social media landscape was not intentional, but as Chesner puts it, it was certainly a blessing in disguise. “When I shifted to Instagram, everyone thought I was crazy, but I saw that there was an interest and I just stuck to it,” he adds.

Chesner justifies his exclusivity toward Instagram by explaining that all of us, for better or worse, are constantly on the social media platform. “Everyone is constantly watching their stories. So, because I have a product that many people are interested in, at a very competitive price point, combined with the fact that I mix my content and add pictures of me and my family if we are on a trip or if we’re hanging out, the client feels like they know me and they can trust me.”

Amuze recently opened a pop-up shop in New York. The digital marketplace had previously held temporary physical shopping points in the past, but Chesner did not expect the success that would come from his recent pop-up venture. “I went to New York not knowing whether people would show up, honestly. We’ve done pop-ups in the past and thankfully, they always worked out well but it had been two years since our last pop-up venture. I did no influencer marketing, which I had done for past pop-ups, and we happen to have sold the most we’ve ever sold and got the largest turnout from any other pop-up run we ever conducted.” The two-day stint at a retail space in Soho attracted upwards of 2,000 orders, according to Chesner.

Photo Credit: Amuze

Due to his extensive experience in the fashion goods industry, Chesner knows how to select only top-of-the-line products for Amuze. In fact, it is Chesner himself who hand-picks each and every item in the Amuze inventory. These items are nearly always current season items, which is practically unheard of, considering the competitiveness of Amuze’s prices and the quality of their pieces. “We’re selling current season good anywhere from 25-40% off their retail price, depending on the brand,” adds Chesner.

One of Amuze’s claims to fame on Instagram is their habit of conducting giveaways for highly-coveted luxury pieces.

“I always hated giveaways. They tend to make you follow x, y and z page and at the end of the day, the new followers are not authentic. I decided to keep this initiative within my following. Now, you got to understand that this was done a little over two years ago when at the best of cases, we would get about 150 likes on a post and our engagement was pretty low. So, I decided, ‘Rather than a giveaway, why don’t I offer a product for a really cheap price?’ And for whatever reason, it just connected and we got about three or four thousand likes on that post and the same number of comments. From then on, it became our thing.”

What began as an exercise in raising engagement for their Instagram page, sky-rocketed Amuze into a viral sensation.

“After doing these giveaways every other week or so, I decide to change my approach a bit and rather than just have our followers comment on the post, we asked them to tag somebody in the comments. We went from getting between four to five thousand comments per giveaway, to about 20 thousand comments and two thousand new followers,” Chesner reveals.

As the giveaway interactions on Instagram continued to trend positively not only on a follower-basis, but for business as well, Chesner realized that these were engaged and targeted followers he was amassing. However, nothing prepared him for his biggest giveaway to date.

“One day, I decided to do something crazy and I just walked into the store and bought a classic double flap Chanel bag. By the way, for these bags we use in giveaways, I’m literally just walking into the store and paying full price. These are not bags from our inventory. So, from this Chanel bag giveaway, we got something like 160 thousand comments and about seven thousand new followers.” As of the writing of this article, @amuzeinc boasts 166 thousand followers.

” I look forward to figuring out fun ways to conduct these giveaways and to grow our engagement and following because whenever I’m back in the states, the one thing I’m asked most about is when is the next giveaway. People definitely connect with them and we love doing them.”

Photo Credit: Amuze

To keep up with Amuze’s giveaways and to check out their inventory, follow them at @amuzeinc on Instagram. Who knows? You might be able to secure that Chanel bag you’ve been wanting for the holidays after all.