This New App Wants to Be the “Spotify for Online Shopping”

June 3, 2026

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The traditional shopping mall is making a comeback with younger generations. Now, a new smartphone app called The Mall is trying to bring that exact same experience to the digital world.

Think of it as a personalized, virtual shopping center where you can keep track of all your favorite brands, sales, and new releases in a single, organized feed.

This is something similar to what we have seen with Google’s Universal Cart.

Here is everything you need to know about how this new app is trying to fix the headache of online shopping.

The Problem: “Too Many Tabs Open”

If you love online shopping, your phone or computer probably looks like a mess of 20 different open browser tabs. You are likely signed up for dozens of annoying email newsletters just to catch a sale, and trying to keep track of when items come back in stock is exhausting.

This exact frustration is what inspired co-founders Ellie Konsker (who has a background working for major fashion brands like Tom Ford) and Sreya Halder (a computer science graduate from Stanford).

They realized that while we have apps like Spotify for music, Goodreads for books, and Letterboxd for movies, we didn’t have a single, massive database for fashion. So, they decided to build it.

How “The Mall” Works (In Plain English)

Most shopping apps have to cut official deals with brands to show their clothes. The Mall does things differently.

Smart Web Scanning: The app uses specialized software to automatically scan and read retail websites. It copies their entire clothing catalog, tracking every single item, price change, and restock.
Instant Alerts: Because the app scans these sites constantly, it knows the exact moment a price drops or a sold-out item is back in stock. It then sends a notification straight to your phone.
Organized by AI: The app uses advanced artificial intelligence (AI) to automatically label and sort every piece of clothing it finds. This makes it incredibly easy for you to search for specific items across thousands of different stores at once.

Key Features for Shoppers

When you sign up, you instantly start building your own virtual mall by picking your favorite stores. The app already has over 10,000 brands in its system, but it also has a few unique tricks up its sleeve:

Add Brands via Social Media: If you find a cool, independent clothing brand on Instagram or TikTok that isn’t in the app yet, you can just paste their social media link into The Mall. The app’s software will automatically find their online store, scan their inventory, and add it to your feed.
The “Rabbit Hole” Discovery: You can look at a specific item and instantly see similar items from any brand in the world. This allows you to easily compare prices and colors to find cheaper alternatives.
Social Sharing: You can choose to keep your virtual mall private, or make it public so your friends and favorite fashion creators can see what you are tracking.
Direct Buying: The Mall is not a store itself. When you are ready to buy something, the app opens the brand’s actual website inside the app so you can check out safely. The Mall does not take a cut of the sale.

How the App Makes Money

The Mall is 100% free for shoppers, and it doesn’t use annoying commission links. Instead, the company plans to make money by selling a specialized data tool to clothing brands later this summer.

This tool will show brands general trends—like what items people are clicking on and how rival brands are pricing their clothes. The founders emphasized that this data is completely anonymous and grouped together, meaning brands will never see your personal details.

Eventually, the app will also allow brands to pay for advertising, like sponsored billboards or recommendations inside your feed.

How to Get Access

The app has already been tested by a small group of 4,500 users. Right now, it is launching on an invite-only basis on the Apple App Store as the team slowly tests their servers.

If you know someone who is already using the app, they can send you an invite code. If you don’t, you won’t have to wait too long: the founders plan to open the app to the general public by the end of this summer.