Heather Marie is betting folks want to simplify how they shop around the Web.
As CEO and founder of New York-based 72Lux, she previously created a universal checkout that lets people complete purchases in one place on items they found at different websites. The idea was to get impulse buyers to not abandon their online shopping carts.
This week, the 500 Startups alum launched Shoppable for Consumers, a marketplace for people to search for products from multiple online retailers and affiliate marketers.
Marie says this is a step beyond last September’s Shoppable for Merchants service, which lets online retailers market their products on publishers’ websites.
The new consumer-oriented functions at Shoppable, she says, include a wish list that lets people save items they see online but do not immediately purchase. For example, if someone sees a camera on sale at a blog or news website, they can mark it to buy later and then keep browsing the Web. Furthermore, they can search Shoppable.com, which has nearly 3 million items available from the retailers 72Lux works with.
Previously, consumers could only buy items through Shoppable that were curated for them at publishers’ websites. As of Tuesday, consumers can peruse the entire database for products they want. She demonstrated these new functions at this week’s New York Tech Meetup.
There are plenty of other online wish lists that let people tag items they want to get, but Marie says some of those startups are set up to be like features rather than actual businesses. She believes Shoppable sets itself apart by allowing people to finish their purchases from different sites in one place. Furthermore, Shoppable tracks items in the wish lists for price changes or if the inventory is getting low at a retailer.
“Anyone can add a link to list,” Marie says. “There’s no wish list company out there, including Amazon, that lets you check out within a single checkout for all the items on your wish list.”
Through Shoppable, Marie says her company also helps affiliate marketers—websites that post items for sale on behalf of brands or retailers—get credit for selling items online. Affiliate marketers can lose commissions, she says, if consumers initially click on an item they discover at a website, but then look elsewhere online for a lower price.
“Many publishers are not getting credit for their sales because of that last-click model,” she says. Shoppable keeps track of where consumers first saw products, Marie says, to make sure the commission goes to the initial site.
72Lux will continue development of its consumer tools, Marie says, and plans to leverage the database of products to make online shopping simpler. She has more ideas to mature the company, but it is too early to go into details—though it will call for more cash.
“We’re generating real revenue so we haven’t raised any additional funding,” Marie says. The next stage of development, she says, will require an investment.
