Home SMART 100 2015 CUZIN

CUZIN [SMART 100, 2015]

0

This SMART 100 profile and the information it contains is a duplication of content submitted by the applicant during the entry process. As a function of entry, applicants were required to declare that all details are factually correct, do not infringe on another’s intellectual property and are not unlawful, threatening, defamatory, invasive of privacy, obscene, or otherwise objectionable. Some profiles have been edited for reasons of space and clarity.

Learn more about the SMART 100 >>

1. THE BEGINNING

This innovation initially came to life when…

CUZIN is a social marketplace empowering consumers globally to purchase the products they want, from anywhere in the world but cannot otherwise access.

CUZIN crowdsources real people who act as personal shoppers and incentivises them using their local buying advantages to purchase online or in-store at the best prices.

The CUZIN platform facilitates the matching, communication, payment and shipping door to door, making it easy to get any product, from anywhere in the world at the touch of a button.

2. WHAT & HOW

The purpose of this innovation is to…

…match like-minded people to help each other shop from the places they can’t otherwise access, and then facilitates the communication, payment and shipping door to door. This is the world’s first crowdsourced shopping community.

It does this by…

We have built a powerful social platform that allows members to post a ‘want’ for any product globally. This ‘want’ request is pushed using our proprietary algorithm directly to those best placed (either geographically or commercially) to help purchase and send the product. We’ve integrated with the world’s best payment and logistics solutions to make the transactions process completely seamless.

3. PURPOSE & BENEFITS

This innovation improves on what came before because…

Before CUZIN the only way to get items from overseas was literally asking a friend to get it for you, or dealing with freight forwarding companies who add large margins to the shipping, delays to receipt and friction in the transaction process.

CUZIN uses the power of crowdsourcing to connect real people to make this process completely frictionless, and fun!

Its various benefits to the customer/end-user include…

  • A conduit to unique, hard to get and trending products, driven by global events and influencers.
  • Safe and secure: multi-level authentication, community-driven ratings and reviews and PayPal Buyer Protection.
  • Full service, integrated shipping with home pickup, documentation and door-to-door tracking

4. COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE

In the past, this problem was solved by…

Before CUZIN, if there was something we wanted from overseas, we’d: have to travel there to get it ask a friend or family living there to post it for us use a freight forwarding company as an intermediary.

Its predecessors/competitors include…

ShopUSA.com, MyUSA.com, Mmmule.com, BackPackBang.com, TheHunt.com (kind of) and many more replicas of the above.

5. TARGET MARKET

It is made for…

In 2013, $1.2 trillion of retail sales (offline) were web-influenced. By 2017, online sales will outpace bricks and mortar, totalling $434 billion in the US alone.

CUZIN merges the offline and online worlds into one online platform. However, we recognise that this is a big market.

At the moment we are focused on the collectors, hobbyists and other close-knit communities (expats, sports associations, university clubs) who are passionate about finding and buying unique, unattainable products that are limited and hard to get hold of. These communities are inherently social, already connected and passionate.

It is available for sale through…

…our website CUZIN.com

Our marketing strategy is to…

We have recently completed our beta phase, where we focused on understanding our customer, product-market-fit and removing unnecessary friction in user experience.

Our next phase is customer acquisition, where we intend to focus on four distinct marketing strategies: influencers, social media targeting, group connections and low cost display and organic reach.

FINE PRINT: This SMART 100 profile and the information it contains is a duplication of content submitted by the applicant during the entry process. As a function of entry, applicants were required to declare that all details are factually correct, do not infringe on another’s intellectual property and are not unlawful, threatening, defamatory, invasive of privacy, obscene, or otherwise objectionable. Some profiles have been edited for reasons of space and clarity.