We think this is pretty clever: today Norma Kamali launched her own online flash sale, but not on her web site. Instead, the goods are available solely through Facebook. This is a smart new retail tactic for Kamali, who benefits from Facebook’s vast network — would-be shoppers have to “like” the designer’s Facebook page to access the sale.

The discussion of Facebook’s various retail purposes has been going on for a while, but using the network specifically as a platform for retailing makes a lot of sense.  It’s flexible, and it’s easy to get a lot of shoppers to the page — after all, they’re probably already looking at Facebook, anyway.

Kamali’s pop-up will last 48 hours.  Depending on how it fares, maybe we’ll see more designers take charge of their own flash sales and subsequently promote them solely through social networking.