"We just landed on the idea of Tumblr commerce, and the idea of
being able to buy from a Tumblr blog was wildly exciting," said
Coexist's principal Dan Coe, whose agency is focused on shopping
experiences for brands like Bath & Body Works and C.O.
Bigelow.
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Mr. Coe says the agency's Tumblr commerce platform has two
service levels: one designed for small businesses and the other for
brands. For the former, Coexist and Stripe would take a roughly 6%
cut of sales transacted through the platform, but the service would
be free to use. In the case of brands, he's envisioning something
more custom where Coexist might develop a Tumblr blog for an event
like Fashion Week and then power a pop-up store where Tumblr
followers could buy limited-edition goods that had been unveiled
that week.
The service's first taker is Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams, which
has 10 stores in Ohio and Tennessee and sells to wholesalers like
Dean & Deluca and Whole Foods but shipped more than $1 million
of product through its website last year. Its Tumblr account
launched last week, and items for sale are marked
with a yellow dot, including a $32 ice-cream-sandwich
collection.
"We're thinking of it as an outlet to do some smaller sales and
sell some [limited-edition] products that we wouldn't put on our
website," said Jeni's community manager Ryan Morgan, who noted that
his team is thinking of Tumblr as a virtual pop-up shop, though
it's too early to say whether product is moving.
Tumblr has taken its first steps toward developing a revenue
model, announcing in April that its "Radar" post on the user
dashboard would become available as an ad unit. It launched its
first major brand campaign with Adidas, focused on the
now-underway 2012 UEFA European Championship, earlier this
month.
Meanwhile, the company is encouraging third parties to innovate
in e-commerce on the platform, but shows no signs of wanting to
enter that space itself.
"We are constantly amazed and delighted by the creative ways
that third parties leverage the Tumblr platform and have put a
tremendous amount of care into making our API as functional and
flexible as possible," said Tumblr's VP-product Derek Gottfrid in
an emailed statement to Ad Age .
