Managing a Successful Pivot from B-to-C to B-to-B: Jifiti Co-Founder and CMO Shaul Weisband (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What was the thought process in your pivot? How did you arrive at whatever was the pivot strategy?

Shaul Weisband: The pivot happened in two stages. The credit mainly goes to the team that was able to roll the punches and figure out exactly what was wrong and the Board. We have one of the most incredible support from the Board who realized that we were still onto something. The number one thing we did was cut the gap between someone downloading the app or interacting with our platform to the actual gift purchase.

Instead of asking the initial consumer to share a wish list and hope someone buys it, we allow them to purchase gifts and send it via email to a friend wherever they are and allow them to redeem that gift. It basically allowed them to say, “Here’s something that I think they would love. I don’t want to deal with the shipping address and bringing it to them. I can select an item and put it in the recipient’s email.” The recipient can walk into the store and purchase that suggested gift themselves. That was the number one thing that we did. That was still challenging.

Your number one challenge is going to be user acquisition. How do we acquire new users, explain to them what we’re doing, and still make it economic in the way that the money we’re spending to get them turns into a viable business? That, in a sense, conveyed a big challenge for us. The big pivot came when we were trying to get retailers to join the platform saying, “Guys, why don’t you put your gifts on the platform so people can send your gifts on the Jifiti apps?”

More and more, they started coming back to us and saying, “This is solving a bigger issue with us. We know that we have a big cart abandon rate when it comes to gifting. Why don’t we use this technology inside our platform that allows our users to send these gifts very easily?” That’s when we realized that we were onto something even bigger. The technology that we created solved an even bigger problem for the retailer. That’s when the switch came to more of a B2B level where we work with different platforms to customize the solution for their users and for their needs.

Sramana Mitra: Essentially, you became the gifting workflow of large retailers who wanted to provide that option on their websites?

Shaul Weisband: Exactly. It could either be on their websites or other platforms. One strategy of ours was to say, “If this dedicated gifting checkout can work anywhere, why don’t we capture the user where they have an exact need to send a gift.” What we consider crucial to the gifting experience is what we call a trigger. It took us a while to really pick up on this.

If you’re browsing a website, you don’t need a trigger to buy something for yourself. You see something you like, you’re going to buy it because you want it. As opposed to a gift, you need a reason to send a gift. It could be a holiday. It could be a milestone. Why don’t we bring this experience to where the shopper is? That’s exactly what we did. We identified the number one platform that represents that junction. The number one time when someone would have to send a gift is when they are invited to an event.

Between getting an invitation and going to an event, there’s only one thing that’s missing; that’s sending a gift. How can we close that gap? We sent out a cold email, through LinkedIn, to Evite’s Head of Business Development. It had two lines essentially saying, “We’ve got a solution for gifting that you guys should probably see.” They picked up a phone afterwards. That’s when our strategic partnership started with them. We saw a huge uptake by identifying that intersection where there is a need for gifting.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Managing a Successful Pivot from B-to-C to B-to-B: Jifiti Co-Founder and CMO Shaul Weisband
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