$1M in vinyl albums sold in eight months via text, and it’s just the beginning
In January, Chris Messina dubbed 2016 “the year of conversational commerce.” Instead of tapping, searching, and clicking around an online store to buy an item, you simply chat via text or messaging app in the same way you would chat with a friend. We think he’s onto something.
The Edit: A neighborhood record store in your pocket
Today we announced that our first conversational commerce store, The Edit, hit $1M in sales just eight months after launching. Utilizing artificial intelligence and machine learning, The Edit sends subscribers personalized daily text messages with a vinyl album recommendation. Subscribers can reply ‘Like’, ‘Dislike’, ‘Own’, and other commands that help us personalize album picks over time. If they want to purchase the album, they just reply ‘Yes.’ Alternatively, subscribers can text us an artist or album they’re looking for, and our chatbot or customer experience team will hunt it down and send it to them, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
There are couple things we think make The Edit special:
- Simplicity: The Edit may be the simplest way to buy records. No app to download, no website to search or browse. Personalized vinyl picks sent to you every day via text.
- Serendipity: We want to replace the “one size fits all” approach to online shopping and discovery with a lightweight, super personalized experience that’s both addictive in its simplicity and emotionally satisfying by surprising our subscribers with albums they love. We want them to have a relationship with us.
Conversational Commerce as a platform
This is also the first time we’re talking more broadly about ReplyYes. Spun out of Madrona Venture Labs last year, ReplyYes is a conversational commerce platform designed to facilitate the creation of hundreds of vertically focused retail channels like The Edit. Each channel utilizes artificial intelligence and machine learning to deliver personalized products and services to subscribers through text. Collectively, we refer to our AI and machine learning as our Serendipity Engine.
In the case of The Edit, our Serendipity Engine handles requests such as albums/artists, purchases & order status and watches how subscribers react to our custom products recommendations. Recommendations are dynamically generated based on artist preferences, similar artists, or the preferences of other similar customers. When a subscriber makes more complicated requests, the engine seeks the assistance of one of our Customer Engagement team members to help them find what they’re looking for.
It’s ALL about the conversation
To our customers, each channel is uniquely branded and operated based on the concept of the neighborhood store where there’s a personal relationship with the store and the people who work there. In our case, we view our Customer Engagement team as the people who work in the store. This has been a real source of differentiation for us — the personal interaction between humans, not just with a chatbot. We’ve had customers ask us out on dates, get into deep discussions about what some album lyrics really mean, ask for relationship advice, ask if they can come to the office and hang out, invite us to parties, and in the words of one customer:
“If you keep finding the good stuff, you’ll not only get a Christmas card, but an invite to the Christmas party, where we listen to a bunch of vinyl, while sampling fine whisky and home-brewed beers.”
I really like the way Todd Bishop at Geekwire captured this:
“The early momentum shows the potential of artificial intelligence chatbots, supplemented by human agents, to engage with consumers and adapt to their preferences over time”
We’re also happy to share that our second channel just launched, Origin Bound. With Origin Bound our goal is to bring the multi-verse of graphic novels to you daily via text message. Today’s graphic novels are artistic and literary masterpieces. The richness of the art, the depth of the stories, and the complex characters that fill the pages take yesterdays comic books and inject them with creative superpowers.
Thanks to our investors
We’re also now talking publicly about our $2.5M in funding from an amazing group of investors: Madrona Venture Group, Lowercase Capital, MESA Ventures, Ore Capital, FJ Labs, Bob Nelson, Francois Kress, and Lorne Michaels’ investment arm Broadway Video Ventures.
In the meantime, if you have a particular channel you want to see launched, we’d love to hear about it… just text us at (860) 385–4055.
Dave Cotter
CEO, ReplyYes
