In late June, we wrote that Ben Pieratt, the Boston-based designer who co-founded Svpply, a stylish social shopping site acquired by eBay in 2012, was starting a radically new and improved version of his first project via Kickstarter. The reason, in part, being that eBay announced it was shutting down Svpply this year, leaving the site’s thousands of users, and their carefully curated dream products and clothing, high and dry.
Enter Very Goods.
Pieratt and team launched the site on Friday in a final two-day push to raise more money in the $50,000 crowdfunding campaign, which has already been funded 109 percent. The startup is saying that the only way to get membership with Very Goods before 2016 is to donate (or, be invited by someone who has donated).
The startup is, however, having trouble getting through eBay to gain access to the Svpply database, which would allow Very Goods to secure the data from current Svpply users before the site expires, Pieratt told BostInno.
Very Goods features a number of early interface sketches of what Very Goods will look like. Strikingly similar to its predecessor Svpply, the platform looks clean, crisp and modern in design, showcasing rather than distracting from the products presented.
The crew seems more concerned with making Very Goods a tight-knit online shopping community than growing a massive company.
“Even as we grew to hundreds of thousands of viewers, it was always a small group of a few thousand members that fueled the engine,” states the site. “The problem was that while we recognized this as being true, we didn’t recognize it as something we should do anything with. In our minds, the only path to healthy growth and success was through growing our member numbers into the millions.”
There will, however, be a few things that Very Goods is doing differently this time around. Pieratt said, for example, that he won’t be the chief executive. Very Goods also has no intention of taking on venture capital and giving away equity, in a “for the People, by the People” vein.
Take a look at the Kickstarter video below, and let us know your thoughts on Svpply and Very Goods:
