Have you ever seen a cute outfit in a picture and searched the web endlessly to try to find it with no luck? You’re not alone. In today’s society, collegiates discover fashion through the lenses of their networks. Social media apps like Instagram and Facebook are the perfect place for window-shopping; however, there are no simple means to purchase those items, until now.
In comes GLBL, a shopping app that brings brands, influencers, and users to one central Market. GLBL is a network that allows users to follow and shop from all their favorite brands and discover and connect with a community of fashion bloggers.
“Our vision is simple, we think buying the items you discover in pictures should be as simple as ordering an Uber,” said Nick Dominguez, CEO at GLBL.
GLBL currently stands with eight partners, 50 collegiate interns, and over 40 fashion bloggers who have partnered with them for their launch. Their mission is simple: To make mobile shopping as simple as it needs to be for complete user adoption.
“It’s about time a company did this!” said blogger Alyssa Amato, of Fashion Sensored.
College students and millennials alike need a one-stop shop to purchase anything they see in pictures. Venmo is a network to send and receive payments, LinkedIn is a network for business professionals, and GLBL is a network to shop what you discover.
Nevertheless, GLBL did not become the platform that it is overnight. In November 2014, Dominguez sat down with his family friend Jeremy Kembel to discuss the vision of GLBL for the first time. Kembel had raised funding in a previous venture he was apart of that was acquired by Oracle. As a junior in college hoping to drop out and become the next Mark Zuckerberg, Dominguez left that meeting very humbled with realistic expectations. What Kembel said to him stuck, and his advice was simple: “Before you can know anything, you first need to build a beta to test what works and what does not. Learn and then alter.” For the next three years, that is exactly what Dominguez and his team did.
However, those three years were met with obstacles and adversity at every corner. Developers had backed out on them, which forced the CEO to step up and take on tasks like User Interface design himself. Competitors had also begun to enter the market with features that forced GLBL to switch feet to newly angled opportunities entirely. They received multiple “no’s” from investors early on, which were absorbed and lead to more business altering pivots.
“There is nothing like being in the trenches,” said Beau Buck, an acquaintance of the GLBL team.
Their persistence to learn and swing back has shaped the entire company into the exciting network it is turning into.
The ability to shop on mobile phones is a huge progression in our society, which will inevitably continue to pull at desktop sales. Its development has been a blessing for millennial women and men worldwide. GLBL has just made mobile shopping that much easier. College students are busy, cash-strapped, and often only willing to give into simple markets that bring clear benefits to the user. An app like GLBL will allow collegiates to instantly find the items they discover in photos and the convenience of its one-stop shop will fade any skepticism to new markets. In the first week of their launch, the GLBL app generated over 45,000 views on the photos of their fashion blogger partners!
Hayley Hall, a student at James Madison University and PR Intern for Glbl said, “This app helps you purchase the things you see while scrolling through photos so you never have to envy an influencer’s outfit again!”
With GLBL, there is no catch. In the next few months, the team wants to make purchases completely in-app so that users can enjoy a seamless checkout experience