The concept of “shoppable videos” has been around for at least a decade, with a number of major companies, such as Showroom, Firework, Vimeo, YouTube, and Klarna getting in on the action.
There are also startups embracing this space that have gotten some investor attention in the past, such as Cinematique, which tried it in 2017, Clideo, and, more recently, Kahani, which doesn’t exactly describe itself as “shoppable video.” ”, but the concept of content videos for ecommerce brands can certainly be considered adjacent.
The latest to catch the attention of investors is the e-commerce video platform Videowisefounded by Romanian-born product designer Claudiu Cioba in 2021. The company now has a $3 million cash infusion in a round that closed earlier this year.
Slack Fund led the round and was joined by Founder Collective, Underline Ventures, MuVentures, Ratio Ventures, Stan Chudnovsky, Javier Olivan, Ed Baker, Scott Belsky and Gokul Rajaram. The new investment gives Videowise a total of $4.1 million in venture-backed funds, Cioba said in an interview.
After working in product design for companies for over a decade, Cioba decided to start his own entrepreneurial journey, with an emphasis on e-commerce. Talking to founders in the industry, he learned that the “North Star” for driving sales was the conversion rate.
“If you can create a product that can impact the bottom line of these e-commerce operators, you could find the product fits the market quite easily,” said Cioba.
While video creation and video consumption on sites like TikTok and Instagram took off during the global pandemic, many e-commerce brands had a “very basic video experience, very horizontal and traditional, nothing that was customizable.” he said.
Cioba said he saw an opportunity to build a better product designed specifically for direct-to-consumer brands and online retailers. In 2022, Videowise launched its video platform product that helps online stores manage and publish videos at scale on an unlimited number of product pages, collection pages or blogs, instead of one video per page like other companies.
What sets Videowise apart from some of its competitors, such as Vimeo or Firework, is its swipe-up video playlists and infrastructure that Cioba says provides automation and insights from advanced video analytics while protecting page speed. Videowise can deliver load times up to five times faster than traditional video players, he added.
The company’s first integration was with Shopify, where the concept caught on: Videowise currently works with over 600 Shopify and Shopify Plus brands. It has generated more than $1 million in additional revenue from purchases directly in its video player and has generated more than $25 million in revenue since 2021 with conversion rates of up to 328% as video shoppers spend up to four minutes more per page, Cioba said.
One of Videowise’s clients is a handmade soap company Dr. Squatchwho saw a 3.2% increase in sales per session in the first 30 days after switching to Videowise, he said.
Meanwhile, Cioba plans to use the new funding to add more employees — the company has 30 today — and further develop its technology stack with a focus on omnichannel video shopping experiences. He also wants to expand beyond Shopify and is now testing with new Salesforce Commerce Cloud stores.
“Last year we had no sales and struggled early last year, but after we redesigned our marketing site and started working with medium and large brands, we saw a big increase in sales, about 500%, we started to consult with investors said Cioba. “There is still a lot of innovation to build and a lot of functionality being demanded of us. There will be new feature releases this year in areas where we currently don’t see competitors, and we aim to be a platform that connects with everyone can be integrated.
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