By Alicia Fiorletta, Senior Editor
Over the past three or so years, the term “social commerce” has acquired a myriad of different definitions.
Initially, many industry players considered putting a shopping cart on a Facebook page as social commerce. After this strategy quickly fell flat, more retailers were pondering how to turn online shopping into a more interactive and collaborative experience.
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Joinem, a community-powered digital retailer, allows shoppers to purchase items together and receive top discounts. With the launch of its beta site, a select group of consumers are previewing the buying experience. The online store will be available to all consumers in early 2015, and a mobile app will be released later in the year.
In the below Q&A, Darren Waxman, CEO and Co-Founder at Joinem, discusses how the idea for the site came about, and the role that Rick Braddock, former CEO of Priceline, plays in helping the business evolve.
Retail TouchPoints (RTP): How did the idea for Joinem come about? What trends were you trying to address that currently exist in the retail industry?
Waxman: The Joinem LLC legal entity was originally formed in March 2012; however, it had a completely different business model than the Joinem of today, although it still had a social marketing overlay. The business needed to be rejuvenated, so my co-founder and I approached Rick Braddock, perhaps best known as the former CEO of Priceline, in November 2013, due to his reputation for helping entrepreneurs build out scalable, sustainable business with market potential. Rick saw the trends shaping the emerging social commerce market — the convergence of social media as a product and services research tool and mobile as a buying device (en route to becoming the dominant transaction medium) — as well as its sizable opportunity, and re-crafted the business proposition of Joinem into the collaborative buying platform powered by social networking.
With Rick on board, we shifted our entire business model and technology to create the first true social commerce business: A transaction-only medium based at the intersection of group buying with social marketing and digital commerce. Joinem’s core proposition is WePower™ group savings — the special guaranteed savings of up to 25% off the lowest online prices on thousands of first-run name brands, when the target number of shoppers will buy together.
RTP: What made you believe there was a market need for a community shopping experience like Joinem?
Waxman: We believe that social commerce is the logical, and in fact, inevitable next evolution of e-Commerce. Today’s online and mobile shoppers are already socially minded in how they shop. Brand recognition, product recommendations and even price comparisons are all driven by peer influence and social networking. According to the most recent Nielsen State of the Media report, 65% of social media users learn about brands and products via social media, and 75% indicated that they would be more likely to purchase a product or service recommended by a friend via social media. Social media is clearly an extremely powerful marketing and transactional tool, but no company to date has figured out how to fully leverage it. Our goal with Joinem is to create a socially powered marketplace where consumers can network, conduct their product research, and get the best deals on the Internet, all in one place.
To validate Joinem’s proposition of powering group buying with social networks’ influence, we conducted an extensive survey of 4,300 online and mobile shoppers, with ages ranging from 21 to 44 years old. We view these demographics as our future target consumers. Most notably, we found that 25% of online and mobile shoppers said they would definitely or probably sign up with Joinem. This represents a potential market of 30 million to 55 million shoppers.
RTP: What impact do you believe it will have on the overall retail landscape? Do you see yourself as a competitor to retailers or a supplement to the overall community?
Waxman: Joinem is the first company to monetize the full potential of social commerce. Just like Lending Club and Airbnb are front-runner business models capitalizing on emerging trends in the sharing economy, Joinem has created a platform that integrates all the major trends in retail to the business’ and to the community’s advantage. We believe that social commerce is the next wave of retail and Joinem will pave the way for other companies to embrace community-powered buying. Retailers, social media companies, mobile ad and marketing companies, technology companies, all touch a piece of the social commerce ecosystem and stand to benefit from adapting to the next generation of retail.
RTP: To date, Joinem has raised $3.5 million in funding. How will you/are you using this funding both from a product development and customer acquisition/engagement perspective?
Waxman: The $3.5 million raised is primarily being used to recruit a talented cross-functional management team, build out and continuously optimize our digital social commerce platform, as well as partner with the top vendors to provide an attractive variety of first-run branded products, selectively curated from thousands of items. Initially, the key departments we will offer will be Computer, Electronics, Home Goods, Sports & Outdoors, and Lawn & Garden. Our expert merchants will regularly expand our product array to address customers’ needs and the latest retail trends.
We are currently running a beta release of Joinem, available to a private group of savvy digital shoppers. Based on their input and feedback, we plan on making further adjustments ahead of our launch in early 2015. After the launch, we anticipate we will learn from our customer acquisition and retention programs and continue to evolve the business and product offerings.
RTP: How will receiving advice and guidance from Rick Braddock help move the brand forward? What will his experience in the retail/online worlds bring to the table?
Waxman: As the former chairman and CEO of Priceline, former global president of Citicorp, and chairman of several high-growth businesses in the social commerce, mobile payments, Big Data and mobile analytics space, Rick has had his feet in both the big corporate and startup worlds and has a unique perspective on how to apply the best methodologies from each in the right context. He has a knack for spotting emerging marketplaces and connecting the dots to larger industry trends, and translating that into accelerated growth and new ideas. Like all of us at Joinem, Rick believes in the social commerce premise and market opportunity and has provided invaluable guidance in helping the company realize the best strategy and business model to execute that vision. Furthermore, as a strong proponent of mobile commerce, Rick has served as a mentor and helped expedite the development of Joinem’s mobile shopping platform.
