Founder Adam Xavier came up with the idea for ENEEDO in 2008 after observing his girlfriend use an online wedding registry to find a gift for her friend. The concept was initially focused on “centralizing wish lists,” said Xavier when he moved the idea to California in 2011 and brought on two partners. Then just this year, ENEEDO raised about $120,000 and built the server side of the application.
Now, according to Xavier, ENEEDO is “a place where you store things that you want online, and your friends can have access to your list." Users can share these lists within their social networks as well ask friends to rate their potential purchase with a thumbs up or thumbs down.
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The concept of “social shopping,” a primary concentration for ENEEDO, is not an unprecedented trend.
“Shoppers that go into stores will be faced with a purchasing decision, and they’ll message their friends for help," Xavier said. "The common platform to do that is text message, and there’s really no one app to solve that problem. Our platform lends itself to that function.”
More recently, Xavier said instead of working primarily on ENEEDO’s website, they shifted concentration to mobile: "We wanted to have a clear user acquisition strategy, and we realized that mobile would be the best way to do that.”
Along with providing a resource for consumers, ENEEDO has also developed a B2B model to engage retailers and generate revenue. Xavier said that through utilizing data obtained from ENEEDO’s userbase, the company plans to “build analytics packages for retailers to utilize to complete the 360-degree consumer view.” These packages would include “wish list scraping tools and in-store bar code scanning so [retailers] can see where customers are going and talk to them both online and in stores."
Additionally, ENEEDO plans to implement a discount section on their platform that allows retailers to employ “hyper-targeted marketing,” Xavier said. For example, if a user saves a particular shoe on their ENEEDO list, “that gives the retailer an opportunity to directly talk to you about that shoe” and give them a discount for that product.
Look out for the beta version of ENEEDO’s mobile app , which will be launched in about two months.
