Comr.se
, a social commerce startup that graduated from B2B incubator 9Mile Labs last year, has reeled in an additional $800,000 in capital that it will use to grow the team and add new customers.
The company earlier this month rolled out a full public release of the technology, which allows brands using e-commerce platforms such as Magento, Shopify, BigCommerce and Demandware to run targeted commerce campaigns via social channels.
Comr.se — pronounced as “commerce” — says that its tools sync with a brand’s existing shopping cart to “power data-rich transactions into any environment where manufacturer’s connect with their customers.”
“We continue to believe Native Commerce, the ability to complete a transaction in a social stream, Pinterest board, or across the digital ad landscape is a natural evolution within e-commerce to match consumer demand,” said co-founder and CEO John Wantz. “In fact, we’re thrilled to see recent news within social commerce from Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat.”
Earlier this month, Facebook rolled out a “buy” button that allows users of the service to make purchases via advertisements on the social network.
“With this feature, people on desktop or mobile can click the “Buy” call-to-action button on ads and Page posts to purchase a product directly from a business, without leaving Facebook,” the company wrote in a blog post.
Separately, Twitter announced the acquisition of CardSpring, pushing the company closer to what CEO Dick Costolo calls “commerce in the moment.” Re/code reports that shopping for goods within a Tweet will arrive by the holidays, perhaps putting some pressure on Amazon.com.
Even so, Wantz says that the Comr.se technology is unique.
“We’re the first to solve for full commerce enabled cross channel pre-targeting and re-targeting of consumers to deliver targeted native commerce,” he said.
Total funding in Comr.se’s seed round stands at $2 million. Backers of the startup include angel investors Rudy Gadre, Geoffrey Barker, Dave Brown and Geoff Entress. Comr.se employs 17 people, and recently added Cobalt Group co-founder Doug Gorder and former Experian Consumer Services employee Johanna Segesser to the team. Meanwhile, chief data scientist Tim Piatenko, former of eBay and Zynga, has been promoted to CTO.
