caprilynn

Thank you!! :)

In order to use Instagram Shopping, a seller needs to already have a website (current popular options are Shopify, Squarespace, Wix, etc.). These websites are time-consuming to setup & update, especially if you're a reseller with constantly-changing inventory. Most of our sellers just need a simple platform to facilitate the checkout but we do have sellers on our premium Website Plan that includes IG Shopping.

It takes the average person 1-2 weeks to setup a Shopify site, and then you have to upload all of your listings to Shopify manually which is time-consuming. We realized that these sellers' Instagram posts are essentially product listings because they feature a picture, the item name, price, & details so instead of the seller having to upload every new item onto Shopify, they can setup and update their Thryft site with all of their product listings in <1min. We're specifically focused on sellers who are already doing the process of posting on IG to engage with their customers and grow their business. If you're @abitchforbrandy specifically, you're selling thrifted clothing so every item is unique and that creates an even bigger pain point when it comes to updating your Shopify site with constantly-changing inventory. Also, we realized that the sellers we're targeting don't necessarily need all of Shopify's customization - they just need a platform to facilitate the checkout. This article from Forerunner is a great illustration of this: https://medium.com/forerunner-insights/the-next-revolution-i...

Thank you!

Thank you! Right now we leave it up to the sellers to create their own FOMO & decide how to use the drop feature. Right now, the drops don't expire after a certain time period automatically, but that is a really cool feature idea! The two most common things we've seen are sellers whose drops immediately sell out (in which case they just delete the drop from their website) or sellers whose drops don't fully sell out, and it that case they typically leave the drops on their website moreso as curated collections for people to shop after the typical drop window has passed.

Cool, thanks!!

Thank you! :) While Depop & Poshmark are 3rd party marketplaces, we see our product as more of a tool to help micro & small businesses sell products directly to their audience on Instagram

IG Shopping is what Instagram has built to allow you to tag products from a website in your posts. In order to use that feature from Instagram, you have to have a website. Thryft sellers use our product to allow their customers to purchase from the link in their bio (for no monthly fee). If they want to be able to tag the photos in their pics, that's a separate thing, but we can set that up for them through IG Shopping (this feature is part of one of our premium monthly subscription plans for $6/mo). Thank you for brining this up - I can definitely see how that could be confusing to potential sellers. We'll figure out a way to redesign that!

Thank you! Dang, that looks super cool! I'll definitely reach out - I already have tons of questions about your experience building Penny! I appreciate it! :)

Great question! From what we've heard from our initial sellers, they really like the social features of Instagram that allow them to build a personalized brand and connect with their customers on a deeper level. With Depop specifically, sellers have to pay a 12% fee per transaction, have to upload all their product listings individually, and buyers have to create a Depop account before they can purchase through their bio link which isn't ideal. We noticed most of these thrift accounts post pictures of the items they're selling so we figured why don't we make those shoppable - this way they don't have to upload their products again to a site like Depop, especially when a large chunk of their purchases on Depop may come through Instagram (this varies depending on the seller)

This is great feedback, thank you. We have $0 monthly costs to use the product to sell on Instagram, however we do still charge a transaction fee + the Stripe fee. We thought that for the IG seller community, it would be good validation to see if people would start out paying a transaction fee to use it. But your point makes a lot of sense - definitely something for us to revisit!

Thank you!

Thanks so much, appreciate it!

Thank you for pointing letting me know! We just relaunched our website so that's very helpful feedback.