Holly Cardew, Founder and CEO of Carted on connecting shoppers to every product on the planet
Dec 19, 2023
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Holly Cardew, Founder and CEO of Carted, talks about revolutionizing shopping by standardizing and organizing products into a shoppable knowledge graph. The podcast explores the challenges of developing Vop for TikTok, creating a multi-merchant checkout, the rise of universal commerce, and the launch of the Swirl consumer app. It also discusses the power of packaging and branding, building a business, and the pros and cons of remote work.
Carted aims to disrupt the current commerce landscape by creating a centralized and standardized product database to empower shoppers and enable them to seamlessly buy products from various digital surfaces.
Swirl, a consumer app by Carted, streamlines the shopping experience by allowing users to save and compare products from any website or app, and receive notifications about price changes and sales.
Cardid Elements is a low-code, no-code builder developed by Carted to simplify the integration process for developers and accelerate adoption of its API.
Deep dives
Cardid's Vision for Universal Commerce
Cardid's vision is to build the world's largest product database that's searchable, shoppable, and personalized, enabling shoppers to find the exact products they want, however they like to shop, wherever they are on the internet. They aim to disrupt the current commerce landscape, which is mainly focused on individual merchant websites or marketplaces like Amazon and Google Shopping. By creating a centralized and standardized product database, Cardid aims to empower shoppers to make informed purchasing decisions and seamlessly buy products from various digital surfaces.
Introduction of Swirl and its Purpose
Swirl is a consumer app launched by Cardid that allows users to save products from any website or app, organize them, and compare prices over time. It addresses the common problem of shoppers trying to keep track of desired items that are scattered across different platforms and often complicated to find later. Swirl aims to streamline the shopping experience by providing users with notifications about price changes and sales, allowing them to stay informed and make informed purchasing decisions.
Building Cardid Elements for Faster Implementation
Cardid Elements is a low-code, no-code builder developed by Cardid to simplify the integration process for developers. It enables them to quickly add card and checkout functionality to their websites, reducing the time and resources required for implementation. By offering this tool, Cardid aimed to accelerate adoption of its API and encourage developers to create new commerce experiences.
Transition to Remote Work and Its Challenges
Cardid initially had a distributed team spanning multiple time zones due to the pandemic. However, they realized that having team members in different time zones posed challenges in terms of coordination and productivity. As a result, they made the decision to shift to a smaller, more focused team located within the same time zone, improving efficiency and collaboration.
Raising Venture Funding and Its Impact
After being a bootstrap company for 10 years, Cardid decided to raise a significant seed round of funding. This decision was driven by the need to access resources and support that would allow them to execute their vision and take on new initiatives. The funding provided them with the flexibility to hire talented individuals and further develop their solutions. While the team remains focused on resourcefulness and cost-effectiveness, they now have the ability to try bold moves and explore new opportunities that were previously limited by financial constraints.
Forget what you think you know about building a new e-commerce experience because Carted sees the world differently. It’s a world where the merchant is no longer the only focus for commerce innovation.
In this episode, we talk to Holly Cardew, Carted’s Founder, about how they are changing the future of shopping by standardising and organising the world’s products into a shoppable knowledge graph.
In Carted’s new ecosystem, shoppers are at the centre, and non-traditional commerce platforms will become the new vehicles for the world’s best contextual shopping experiences. As with all big, hard things - the journey is not linear. We touch on the beginnings of their product graph API with permissionless integrations and standardising a billion products, how that led to building a new multi-merchant contextual commerce experience for publishers - and then to where they are today with their consumer-facing API implementation, Swurl.
All of these forked paths have led the team to exactly where they need to be.
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