A recent article in Women’s Wear Daily reported on a shopping trend amongst teenagers in Singapore. Known simply as “sprees,” these mass orders from online retailers are just the latest evidence of the westernizing and globalization of seemingly not-so-foreign-now markets.

Unable to find the (relatively) inexpensive, American bargain cosmetics and mass-retail brands like Old Navy, American Eagle, and Abercrombie at their own malls, shoppers (mostly young women with pocket change to spare on trendy fashions) in Singapore and other “key e-commerce markets” place large orders to American online retailers, and split the cost of tax and shipping. As a result, a shopper can avoid the otherwise $25 dollar international shipping fee that would have made a cheap logo tee shirt from Mandee or flip-flops from Old Navy twice as expensive. The article also stated that the popularity of spree-shopping has prompted new services like ComGateway, which works with MasterCard to provide international shoppers with an American shipping and billing address so that they’re able to make purchases from companies who don’t normally do international business.

WWD reported:

“Singapore’s strong economy and wide exposure to Western brands have made the city-state a shopping hub in Southeast Asia, so it is natural that its status as a leader in the shipping trends would extend online. More than 80 percent of Singapore’s internet denizens have shipped online, making an average of five to six purchase a month, the same number made by consumers in Taiwan and China.”

The article also made note of a livejournal.com group set up by spree shoppers to organize their orders. Just one look or scroll down and its easy to see that the stuff that Taiwanese shoppers are jumping hurtles to own are the same gear I usually take for granted as mall staples that are all but completely worth passing up, though I'm sure there is some sort of tantalizing novelity for Singapore teens in foreign fashion, no matter how cheap and mass produced it really is.

But more obviously, I guess that with the popularity of American television shows, music and fast food abroad, and the connecting of cultures allowed by the Internet, the influence of young American fashions on the rest of the modern consumer world is inevitable. It’s just the genius of spree shopping that makes it affordable.