What is minted? Win love with creative product design

Minted with its chic and innovative product design has won a group of excellent designers and the public's favorite.

What is minted?

Valentine's Day is a big holiday for both men and women who are engaged. After inviting both parents, many couples are looking for date booking cards, wedding invitations and even wedding decorations on the minted online shopping site, designed by independent artists worldwide. Of course, for non-couple users, the minted website based in San Francisco also offers suitable products such as holiday cards, art prints, stationery and business cards.

How to get started?

Minted founder and CEO Mariam Naficy is a senior E-commerce expert. In 2000, she sold her own cosmetics electronic retail website, eve.com, for a price of more than 100 million dollars. In 2007, she began to look for new business opportunities. Soon she was fascinated by the idea of crowdsourcing. "I've been looking for crowdsourcing opportunities, and then I realised that maybe product design can be done in this way, looking for talented designers who are hidden in the marketplace and asking them to design for consumers." "I decided to try a crowdsourcing business model for simple things like D printing." ”

But at the time of 2007, investors had been slow to join in the general wait-and-see approach to the market-proven crowdsourcing program. To ease investors ' worries, Naficy expanded the company's inventory to include some well-known stationery brands. In addition, by virtue of the successful influence of previous eve.com, a group of angel investors eventually received 2.5 million dollars in financing. 2008, minted was formally established.

Career Take-off

Minted has added two new products almost every week, but none of them come from famous brands. By the end of 2009, they had abandoned all brand-name products, the site sales reached 6 digits. "The user mindset has changed a lot, they prefer handicrafts and small-volume products, and they are more passionate about local products." "Naficy said.

Even if they sell only a few small commodities, their website sales are still growing. In 2013, the site's monthly visits rose from 400,000 to 1.2 million. The increase in traffic has brought huge benefits to the company, with revenues reaching 8 digits (Naficy declined to disclose detailed numbers).

Business model

Artists want to sell their products in minted, you need to submit ideas to the site, participate in the minted site monthly design competition, such as design appointment cards, Christmas cards and so on. In the first few weeks, the minted community (including consumers, web site employees, and about 5,000 designers) reviews the submitted works. Then the artist will revise it over and over again, until the artists get enough votes to make their work a real product.

In the monthly design competition, about 10% or 15% of every 1000 products will eventually become a product, they will be sold on the website. The winning designer not only gets 200~1500 dollars in cash, but also gets a commission on every item sold, with a commission point of 6%. If the product sales increase, the percentage of Commission will also increase. On the minted website, each 100 holiday cards are priced at $115, and the premium wedding invitations are priced at $500 per 100.

Next plan

In October 2013, minted received the 41 million dollar C-round financing from the Silicon Valley Technonlogy Crossover Ventures. Some of this investment will be used to develop the latest products of the site, including art prints and party decorations, Naficy said. Of course, they will also explore the development of other product lines. "The hardest part is deciding what to do first." "There are so many opportunities in this room," she said. ”