NY Launch Pod: Welcome to the New York Launch Pod, the New York Press Club award-winning podcast highlighting the most interesting new startups, businesses and openings in the New York City area. I’m your host and New York attorney, Hal Coopersmith. And in this episode, we are talking about online shopping and taking on Amazon locally with Maya Komerov, founder of ShopIN.nyc, an e-commerce platform, helping local businesses fight against the online giant here’s Maya.
Maya Komerov: It’s really amazing. What we see is that when you have retail real estate today in the city, you cannot think about that as just the place that people come to your store. As I said, like, you need to think how the inventory come fast to the customers. And that’s something that they cannot do without us. They don’t have the infrastructure to do that
NY Launch Pod: But before we go to the interview, if you haven’t already remember to sign up for our monthly newsletter for unique content and insights at nylaunchpod.com and subscribe to the podcast on your favorite listening app. And this episode’s sponsor is RezCue New York State’s premier residential rental compliance platform. Have you rented out residential property in New York State? If so, odds are that you are not compliant with the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act enacted by New York State in 2019, that’s right, 2019. And if you don’t follow the law, your tenant may be legally able to stay in the property beyond the length of the lease. You won’t be able to increase the rent by the desired amount, or you may be forced to pay for damages to the property out of your own pocket instead of from the security deposit. RezCue is designed to solve all of those problems and more go to rezcueme.com, enter in some basic lease information and RezCue takes care of the rest. So you can relax and be more profitable. And with that, let’s go to the interview.
NY Launch Pod: Shopping local in New York City, living wages, digital platform. This sounds too good to be true.
Maya Komerov: Yeah. I think, we see that with the pandemic, what I saw is that we go to Amazon all the time because we want this everything store experience, getting stuff to the door. And when I tried to do that with local stores, even if they have e-comm, I couldn’t get the same experience. Like I had to go through five different e-comm to get everything in five different boxes and pay five time deliveries to the door. And when you think about it, like if they cannot compete in that environment, then they cannot get the power of scale, even if they have the move to e-com. So I start to think like how we bring them to serve their communities. Because if you think about the e-commerce and online purchase saying, it’s not just about the site and the store, it’s a lot about the logistics. Like Amazon now open warehouses all around the city, because they understand that the first that will have the inventory in the city and the first that will come to the customers, it’s going to win in the last, maybe 15 years online commerce left that community because it was more focused about shopping online. But now it goes really back because it’s all about same day, how businesses that already have their inventory in the city. And they’re already part of those communities, how they can compete and how they can bring their items and what we found that they cannot compete because they don’t get the traffic. Their inventory is not as visible as Amazon, and it’s not convenient to shop there. And also even if they get an order online, if it’s 10 minutes drive, there will ship it to you by UPS. So we build the new model that actually leverage all that real estate and the inventory and the stores that are in the city to be the first to serve their communities. That’s by, you know, building a new model because we don’t need the warehouses like Amazon, we don’t need the real estate. It’s already exists. We just need to make it convenient. So we connect all the e-comm into all the stores into one platform and people can shop, you can go and shop whatever you want or they’re come from three different stores. And when Shopin.nyc to get order, they send the order to the stores to fulfill them.
NY Launch Pod: So you mentioned that this was something that you were thinking about during the pandemic. Was this something that you were also thinking about before the pandemic, in terms of making shopping more local and more digital?
Maya Komerov: Yeah. I started the company in 2017 with that mission to make the neighborhoods more digital and more convenient. But I started with service businesses and the first product that I started drive people to go to the, to the stores when the pandemic arrived. I first couldn’t send people to the stores, but the second thing is I didn’t have a solution for retailers. And I understood the big opportunity with the retailers and would develop, also Shopin as another product to be able to provide that need.
NY Launch Pod: So how does this all work? You’re getting the traffic and the stores are fulfilling the orders, but can I order from two different stores in two different locations? And then how do I get one package that seems so foreign to me?
Maya Komerov: So the way that it works is that every dat, we have a cutoff at [10:00] AM. Everybody that orders by [10:00] AM get it the same day. We have the cutoff we split the city into routes. We have drivers that go around the city, pick up all the bags that the stores fulfilled and prepared into one sorting location. We sorted back to the orders of the customers and we send it out for delivery.
NY Launch Pod: How many drivers do you have at this moment? And something that’s really important to you is that you’re paying all of them, a living wage. Why is that important to you?
Maya Komerov: It’s very important for us because we understand that Shopin.nyc is more than just a store. It’s a movement and people really want to make sure that when they shop in the store, it’s good for the community. And everybody in the community is treated well. And when people approach us and say that’s amazing that we have now this opportunity to shop in the city as an alternative to Amazon, we want to make sure that you are not, you know, you’re treating well, the delivery people and the stores, and as a DNA, because we see us as the platform for the community to get together. We said like, we need to be transparent. We need to tell them, like, if this is a platform for the community to work together, we can not like hide something. And because we didn’t plan to hide. And it was important for us to make sure that everybody is treated well, because in that way, people love and want to wake up in the morning and serve the community in the best way possible. We have decided to pay the delivery people $25 an hour, and we also make it public. Like we share it with the customers and it’s on our website and everybody can understand, what we are doing.
NY Launch Pod: Well, it’s a wonderful mission. And in terms of the community, is there a premium on the products because you’re paying a living wage or does it come out of the stores? How were you able to make the economics work?
Maya Komerov: Yeah, it really depends on the order value. And it’s a mix between, the price of the product marketplace fee that the stores are paying through us and also delivery fee. Like if you order above $60, it’s free and below that it costs like $5.95. So that’s how we make sure that also the stores, they pass fees, you know, they can pay based on the margin that they have and it changing between different industries.
NY Launch Pod: So how are you able to get stores onboard your platform? Let’s start with the first store. Maya, you say, I want to create this community for shopping local. Then you walk into a store and say, will you join my platform? What was that conversation like?
Maya Komerov: Actually, it’s not my platform. It’s the Shopin.nyc Platform. It’s New York City stores platform. That’s what, how we present that. And we ask them if they want to come together, if they want to work together and sell everything and serve everybody together and get the power of scale. And their answer is really, really positive. They see that as a, another channel, the reason that they are very positive and now we have very interesting data to share. Like they do thousands of dollars every month in incremental revenue. And the most interesting thing is that it’s increased their catchment area. Like we have stores today that get customers from four or five mile radius for them. It’s no brainer. They don’t have upfront cost to join. They just need to make sure that they followed the rules of fulfillment, because it’s a community and this community is fulfilling the orders by, it’s not like one warehouse that fulfill everything. And that’s the decentralized warehouse model that we build that allow all of them to participate. I think it’s really amazing. What we see is that when you have retail real estate today in the city, you cannot think about that as just the place that people come to your store. As I said, like, you need to think how the inventory come fast to the customers. And that’s something that they cannot do without us. They don’t have the infrastructure to do that because they don’t get enough traffic just to their website.
NY Launch Pod: What technology does any of these stores need to participate in the Shopin.nyc Plan?
Maya Komerov: They need to have e-commerce in place from their side, exactly like a Shopify or all the other guys. And then we mirror their store into Shopin.nyc. So we update the inventory a few times a day and we just sync. So they don’t need to update something else on our side. And then they need to use our fulfillment platform to review the orders that they get and confirm that they fulfill all the orders.
NY Launch Pod: So now it’s a no-brainer for any New York City store to use the Shopin.nyc Platform. But when you were starting out, I have to imagine you were met with a lot of skepticism. What was that like?
Maya Komerov: I think people when COVID hit were very open to try and I think now when they see that they get thousands of dollars every month, it’s not the question. And it’s just, you know, we are going to be better. We are going to invest more on the infrastructure. We are going together to be the first that come to every household in New York. And that’s the mission of that. Like, we need to be the first, not Walmart or not Amazon. I don’t know if you saw, but yesterday, New York Times wrote that Amazon is taking over in New York. They deliver 2.4 million packages a day just in New York City. So I think we need to bring some back to the stores in the city.
NY Launch Pod: What are some of the goods that people can get on the Shpin.nyc Platform?
Maya Komerov: Actually, we have more than 12 categories and more than 600,000 products in the store. And it’s really growing every day, they can get essentials, they can get wine, gifts, pet supply, like almost everything, jewelry, accessories, and soon also perishable item until now we didn’t deliver perishable items, but now we are working to allow our stores also to deliver that.
NY Launch Pod: And how hard was this to build? It seems so complex.
Maya Komerov: Yeah. It’s not easy to put it together. You know, you need to be able to build that new model. We have to have technology, people to build a platform that allow that model to work. We have an operation team that does all that operation. Yeah. And we have a marketing team that continue to drive the movement and ask people to pledge and move part of their online shopping back to the community.
NY Launch Pod: Obviously you have all those teams, but talk about that development team. I’m interested in that and the operations, you know, it seems like it’s very sophisticated. How long did it take, how were you able to pull everything all together?
Maya Komerov: Yeah, I think from technology perspective, the complex side is one integrate the inventory, make sure the inventory is accurate as possible. And we measure that all the time when someone placed an order, we can fulfill that because you know, we don’t have the inventory in our warehouse, then it’s the catalog. That’s another complex thing. Like how you create for many different catalogs that each store prepare on their online store, how you prepare one unified catalog when it’s convenient for the customers to shop from. And the third is the fulfillment. Like how you make sure that the feedback there are no fulfillment mistakes from the store side. And once they fulfilled how you sync all our operation, like our operation team in the sorting area, they see they filled it from the stores and they know if there is missing item or something was out of stock and all that processes and feedback back to the stores is something which is very, very important because we need to learn, like we build processes that we are as one team, because we don’t have a fulfillment team in our company because we use the stores as fulfillment. So those are the new technology that we invest a lot and build based on the needs that we see to make sure that we make this model work.
NY Launch Pod: And how are you able to attract customers onto the platform? You have a marketing team, how are you getting New Yorkers to shop more local?
Maya Komerov: I think New Yorkers, really want to get the convenient and second, get the values, learn what the values of Shopin.nyc, the reason that they really want to try it because they want to support their communities. We also build the program that give back money to the school. Like if you know, Amazon Smile. So, we build the seminar program where you can attach your account with the school and we give 1% to the school out of your shopping. So we build services that really make living in New York better when you shop with Shopin.nyc. You get more than just the shopping because the school can get the value out of that. And also we work together with, for example, the real estate players and the property owners to offer new amenities that the stores around the city can offer. And we offer for a building two days of free delivery. So we work on a lot of newer services to make it attractive and compelling for the customers to shop. We are not competing at that stage on pricing and stuff like that, but we definitely much more valuable to the community when people shop with us.
NY Launch Pod: So you’re saying that on buildings, you’re doing bulk deliveries, so that with your neighbors, you can get free delivery, even if you’re below the $60 threshold. So how come right now, you’re only delivering to certain zip codes because New Yorkers may go onto your website and see that their zip code is excluded. How come it’s only certain zip codes and when are you going to cover all the zip codes?
Maya Komerov: Yeah. So, it’s important for us when we expand to make sure that we have some stores from every area. We’re getting now more and more stores in Manhattan. And like in a month Manhattan will be open. So it’s all Brooklyn, plus, some zip code now in Manhattan, but by end of the month all Manhattan, and it will be open and we’ll also start to work and develop Queens. I think in the next few months, you will see us all around.
NY Launch Pod: And what happens when you have two stores in the same category. So let’s say two pet stores, for example, why would one person go to one versus the other? Or can you only have one per category?
Maya Komerov: No, we allow everybody to join. We are not limiting anybody. The way that it works is that it depends like people shop by store. Like there are people that love specific stores. So they’d go to the store and shop there, or people shop by search. If they need something to just search they will see the results of all the stores and they can choose what they want. That’s more local to them. If, they see multiple of the same items, it depends. Some of them care about that. Some of them don’t care about that. And they just, that’s why I’m saying, like, there are also values in that for the businesses, because they get customers from four or five months register because people shop whatever they need.
NY Launch Pod: So you’ve been doing this. You mentioned for a few years. What surprised you most about this process as you’re building this platform?
Maya Komerov: I think an interesting insight that I have is that you asked me at the beginning about that. It sounds like a dream. I think people don’t feel comfortable now in the place that they are. Like, they have a lot of conflicts. Like I will give you an example with the school PTA wants donations and they push people to shop on Amazon, where their natural thing is to shop in their communities. And they live in conflict because they want the convenience of this Amazon, because they will not walk the street anymore and get donations from the local businesses. Like it was 15 years ago. And that showed me the opportunity for the local businesses and the kind of the crazy world that we are because some online, giant pop up and nobody started this all econ from the place. And that really keep the volume of people and aligns with the volume of people. Like there is huge opportunity here. That’s, something that I feel that making sure that the next big commerce platform should be really aligned with the way that people want to see that.
NY Launch Pod: So do you see other giants kind of replicating what you’re doing to fit those values? Because the value story is really compelling.
Maya Komerov: Maybe, but I think it’s very hard for them to do that. They’re not designed to do that. And think this way, there are a lot of questions and answer through us and decisions to make, to allow you to be in that place. We had to choose a lot of specific direction to allow us to make sure that we keep that as a first priority.
NY Launch Pod: So as you’ve developed this platform and you’ve been in existence for awhile, you’ve probably aggregated a lot of data. What surprised you about New Yorker’s shopping habits? What do New Yorkers want the most?
Maya Komerov: I think, I was really surprised by the mix, like I see the different stores that people or they’re from, and it’s really interesting to see and nobody knows that, right? Like nobody knows that you order from this store on this, and how your basket looks like. And I think this is the most compelling thing. And I think this is the most compelling, because I think this is an important data that we are going to share with the stores, because it can create a lot of relationship and a lot of opportunities between the businesses in the community.
NY Launch Pod: Why is this so important to New York City? And why did you start this in New York City?
Maya Komerov: I started in New York City because I’ve found that that’s a great city to build that new model and the best city from density perspective, innovation, people that are open to try new stuff and then take it to another and other places. And I think it’s important for the city because like, if this model is not exist, we will see more and more packages by Amazon. And those businesses are going to die and their e-comm is not going to be meaningful. That’s very clear to me. Yeah. If you don’t get the power of scale and you can turn all those stores and real estate into a giant warehouse, you know, that can come and be the first to serve that company, the customers, I don’t see any long-term value and it’s going to be worse. That’s what I believe it’s going to be worth as those big guys understand that being in the center of cities is this is the key element because they want to come same day and they will be the same day because they will make it more convenient.
NY Launch Pod: Well, it is great what you were doing in terms of helping the little guys fight the big one, helping them be on the side of that war and bringing scale to small businesses that have been hurt so badly and shopping local Maya Komerov. Thank you for stepping onto the New York Launch Pod and sharing your time with us. How do people learn more about you and what you’re doing with Shopin.nyc?
Maya Komerov: You can visit shopin.nyc And you can always, write to our support email, and we would get it to the right person in our team.
NY Launch Pod: So shopin.nyc is the website. And if you want to learn more about the New York Launch Pod, you can follow us on social media @nylaunchpod, or visit us online at nylaunchpod.com for transcripts of every episode, including this one. And if you are a super fan of the New York Launch Pod Maya, are you a super fan of the New York Launch Pod?
Maya Komerov: Yes!
NY Launch Pod: She’s a super fan of the New York Launch Pod but if you’re a super fan like Maya, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It is greatly appreciated and does help people discover the show.
SHARE THIS:
