Listen to this articleTo The Tens is changing the way things are seen and bought online by bridging the gap between social media and e-commerce. The media commerce platform makes socially-shared photos and videos instantly shoppable. To find out more about the platform that’s pioneering contextual commerce, we caught up with Founding CEO Paul Ahn in the company’s Silicon Beach headquarters.
Q: What inspired the idea for To The Tens?
A: My experience of launching and managing an emerging fashion label showed me firsthand the shortcomings of the current ecosystem. True, social media is a primary source of entertainment and information but it’s really all about the ads. Take for example of Facebook Inc.: the social media giant recorded $27.5 billion revenue last year, of which $26.9 billion – more than 97 percent – came from advertising. This ad-based social media model doesn’t just mean high advertising costs to brands, with poor results to show in return. Worse, it creates a compromised user experience with content becoming less genuine and organic posts losing ground to paid ones.
This is incongruous, considering that it’s actually the user content that keeps people logging back on. Should we – the real content creators – really be satisfied with just the number of likes we get on our posts, or do we deserve more? What if there were an ecosystem that not only puts at our fingertips the products we see on social media, but also rewards us, as content creators, for sharing the products we believe in? The only thing standing between people and their favorite brands is marketing dollars. We’d all benefit from a free market approach, presented in a social media framework.
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Q: You mention recognizing the value that users provide to the social media experience. How does this idea of user recognition translate into To The Tens?
A: The premise of To The Tens is that as users share their life moments, along with the things they love, they deserve to be rewarded when someone else buys those items – when someone else buys into their story. The platform acknowledges that an online community is a place where each user is both consumer and creator. And, in the spirit of sweetening the user experience, To The Tens rewards users for providing the inspiration. Users earn cash whenever others shop from their photos or videos.
Q: Given that To The Tens address problems with the current ecosystem, how does the platform bridge the gap between social media and ecommerce?
A: To The Tens’ key attraction for brands and users is its seamless transition from inspiration to shopping. It provides a smooth and intuitive transition from social content to e-commerce by utilizing user-generated content as the ultimate conversion tool. This boosts ROI and sales potential for brands while providing an enhanced experience for the increasingly mobile consumer.
Q: How exactly does To The Tens work?
A: The platform’s contextual commerce model hinges upon its unique functionality: To The Tens enables socially-shared content to be linked to actual products, so each visual story has a full breakdown of the things comprised in it. Linking products to user-generated content allows To The Tens to reward users whenever someone shops from their photos or videos: every time a product is sold through a user’s content, that user gets part of the sale. These earnings are disbursed as points, which can be cashed out to Paypal.
In addition to tangible and experiential benefits for users, To The Tens is also an enticing growth channel for the hundreds of fashion, beauty and lifestyle brands on the platform because they pay for results, not for exposure: instead of buying clicks or ads, businesses pay a flat percentage of each sale.
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Q: What gets people the most excited about To The Tens?
A: Passive users seeking inspiration love that they can see not only real-world style that fits their tastes, but also get a full breakdown of the items in each photo and video. Because the looks are instantly shoppable, this saves people a lot of time and makes it easy to go from seeing trends in photos and videos to buying the products in those looks.
Users and influencers who share their own beauty and fashion looks are very excited about being able to earn from their photos and videos. Aside from offering the same experience as current social media, the platform’s rewards are a big draw.
Q: What’s next for To The Tens?
A: We’re thrilled to have been named among Decoded London’s Top Four Startups of 2017, and look forward to continue growing in the beauty and fashion sectors. Internally, we’re constantly testing and working on creating a better user experience. Externally, To The Tens is connecting people and brands globally so that people can easily discover new brands and access products from all over the world. We also have expansion to additional sectors such as home décor and hobbies – everything from decorating and crafting, to sports and electronics.
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