Shopt will give you the opportunity to always have your girlfriends opinions on potential purchases even if, as happens often at Northeastern, you are on completely opposite schedules and don’t have time to shop together. By sharing pictures of products you wish to purchase and the price with friends and fellow fashionistas you can help determine if it’s a good purchase, or even if there are possible discounts on the item. Shopt will give retailers the opportunity to better position products that are most often Shopted to create sales out of all their unrealized potential sales. In terms of social networking, Shopt users will be exposed to, and share a community with their friends and other people who love fashion and love to shop. So it’ll be its own social network, but there will also be a way to link your Shopt account to your Facebook or Twitter to share items to, or get feedback from, a larger group of people. s
Shopt founders Christian and Martin spend as much of their free time collaborating on advancing Shopt to the next level as possible. Christian is currently finishing up his last semester at NU and interning at MassChallenge, a venture accelerator/start-up competition based in Boston; while, Martin just accepted a job at G&P Management, doing property management for their buildings along Newbury and Kenmore Square to pay the bills.
Inspiration
These two had been trading ideas for various business opportunities since last Fall. They spent countless hours debating which of their ideas would gain momentum and had the most potential for success. Martin and Christian wanted to make sure it was something they felt they related too so they could put their whole hearts in to the company and not just be in it for the money. They tossed around ideas ranging from rooftop farming in downtown Boston to something that would take on Blackboard. Martin described the process by saying, “Any problem that we stumbled on during our day, we’d brainstorm on a potential opportunity. We settled on Shopt because we’re both pretty big on clothes and sneakers, and felt there was a better way for customers to organize/share all the awesome things they find while shopping, and also help them decide on a purchase.” Their inspiration came from a day of shopping when they realized there are so many things they thought were cool, but weren’t ready to buy. They described it as a dilemma where, as a shopper you’re like, “should I buy this now? Wait until it goes on sale? but what if there’s only a couple of my size left?” The two recounted several instances where they had waited, and end up forgetting all about the item. They felt both the retailer and the consumer are losing out when that happens; they are developing Shopt to solve this problem.
The Future of Shopt
In 2 years, if all goes well, the duo expects that the app would be up and available for download on as many platforms as possible (i.e. iOS/iPhone, Android, and Blackberry). They expect to have a solid user base/community who continuously use Shopt to discover, track, and get feedback on the items they want to buy. Martin and Christian also are looking to make solid partnerships with specific retailers where their customers love to shop. They would love to grow from just the two of them to a complete team of workers dedicated to their mission. With hard work and determination they look to launch Shopt as the next logical evolution in Social Networking across multiple platforms and reach the success levels of previous Northeastern social start-ups.
Currently Shopt is available in the testing phases on Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. At the present moment everything is being done manually by Christian and Martin but they encourage people to join the network and start Shopting! They are hoping to build a small community who will really get engaged in the products and comment on each other’s wish list albums. Their goal is to have people get the experience with the process of using Shopt whenever they’re indecisive about a product, taking pics of the item’s tag, and conversing with their friends and other fashionista’s about the things on their wish lists. They are currently looking for an iPhone app developer and encourage someone to, “holler at [them] if you’re awesome!” The more feedback they get about what their customers want and need the better their application can be once fully developed.
There are many ideas in terms of technologies that can be incorporated into the Shopt concept. The two gentleman are highly concerned about making the user experience to be the best possible; they know that no matter how ‘attractive’ your product is, when it come to social networking it is the experience that really sells it to the consumers. They will be working with retailers and local boutiques on what’s most feasible and useful for the users to get the proper information about each product they take a picture of, and how to best open that communication between the potential customer and the store (for notifications of sales, etc..). At the same time, there’s also technology that they can take advantage of so that retailers can optimize their promotion strategies and improve revenue.
Plans for the expansion of Shopt
For Christian and Martin, Boston is a great place with great resources to have a start-up, as their is so much innovation all around this city. Starting small the duo plans on working with local stores. As awareness of Shopt grows in Boston there are definite plans to expand in to the New York City market due to the sheer number of stores/boutiques, advertisers, and brands that you can find in NYC. They know that creating an amazing experience for customers in Boston is essential to launch the service and expand in to bigger markets such as NYC and LA. Currently, Shopt is self funded (hence why Martin is working in real-estate). They are applying to MassChallenge, and if accepted then some of the capital required for growth will come from them and eventually venture capitalists.
Shopt is currently in its infancy but has great potential to become a huge hit much like the late Napster and the ever present Twitter. Martin and Christian will continue to develop and push the application until shopting becomes an acceptable phrase, tossed around in popular culture.