Looking to draw a bit more attention, 72Lux, based in New York, introduced on Wednesday a new platform called Shoppable for Merchants that lets e-retailers selling most any type of product market their wares on publishers’ Web pages. This marks a new approach for 72Lux, which previously developed a white-label platform for selling high-end apparel and beauty products on health, exercise, and lifestyle content sites.
The increased diversity of products—and the openly branded portal—is a way for more merchants who have Web-based stores to attract more consumers, says Heather Marie, founder and CEO of 72Lux. “Most [sellers] don’t have a lot of outlets for marketing,” she says. “[The platform] can get them in front of a lot of large publishers and a large audience.”
Shoppable for Merchants can be used by anyone with an e-commerce site—such as an Etsy or Shopify store—to market, distribute, and sell products to a vaster audience. Using a self-serve method, merchants upload details about their products to the platform, which runs on websites that belong to content publishers in 72Lux’s network. Publishers that host Shoppable for Merchants earn commissions on the product sales. By opening up the categories to include children’s apparel, gadgets, books, and other items, Marie hopes to expand upon the more than 23,000 brands already in her company’s catalog.
Founded in 2011, 72Lux is an alum of accelerators 500 Startups and First Growth Venture Network. In July, Marie was named one of this year’s Women in Digital by L’Oréal USA, an award given by the company to three women founders of tech startups who get the chance to pilot their ideas with the cosmetics brand.
The advent of Shoppable for Merchants, with its self-serve systems will free up 72Lux to work more with midsize and smaller online merchants, Marie says. “Prior to the launch, it would take just as long for us to set up a partnership with The Sharper Image or Best Buy as it would to setup someone that had just one product to sell,” she says. That forced 72Lux to focus on working first with larger merchants while some of the little guys waited to be integrated into the system. Marie believes the new platform will give her company more flexibility to serve a broader swath of merchants. “Our large goal is to make any type of content Shoppable,” she says.
