After years of copying and pasting buying hyperlinks into spreadsheets and taking screenshots of merchandise to share together with her family and friends, Kristine Locker lastly determined to launch a social buying platform (which she named after herself) that would take her countless tabs and manage them right into a shareable, digital want listing multi functional place.
Locker, dubbed because the “Pinterest for online shopping,” launched in 2022 as a Chrome extension and lets you save any on-line product into categorized want lists, uncover outfit collages made by different customers, collaborate with pals and create giftable collections to be shared by way of electronic mail or social media. It’s additionally out there as an iOS app.
Locker just lately closed on a $2.5 million spherical from Marvel Ventures at a $9 million valuation, the corporate introduced right this moment.
“Kristine Locker has figured out something which Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook have all tried and failed to nail down,” Marvel Ventures’ Valentina Rodriguez stated in a press release supplied to TechCrunch. “Shopping is the core product around which socialization happens, not vice-versa. Largely due to the fact that she has the perfect founder/product fit, she has built a platform for which socialized commerce is just wonderfully user-friendly and inherently viral.”
Picture Credit: Locker
In contrast to influencer-focused platforms LTK, Collective Voice and Break up, that are designed to monetize a big social media following, Locker is designed for on a regular basis customers who simply need to curate shoppable collections for enjoyable.
“When I looked at the competitive landscape, there were platforms that were built for influencers… as a consumer, none of that really fit my need to organize my shopping [and] also have an organic place where I could see what my friends were shopping for, which is really what I wanted to see,” Locker’s founder informed us. “A big part of [Locker’s] mission is to create a user-generated authentic sharing platform where there’s no monetization around it so you don’t feel like ‘Oh, someone’s sharing this with me because they can make money off of it.’”
Though you’ll be able to’t earn money from sharing merchandise on Locker, you’ll be able to be a part of its “Shopping Club” to get rewarded when pals use your referral hyperlink. For example, you get unique Locker merch should you refer 25 customers to Locker. At 500 customers, you get $750 to buy an outfit out of your Locker assortment, the startup’s founder explains.
Picture Credit: Locker
Relating to Locker’s enterprise mannequin, the corporate earns income by partnering with manufacturers via affiliate networks. Its common fee fee is round 12%, nonetheless, relying on how a lot publicity the model desires, Locker raises the speed to as excessive as 25%.
“If brands don’t play in the affiliate space, we remove them from the discovery page to keep it fair for the brands that are participating,” Locker says.
The corporate’s current funding spherical comes two years after Cabell Hickman, a Locker person and higher-education guide who was featured within the Wall Avenue Journal for her $6 million portfolio, notably invested $1 million into the corporate. Different traders embrace former Honey exec Chris Arreguin, Elizabeth Egan (Breakaway Ventures), Maggie Sellers (HSR Ventures), Kira Jackson (Rx3 Progress Companions), Alex Doman (AVEC Drinks) and Tariro Makoni, senior technique supervisor of world startups at AWS.
Locker touts 80,000 month-to-month energetic customers.
