The Israeli startup, buywith, is harnessing the influencer industry to create better brand awareness for major fashion companies and increase their customers’ virtual shopping carts. The virtual shopping experience platform has recently announced a $1 million Pre-Seed round investment, led by NEOMI, Sarona Partners, and private investors Harry Lipshitz, Raz Alon, and Itzhak Rachlevsky.
A shopping experience made for Millenials & Gen Z
These days, it has become pretty popular to include friends and family in our online shopping experience. We send links and snapshots to get the opinions of our loved ones on the next pair of shoes we drop in our shopping carts. At buywith they took this practice and aim to turn it into a standard shopping habit, developing a platform that easily plugs into any online store, allowing potential shoppers to consult in real-time with their friends and family on their next buy. The Israeli startup’s platform shares a live chatbox onto the online store’s website, totally cutting out the need to download yet another app. While talking to Geektime, CEO Adi Ronen Almagor explains that using plug and chat technology differentiates her company from the app-dependent competition, adding that bypassing the app step increases the chances that the user will actually use the service.
The company further realized its technology’s additional potential, turning their platform loose on the influencer industry. Using the platform, fashion sites and brands can create valuable collaborations with relevant influencers, enabling them to share their online shopping sessions with their followers via live video. While also creating an easy to use dashboard for brands and stores to track sales metrics through influencer collaboration.
Ronen Almagor notes that the demand for the product has seen an increase following the lockdown restrictions in many countries due to the Coronavirus: “Brands are searching for different technologies which will allow them to better connect to the digital landscape while keeping a strong bond with their loyal customers and reaching potential new customers. We see the global trend is turning that way, even mega-companies like Facebook and TikTok are integrating live video shopping options into their platforms.”
The company was founded in 2018 by CEO Adi Ronen Almagor and CTO Eyal Sinai, and currently has 5 employees working out of their Tel Aviv offices.
