Seattle startup BevyUp is introducing a social shopping service for online retailers that allows groups of people to browse, chat, and tag items together.
The company, founded in 2011 by Microsoft veterans including CEO Mauricio Cuevas and backed by unnamed angel investors to the tune of nearly $1 million, charges retailers for each shopping session undertaken on their site using BevyUp.
Collaborative shopping leads to higher order values and conversion rates, among increases in other e-commerce metrics, the company says, citing its own test deployments. The company’s platform—added to each Web page with a one-line HTML script—allows shoppers to invite friends and family to join them via Facebook or email, chat via text and video, and co-browse, among other features.
“Shoppers that want to browse and buy online with their friends and family are currently resorting to tools that were not designed for shopping—like Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, etc.—to try to make multiparty purchasing decisions,” Cuevas says in a statement.
The company says categories best-suited to collaborative shopping include apparel, jewelry, and real estate.
BevyUp is eyeing other potential business models as well.
“We plan to create new revenue sources based on the data we collect on shoppers’ sentiments and buying preferences for individual products,” Cuevas says in an email. “For example, we will enable retailers to offer shoppers real-time and personalized recommendations, etc.”
The company also plans to raise more capital, with a Series A round planned “in the near future,” he says.
