Startup interview: Brian Wiegand, CEO, Spin
RTIH: Tell us about Spin.
BW: Online shopping and live streaming had a baby, and it’s Spin.
We’re on a mission to reinvent traditional window shopping and make buying things online less boring. We’ve created a live social shopping experience that brings back the impulse buy and makes it fun.
To date, e-commerce has been dominated by search and intent-based purchase experiences. People go online already knowing what they want, and basically turning it into an all out research project.
On the flip side of this, Spin takes those organic shopping experiences you used to have in malls and boutiques and makes them accessible from your living room.
RTIH: What was the inspiration behind setting the company up?
BW: We’re shopping guys, through and through. We buy things that don’t make sense, we love the consumer experience, and we’ve built our careers on it.
When we saw the gap between live streaming and online shopping - merchants struggling on camera to distribute shopping links and discount codes, buyers stuck at home during Covid-19 with nowhere to go - we saw a chance to bring shopping for fun back to life.
With broad adoption of 5G and video, our founding team really felt the market was ready for a more interactive, social shopping experience.
RTIH: What has been the industry reaction thus far?
BW: Extensive outreach has been underway for months, and the responses to Spin have been overwhelmingly positive. Covid-19 has forced many brands to close their bricks and mortar doors, and they miss that opportunity to sell their stuff in person; selling something online can feel so impersonal.
Right now, brands are jumping at the opportunity to sign on with us, not just because it’s a monetary opportunity, but because it’s just, well, fun.
RTIH: What has been your biggest challenge/setback?
BW: Fundraising through the pandemic has definitely made access to capital more difficult. But we’re crazy lucky; our founding team has had a history of success in building early-stage teams and launching quickly.
Social distancing and the virtual nature of building a team/culture has not allowed us to move development as fast as we would like, but I’m still really proud of the progress we’ve made in spite of that.
“When we saw the gap between live streaming and online shopping - merchants struggling on camera to distribute shopping links and discount codes, buyers stuck at home during Covid-19 with nowhere to go - we saw a chance to bring shopping for fun back to life”
RTIH: What are the biggest challenges facing the omnichannel retail sector right now?
BW: If Covid-19 has taught us anything, it’s that the time to embrace e-commerce was yesterday. Omnichannel retail tends to struggle with embracing change and quickly adopting new technologies, partners and strategies needed to succeed with rapidly changing consumer behaviour.
Foot traffic may never return to the previous levels and the shift to digital and digital shopping experiences is moving at a rapid pace.
RTIH: What's the best question about your company or the market asked of you recently by a.) an investor and b.) a customer?
BW: The best question asked by an investor is, “How do you build enough content relying solely on live video?”
We have built a strategy that allows us to showcase all of the interactive and social experiences with the live video, but we also allow for a limited distribution of the shoppable videos in a recorded format.
This allows influencers and merchants to leverage the videos they created by sharing the shoppable recorded version on their website and social media for 48 hours after the live shopping event.
The best question asked by a customer is, “How is Spin different than Facebook or Instagram Live?” Instagram and Facebook are feed-driven experiences using live video as a generic tool for a wide variety of content (concerts, political debates, sporting events, etc.).
Spin is a shopping first, shopping only social network that’s all about product discovery and impulse purchases through highly interactive, two-way experiences. The product merchandising, checkout, payment and community is all integrated into one video experience.
RTIH: What can we expect to see from Spin over the next 12 months?
BW: We’re days away from launching Spin for iOS and Android, and we couldn’t be more excited. The app will be live for consumers in the next week or so, and we’ll have influencers and merchants livestreaming their products, showing off their amazing deals — it’s going to be insane.
We anticipate this spreading like wildfire, due to the nature of the built-in distribution model. With every merchant and influencer on the platform sharing their content on social media, we see it taking off very quickly.
We also have several new features we’re working on deploying post-launch to make the app even more interactive for shoppers and sellers. Stay tuned.