Afloat, a present supply app that permits you to store from native shops and have items delivered to a cherished one on the identical day, is now out there throughout the U.S. The startup introduced on Monday that it’s rolling out its service nationwide after beforehand solely being out there in choose cities, together with Atlanta, Dallas, Charleston, Fort Worth, Kansas City, Nashville, and Wichita, amongst others.
The startup was based by Sarah-Allen Preston after she skilled the stress of her new child present process open coronary heart surgical procedure. After receiving considerate items from family members, Preston needed to make rapid gift-giving doable for everybody, together with those that stay in one other state, to assist their family members in a time of want.
“When I looked back on that experience, though, I weirdly didn’t remember the stress and the heartache. All I remembered was how people showed up for me and how cared and supported I felt… So, I took that feeling and went on to amplify this in the world through technology,” she instructed TechCrunch.
Afloat goals to offer the comfort of on-line buying and immediate supply whereas additionally supporting native companies with out leaving your house. Afloat takes care of the complete gift-giving course of, together with reward wrapping and including a handwritten observe for an additional private contact. (Preston talked about that that is extra considerate than receiving a typed Amazon receipt.) As for the supply half, DoorDash drivers maintain that.
After the pandemic, many purchasers realized how a lot they appreciated their native retailers. Nearly 40% of small companies needed to shut down in the course of the COVID-19 lockdown in 2021. That need to buy at small companies continues to remain sturdy. According to a latest survey by Intuit, 62% of members mentioned they need to purchase from small companies of their neighborhood. E-commerce giants are additionally capitalizing on this mindset, as demonstrated by Etsy’s new gifting initiative, which options curated reward guides that spotlight impartial store homeowners.
The app presently works with 100 retailer companions, starting from bakeries and child shops to bookstores, florists, conventional reward shops, jewellery shops, and so forth. According to the corporate, it has helped its retailer companions broaden their gifting income by 30-50%.
The firm has additionally now shifted to a SaaS (software program as a service) mannequin to permit extra shops to affix the platform, together with different sorts of companies, like spas and related companies. Afloat will supply subscription plans at $99/month (Gold) and $299/month (Platinum), which features a newly launched dashboard that gives shops with advertising and marketing and merchandising assist, in addition to gross sales information, and different helpful options.
“We don’t have to hard launch markets anymore, which is really exciting… We are going to be able to be SaaS anywhere, everywhere,” Preston mentioned.
Additionally, the corporate is within the strategy of constructing a subscription tier for customers, which is able to enable them to entry premium options like scheduling deliveries and being notified as quickly as a brand new reward providing drops.
Afloat presently has over 30,000 customers. It’s backed by Goodwater Capital and Techstars, with over $5M in complete funding.