As if online shopping isn't a boon enough to brands relying on impulse buying, here is another way to push consumers into buying even more: a new iPhone app that allows shoppers to purchase items with a single swipe.
Spring was borne out of what retailers call shopping attrition, a phenomenon where shoppers abandon their shopping carts for various reasons before proceeding to checkout. With Spring's one-swipe shopping technology, buyers now have less time to consider their purchases before tapping the checkout button.
"Why create a workflow for shoppers to check out when in reality, they just want that one product?" says David Tisch, angel investor and chairman and co-founder of Tisch.
A look at the Spring app, which launches Thursday, gives the user a feeling reminiscent of Instagram's layout, with lifestyle photos of sun-kissed products instead the boring product shots usually seen at regular e-commerce stores. Users can scroll up and down to view the photos and, when an item catches their interest, they can simply swipe right to purchase it. Spring then delivers the order to the brand's own system.
From there, the brand takes over to process, pack, ship and address customer inquiries about the order. This takes a lot of work, but the shopper isn't made aware of this. On the front end, all it takes is a swipe and users can expect their products to be on the way. On the back end, however, Spring has a complicated technology integrating e-commerce platforms such as Shopify and Magento with brands' own systems.
"We built this robust technology so that in the swipe of a finger, we can make sure the inventory's there and that the order gets processed through the brand's system, such that when you call their customer service, they already understand exactly what the order is," says Tisch.
The concept sounds compelling, but have any brands signed up with Spring? As a matter of fact, Spring has more than 100 brands signing up on launch, from high-end luxury brands such as Michael Kors and Rebecca Minkoff to rising-star start-ups such as Jack Erwin shoe brand and Warby Parker sunglasses. Spring is also in talks with a number of prominent brands the likes of Levi's, Nike and Hugo Boss and is said to be launching new brands for the rest of the month.
The brands have full control over the look of their storefronts and Spring takes a "minimal" 8 percent cut of their revenue. If the brands offer free shipping, which Spring encourages them to do so; Spring takes half of the original price cut.
Tisch founded Spring with his brother Alan Tisch, Ara Katz and Octavian Costache and took more than 12 months under stealth to build the technology needed to make the app possible.
