While we are already seeing a lot of mixed carts indicating that a two-sided effect is achievable, our current model assumes that creators will funnel in the majority of traffic to their own stores. The creators we work with have already build a direct channel with a fairly large and unique set of people (anywhere from 50K-millions). Size and other parameters of their audience is what determines whether this is a suitable fit for them. Since we rely on data to make that decision, a strong social media presence is necessary at the moment.
Etsy and Shopify are great e-commerce platforms, but creators still would have to do all the work of understanding what products will work with their audience and that is data that we will be able to provide based on our current and future portfolios on our marketplace. We also solve the rest of the equation for them, translating their culinary content into commercial products through in-house R&D, packaging design and we physically manufacture all products and manage delivery and customer service as well. So for them it is as simple as signing a contract with us and then earning revenue within a few weeks.
Exactly, we leverage Shopify which helps us spin up new stores very quickly. As we further build out the platform and learn more we can always look into a custom build but as you said, our priority is launching many successful stores in a short amount of time.
To help with the understanding around the name, as we mentioned above, we actually launched Global Belly with a different concept. It was our own food brand, direct to consumer food products to help you make global cuisines at home. We pivoted over the last 6-8 months into this current model and we felt that the name still worked but it could be something to explore in the future.
Influencers is a "broad" term. Right now we work with influencers who are culinary experts and have built a brand using original content in their own field of expertise. Additionally, they represent a gateway to an audience of 50K to several millions, who are interested in their type of content. Their audience has its own characteristics of age, income level, interests and preferences etc. that is relevant for us to understand, as we launch products catered just to that audience
Thanks for the feedback on the website - we are working on it right now!
Yes - we ship through a 3PL (3rd party logistics company) and we build that cost into our pricing. This actually helps us save money since we don't have to invest into our our facilities. The 3PL ships every order that comes in within 12 hours. Right now shipping is 2-5 business days as we only use 1 warehouse. As we leverage multiple warehouses from the the 3PL across the country, our shipping time will come down to 2 days.