In every product category, there are 10% of buyers generating 30% to 70% of all sales. This is because such “super-buyers” purchase more frequently and in larger quantities than others. But how do you find super-buyers? This startup has come up with a way to attract the super-buyers of online stores. Their recipe can still be replicated to earn super-money from super-buyers 😉
THE ESSENCE OF THE PROJECT
Flash offers to create an email on its domain flash.co and use it for registration on online shopping sites and marketplaces – to receive information about orders and newsletters in the Flash app, and not on your regular email address.
Flash platform is specially tuned to recognize emails from stores, so it can reliably separate spam and unnecessary newsletters from needed emails with order information – to neatly organize them into separate sections of the app.
From the emails with order information, Flash is capable of extracting essential order details – and immediately displays them in a short and convenient form in push notifications and in the list of received emails.
By analyzing the information about the orders made, Flash over time begins to “understand” what products and services are of interest to a specific user – and does not send to spam emails with information about discounts and promotions on similar products and services.
Moreover, Flash collaborates with brands and stores willing to provide coupons and discounts to Flash users. At the same time, the platform shows each user only those offers that may interest them – based on the same mechanism of analyzing user purchasing preferences.
Also, Flash users can receive additional cashbacks on their purchases and special bonuses for the volumes of purchases made using Flash email address. Moreover, points are accrued for each such purchase, which can be used for subsequent purchases or withdrawn as cash to their digital wallet.
At the time of the public launch of the platform in the spring of this year, the startup talked about 35-40 brands that began to offer special conditions and offers to Flash users. Since the app itself is free, the startup earns on brands that pay for distributing information to Flash users.
Flash originates from India, where already 150 million people shop online. The startup expects that in the next few years about 40 million people will use Flash. Therefore, the founders believe that the number of online stores attracting users through Flash will grow exponentially.
Since the launch of the platform this spring, 400 thousand people have already created their addresses on Flash, who during this time managed to make purchases in more than a thousand different online stores and received 8 million emails with order information and newsletters.
Flash raised its first investment round of 5.8 million dollars even before the launch in November last year. And now it has raised a new round of 6.7 million.
What’s Interesting?
Well, why create a separate email address for online shopping? A common person, probably, has no need 😉 But for a person who shops online often, a lot and with pleasure – additional convenience, additional discounts, and additional bonuses will certainly not hurt.
The trick is that the startup is deliberately targeting such people, considering their target audience to be “super-buyers,” making 100-150 purchases online a year in 20 or more stores and marketplaces.
The founder of Flash estimates the number of such buyers in India at the level of 25 million people out of a total of 150 million Indians shopping online in general. He is confident that in the next 3 years the number of super-buyers in India will grow at least 2 times, crossing the threshold of 50 million people.
It has long been known that in every product category there are so-called “super-consumers” (superconsumers). They make up only 10% of all people making purchases from this category – but generate from 30% to 70% of the total sales volume in this category. This bias is explained by the fact that these people buy much more regularly and for much larger amounts than the rest.
One of the interpretations of the well-known Pareto 80/20 principle asserts that 20% of clients bring 80% of the money and take 20% of the time. While 80% of clients bring 20% of the money, but take 80% of the time.
In the case of super-consumers – these are 10% of clients bringing up to 70% of the money. The figures are slightly different, but the principle is the same. Therefore, one of the successful growth strategies of a company can be to deliberately seek and specially retain such super-consumers – stop dancing around the rest, who buy little but take a lot of energy and time.
However, the most crucial and challenging question in implementing such a strategy is – how to find super-consumers?
Flash’s answer is to roll out a tool that will be practically useless for “casual” buyers, but will become convenient and useful for those who buy frequently and a lot everywhere. And then only super-consumers will start using this tool – whom can be cultivated and indulged in a super way, earning super-money on it 😉
The additional charm of focusing on super-consumers is that super-consumers in one category are on average super-consumers in 9 other categories! And not necessarily in adjacent categories – but in any. Because people are usually made super-consumers not by a passion for something specific – but by a general character disposition and financial security, supporting such a style of consumer behavior.
This means that potential partners of Flash, advertising their goods and services to its users, can be not only online stores and marketplaces – but any sellers selling anything. And this significantly expands Flash’s potential to earn money on advertising.
Where to run
Focusing on super-consumers is a super-strategy 😉
However, it is difficult for an individual store or online service to find such super-consumers on its own. Because a super-consumer is a person who buys not only often and a lot, but also a lot everywhere. Therefore, they need more general tools that provide convenience and benefit from purchases not only in a particular store that has decided to take care of this.
So, the appearance of platforms for super-consumers is a natural phenomenon. One of the options for such a platform, tailored for purchases in online stores, is today’s Flash.
The audience of online buyers is already huge, but still continues to grow. Therefore, creating a Flash analog for another geographical market is a possible direction of movement. But which needs to be dealt with right now, before someone else has taken this place – because in the end, in one country, hardly more than 1-2 universal platforms that have collected the maximum number of online buyers can survive.
On the other hand, more specialized platforms may appear in this area, focusing on individual categories of super-consumers of other product categories.
For example, there are people who love to constantly learn something on the internet. Or people who love to travel. Or people who buy almost all the new gadgets in a row. Or something else.
What might platforms for super-learners look like? And for super-travelers? And for gadget maniacs? What additional conveniences and benefits can they offer? And for which other categories of super-consumers can a special platform be invented?
About the company
Flash Website: flash.co
Latest round: $6.7M, 19.09.2023
Total investments: $12.5M, rounds: 2