- Citizen Made is the ecommerce platform for brands that make custom products (Image: Citizen Made)
Not every business is like Burger King. You can’t always “have it your way.†But now Citizen Made, a new e-commerce platform, is making it increasingly easier for brands and customers to create custom products online.
Traditionally, the online shopping process has been linear. For example, in the past, if a seller posted an image of a bike, the buyer could choose to buy it as is, or hunt through pages and pages of web posts on the seller’s site or on other sites to find the style of bike they wanted in the right color–with the right frame, seat, speed, and handle bars.
Unfortunately, for the seller, that search might take the buyer away from her page causing her to lose a sale. Even if the seller is able to customize the bike based on the buyer’s verbal or written instructions, the buyer will never see the finished product until after it’s built and paid for.
“There is a large set of brands and manufacturers that sell configurable or customizable products, but are unable to participate in e-commerce simply because…the experience of mixing, matching, and adding on options is generally unavailable,†says Rachel Brooks, who developed Citizen Made. “We aim to provide software tools so that [any brand is] able to open their business to the world via the Internet.â€
With Citizen Made, the buyer can mix and match features to create, for example, the bike they’ve always dreamed of, without leaving the seller’s page; and Citizen Made produces an illustration that is a carbon copy of what the end product will look like before they even spend a dime.
While websites that allow shoppers to customize products aren’t new, it’s often been a costly, time consuming venture, especially for small, independent businesses. Citizen Made makes it possible for business owners to produce custom products online without having to learn any
development skills to build it themselves or outsource the project to software development agencies who have pricey fees, says Brooks, who traveled to Silicon Valley to participate in the widely-acclaimed NewMe Accelerator.Citizen Made licenses the software to businesses for a monthly fee that is tiered based on the number of transactions a company has within the context of the software. They also charge an initial setup fee for enterprise clients, which covers their unique needs for integration at scale.
With a background in product design, development and production, Brooks’ client work had at one point reached Target, Bloomingdale’s and Reebok, among others. Before starting Citizen Made, she was actively designing and managing a menswear label. In the store, customers had the option to design custom versions of the products based on the inventory the store carried.
“Because many
of the products were made to order, we were able to produce custom versions without a major increase in production costs,†says Brooks, who started the company in Chicago, but moved to New York once she realized how frequent her business trips there had become.“Customers loved this capability, and we wanted to find a way to extend that experience to our online business.â€
Brooks took the idea to Bryn McCoy, her co-founder and CTO, who she met through mutual colleagues–and so Citizen Made was, well… made. After putting in a lot of elbow grease, Brooks and McCoy raised about $65,000 from a string of competitions that included the Women 2.o Pitch NY 2012 Startup Competition, which scored them an opportunity to partner with L’Oreal USA’s Women in Digital Awards; and $15,000 from the Chicago Interactive Marketing Association. Now, after building a fully scalable, revenue-generating platform, Citizen Made is currently in the process of closing their first formal round of financing in New York.
Congratulations to Brooks and Citizen Made, which is our Tech Startup of the Week. Below, Brooks provides three tips co-founders should implement in order to work together effectively:
- A co-founder has the ability to bring balance to your skills, personality, and work style. Pick somebody who shares your values, but also somebody who can complement you as a leader.
- You don’t find a co-founder, you earn one. This means something different for every founding team but, in looking at successful founding teams that are still in tact, the time, effort and commitment of each person early on is what grounds the relationship.
- Allow others to thrive in their expertise. In new, small teams, there is rarely a huge overlap in skills and experience. That means that each person is uniquely better at some projects over others. Let team members lead where they can, and step up where you can. Nobody should run the whole show.