Re-inventing a brand and turning engagement into transactions with Fancy.com CEO, Greg Spillane

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Key Quotes:

“The traditional influencer model of, ‘Hey, let me find a micro-influencer. Let me pay him X amount of money, depending on their size. And let me have them do a post talking about our product or driving people to our site.’ The experience that we’ve had ourselves and then with brands that we’ve worked with is, you’re really not going to get an ROI there….So we’re looking at it a little bit differently. We want to create more of a platform that influencers can leverage and become a little bit more native in what they’re doing that helps them expand their own reach, expand the value to their user base. And then ultimately monetize that user base, because that’s really what the influencers, especially micro-influencers are looking to do. But it has to be done somewhat organically.”

[When coming in as a new CEO]: “What not to do is go in and start making changes too quickly. One of the easiest things in the world to do is be a critic. And you can go into a company that’s somewhat distressed or has had some issues, and you could just start just tearing things apart. … And even though you can quickly come up with the right direction and the right solution for what you need to do, you can lose your people. And ultimately, your people are the most important assets you have…. Most of the issues that you’re going to eventually have to address, [employees] already know they exist and they know what they are. So let them tell you, and you’ll start to pull out the solutions..”

“Where we’re moving toward as a company is to this concept of the rise to the direct consumer brand. We just see so many amazing purpose-driven brands. And I think that’s the key. We know consumers are attracted to those brands and purpose-driven brands. Brands that have a story. Brands that potentially have a charitable aspect or a self-sustainable aspect. And those are the types of products that they want to find. They want to cut through the clutter.”

“On the brand side, customer acquisition is really difficult, and platforms like Instagram and Google are really saturated. That’s one of the main channels that people have now to reach out to their consumers. Everyone’s talking about influencers and how they can leverage influence more effectively. But I don’t think anybody’s really cracked that code really well.”

“We have a huge audience and we spend a lot of time trying to build up the products and the brands that we feature. And we come up with a fair and equitable revenue split. And we reach out to the audience. People come to us to find these brands that have been curated and it doesn’t cost anything to be on our platform for the brands. So [brands are] guaranteed to make money when we sell products. And we’re going to continue to build on that thesis.”

“What you really want from a board is a group of people that are willing to get involved and make introductions and are actually taking an interest and listening to what you’re doing and provide you with valuable advice and help you answer difficult questions.”

“For us, the more the experience gets better, the more sticky it is, the more people want to open up the Fancy app and just enter into that sort of social commerce world, the more people who are eventually going to transact.”

Mentions:

• Stephen King
• The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz

Bio:

Greg Spillane is CEO of Fancy.com. After Greg came on as CEO, Fancy.com’s average order size increased by 50%. Now, Fancy.com boasts 35k new app downloads per month and more than one million active users. Prior to his work at Fancy, Greg was the Chief Operating Officer of Events.com and the Chief Operating Officer of Granicus. He was also the Founder and CEO of Spicore Interactive, which was acquired in 2006.

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