Beauty is a terrible thing to waste. Meaning, you know all of those samples you get every month through one subscription service or other, what to speak of free samples, and those multiproduct offers, where you simply can’t use all of the products? Instead of tossing them, or otherwise letting them go to waste in a drawer when you know that you’re never going to look at them again, much less use them, eDivv has a better idea.
eDivv is an online peer-to-peer marketplace where women can buy, sell, or swap their beauty products, including everything from fragrances to cosmetics, hair to skin care, body and nails and everything in between. It’s something for everyone and CEO and cofounder Casey Casterline tells us how she hopes to make sure that everyone gets what she wants and need.
Tell us about the service.
eDivv is an online peer-to-peer marketplace for women to buy, sell, or swap their beauty products. We’re the first market place solely dedicated to the beauty/cosmetics space that allows women with excess products to earn cash or gain value for unwanted products by trading them.
Many women have extra products through subscription boxes (i.eBirchbox, Ipsy, etc.), gifts with purchase, free samples, impulse buys or kits that are only partially used, more products than you would ever need! Instead of wasting it and throwing it, our platform offers a secondary service to gain value from it.
How is it different?
Women have been buying and selling makeup on eBay for a very long time, but never had a dedicated platform to do so. Not only is eDivv a dedicated platform for the beauty industry: you also have the ability to trade your items, which is unique.
We have the knowledge and infrastructure to support bartering with an in-depth rating system, shipping tool integration and trading algorithm.
We also make it easy to “bundle” where you can trade for multiple things or buy multiple things from a seller, which is unique to most buy/sell platforms.
What market are you attacking and how big is it?
Our initial target market is the beauty subscription box industry, which consists of roughly 2.5 million women in the US getting a box of beauty products every month. Beyond that, we see our addressable market as women who participate in buying/selling on secondary marketplaces, which is estimated at 10 million+.
Our potential market is anyone who participates in the beauty industry through the combination of subscription boxes or purchases cosmetics at Sephora/Macy’s/Ulta or other beauty retailers, and finds that they have extra products that aren’t used. The beauty industry market consists of approximately 80 million participants.
What is the business model?
We started monetizing through shipping labels, where we take a cut of each transaction. After we launched buy/sell, we began taking 20% of each sale, which is our second implemented revenue stream. We plan to sell targeted advertising to beauty brands through native ads and down the road, sell data to beauty brands and subscription boxes about what is going on in the secondary market.
What inspired the business?
I’m an avid beauty enthusiast and was an early adopter to beauty subscription boxes. While I loved exploring and experimenting with new products and colors, after awhile, I noticed that some experiments weren’t for me (green nail polish?) and things kept piling up. Instead of throwing them away and being wasteful, I went online to see if other women were having this problem, and found a secondary market on blogs/forums where women were facilitating trades and sales. They would leave their email and their paypal information, and tell people to email if they were interested which was very outdated. We created eDivv to bring all these smaller communities together in one place.
What types of beauty products are most popular right now on your platform for trade?
Nail polish is the most popular item swapped. 30% of the products uploaded to eDivv are nail polish, and 25% of the products actually swapped include nail polish. The most popular brands uploaded to the site include MAC, NYX, Julep, Tarte, and Urban Decay (with MAC being the most popular item uploaded).
The five most popular brands traded are Julep, Benefit, NYX, MAC, and Tarte (in that order, with Julep the most traded brand).
What are the milestones that you plan to achieve within six months?
In the next six months, we plan to continue growing our user base and have over 100,000 users. We are continuing to build our platform, raise capital, and grow our team. Furthermore, we will continue to increase revenue and build out our brand partnerships for advertising and data.
What is the one piece of startup advice that you never got?
You aren’t going to succeed in one month. Building a business is a marathon, or maybe two. It’s not a sprint.
If you could be put in touch with one investor in the New York community who would it be and why?
Alexis Ohanian – Founder of Reddit and focuses on marketplaces
Why did you launch in New York?
NYC is where we’re from, but more importantly, it’s the best city in the world to create connections and network. Furthermore, the beauty industry is based in NYC and most of the beauty editors are located here.
Where is your favorite outdoor bar in the city for a drink when it is actually warm out?
Hotel Chantelle – or any bar with a rooftop – warm weather can’t come soon enough!
