Xuba: What’s known is that it’s a social commerce startup co-founded by two of the three co-founders of Hayneedle, which is today one of the largest niche ecommerce retailers.
What’s unknown, however, is what exactly they’re building. Whatever their product is though, their team is confident about what lies ahead.
“Over the next six months we expect the business to grow rapidly and we will add great people to the team to meet that business expansion,” said Xuba co-founder Julie Mahloch in an email interview last week. Currently at 12 employees they’re looking to bring on several more.
In our post last week – “Xuba, a ‘well-funded’ social commerce startup prepares to launch” – we published nearly all of our interview with Mahloch in which she spoke about funding, timelines, team members and more.
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Today, in anticipation for this Wednesday’s Xuba Launch event at Nomad Lounge (5-7 p.m.), we’re sharing the final piece of our interview with Mahloch, her response to our question regarding social commerce.
Silicon Prairie News: Could you briefly talk about the potential of the social commerce space?
Julie Mahloch (left, photo from hayneedleinc.com): We are very excited about the huge potential in the social commerce space. Broadly speaking social commerce is the use of social media in the context of ecommerce. In the last few years, and especially with the rise of social media platforms such as Facebook, increasingly consumers rely on collaborative ecommerce tools that enable them “to get advice from trusted individuals, find goods and services and then purchase them.” Social commerce includes customer ratings and reviews, user recommendations and referrals, shared online shopping, advice forums, social media optimization, social applications and social advertising.
Xuba’s version of social commerce is leveraging the power of others to find the right product for you and to get it at a great price. Finding the right product for you can be hugely complicated in this world where we are bombarded with product recommendations from multiple sources. Xuba takes the power of our own individual needs and matches it with the power of what our friends and other people like us find works for them, making the recommendation process simpler and more satisfying. Retail is no longer just taking a recommendation from a retailer or from a journalist – now you can shop based on what other people like you found to be successful and together you can get the product cheaper than if you just purchased it on your own.
Obviously there has been a lot of excitement over another social commerce company – Groupon recently – which along with its imitators is quickly transforming the way that consumers try new products and services by offering a discount if you purchase as part of a crowd. Flash sale sites such as Gilt and RueLaLa are another category of social commerce that has been very successful based on the sample sale model of proving limited term special offers on luxury goods. Xuba is also using social commerce but in a different way and we are focused on getting the right purchase for you everyday, rather than just one off special offers. The rapid success of companies like Groupon and Gilt though demonstrate how consumers are excited to try new ways of shopping for products and services – but we believe that we are just in the very early stages of social commerce innovation and a number of revolutionary improvements will play out over the next few years.
