Q&A with Shopit
Shopit is an e-commerce service that enables the sharing, publishing, and selling of products and information on multiple platforms online. Products and services can be directly linked from Shopit to any web site including social networks like MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, Friendster, Blogger, LiveJournal, and Xanga.
The company is based in Brentwood, California, and currently has 18 full-time staff. It was founded in August, 2007 by entrepreneur Matt Hill. StartUp Beat connected with James Revell, SVP of Marketing for Shopit, to find out more.
SUB: What primary need does Shopit address?
Revell: Shopit enables those web users who are new to e-commerce and those who have been selling online for a long time to monetize their existing network of friends on social destinations like MySpace, Facebook and Bebo at no charge to them. With the Shopit Store App users can download the store right to their social network profile page.
SUB: How did the idea for the service come about?
Revell: Shopit was started out of a growing need for users of social networks to be able to conduct commerce by the simple means of showing products and services and items that they are interested in selling or buying from within their social network page.
SUB: Was there a specific “moment” when the founder came up with the idea?
Revell: After Shopping.com, for which Matt Hill was one of the original founding investors and employees, sold in 1999 to Compaq for $220 million, Matt saw the trend or second wave of e-commerce come in the form of shopping comparison. He felt strongly that the third revolution in e-commerce would be peer to peer commerce outside great companies like eBay and Amazon empowering commerce in social communities and everyday communication like IM chat and email.
SUB: How do users build their widgets? How customizable are they?
Revell: Shopit users can build their widget by simply downloading it. From there, they can import an existing product set from their eBay or Yahoo Store, or import the products via a .CSV file. It’s very easy to do. Customization is pretty flexible in that users can change the copy, background colors, and header image. It's been built to allow the user to play around with it, make it unique to them.
SUB: Are users able to measure the performance of their widgets?
Revell: Shopit currently does not have a tool for use to measure performance of the widgets, but enhanced tracking metric solutions are in the works.
SUB: Are users able to place their widgets on any social networking service?
Revell: Shopit’s widget is compatible with MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, Friendster, Blogger, LiveJournal, Xanga, and dozens more social networks. It's also compatible with most traditional e-commerce sites such as eBay, Craigslist, Yahoo Stores and Amazon, so users can expand the visibility of what they're already selling on eBay across their chosen social networks.
SUB: Who do you consider your competitors?
Revell: Others that are giving it a go that might be similar, but not exactly the same include Cartfly and Lemonade.
SUB: How has the company been financed to this point? Who are your investors?
Revell: After a successful friends and family round, the company closed a series A round led by Propulsion Ventures Inc.
SUB: How many users do you have, and what are their general demographics?
Revell: Shopit currently has over 200,000 stores. General demographics of our users are social network and e-commerce centric folks.
Shopit: www.shopit.com
