Member Article

ParentDeal Partnership Takes Spreadshirt into New Vertical Marketplace

Social Sharing with ParentDeal Takes Spreadshirt into New UK Vertical Marketplace

Platform launches UK social voucher promotion

Spreadshirt has announced its first partnership and social sharing voucher promotion with a UK vertical marketplace. The print-on-demand merchandising company will be offering schools platform, ParentDeal, a share and save deal for parents at its 6,500 schools and clubs.

ParentDeal parents will be able to customise Spreadshirt’s clothing and accessories to commemorate a leavers’ event or create team shirts for a school sports club. Starting on 8 June 2016 and running til the end of term (17 July), the promotion will give ParentDeal users the chance to use their social media networks to share and save. Parents will receive 10% off their first order and can upgrade this to 15% by sharing the offer on Facebook or Twitter.

In addition, ParentDeal will then manage the donation of 5% of sales towards specific fundraisers at the schools & clubs using the service.

Philip Rooke, CEO of Spreadshirt commented “A vertical marketplace like ParentDeal is all about providing value to the parent market. Parents have a lot of demands on their time and money, by bringing the Spreadshirt services inside ParentDeal we are able to save them both. Now parents will be able to create shirts for teams and events, raising money at the same time. We have worked with a lot of teams and fundraising projects around the world but this is an exciting partnership in the UK parenting and schools market.”

He added, “Spreadshirt is increasingly able to create clear and specific offerings for the rising number of vertical marketplaces out there as well as offer them economies of scale. We also know from our Mobile Shopping Trends Review that the British are very keen online shoppers, so we’re very interested to see how the social sharing develops.”

Spreadshirt also has experience of horizontal marketplaces as its creators have the opportunity to sell via Amazon.

Founder of ParentDeal, John Harrison, said, “Our platform gives parents access to great deals from recognised family brands. We loved the Spreadshirt customisation option and their print-on-demand capability means our users can create a standard style AND allow individuality to shine through”. He continued, “By facilitating a donation back to the schools, we also help support local fundraising initiatives which provides our parents with an additional reason to use our offers. Everyone wins!”

Statistics

The vertical marketplace is on the rise according to Silicon Valley Bank Analytics, which noted at end of 2014 that “Just five years ago, invested capital in marketplaces was evenly split between vertical and horizontal plays. Today more than 80% of the investment is in companies focused on vertical-specific solutions”.

About Spreadshirt

Spreadshirt is one of the world’s leading e-commerce platforms for on-demand printing of clothing and accessories. Its customers (individuals, businesses, organisations and teams) can create, buy and sell their ideas on over 150 different products.

The business model includes four areas where sellers and customers can offer or buy a product: Create Your Own, Spreadshirt’s and other online market places, white-label online stores and Spreadshirt’s fulfilment technology. Spreadshirt’s more than 70,000 active sellers include companies such as Newcastle Brown Ale, Rubik’s Cube, Thelwell and The Avengers.

Spreadshirt is active in 19 markets and 12 languages and operates five production sites in Germany, Poland, the USA and Brazil. The company was founded in 2002 and, in 2014, achieved revenue of around 72 million Euros, printed about 3.3 million articles and sent them to more than 150 countries.

Yink, a large volume provider for individual textile and promotional printing is also part of the Spreadshirt family. www.spreadshirt.co.uk

About ParentDeal by Schoople

ParentDeal is run by Schoople. Founded in 2012, Schoople develops online tools that help engage local communities – predominantly school and parent communities. It currently has over 6,500 schools & clubs signed up which equates to over 1.5m parents.

Schoople also runs three other online services: UniformEasy – in association with Tesco – providing embroidered uniform; FundWider – in association with WorldPay – providing a crowd fundraising platform; and ParentMessage - a community communication noticeboard. The Schoople mission for their services is ‘Parents save. Schools raise’.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Philip Rooke .