Wanderful Brings Circulars Into 21st Century

How can old-school circulars and coupons be reconciled with today’s mobile and digital world?

It’s an important question for retailers everywhere, and one Wanderful Media is trying to answer through its unique “online community for shoppers.” Blending elements of new and traditional media with couponing, social sharing, recommendations and more, Wanderful also launched a redesigned “Find&Save” platform in April, and received $9 million in funding shortly thereafter.

What does the company plan to do with the new backing, and how are they continuing to bring savings to the digital world? PYMNTS.com spoke with Ben T. Smith IV, CEO at Wanderful Media, to find out, and about Wanderful’s primary focus: pushing shoppers across the thresholds of local retail stores.

PYMNTS.com: As a new player in the online shopping space, Wanderful may be an unfamiliar name to some of our readers. Can you introduce your business to us and explain how you operate in the current market?

Ben T. Smith: We put Wanderful Media together close to 18 months ago to redefine what the local circular would be if it was built in the age of tablets, location-aware cell phones and other modern technological advances. While there have been attempts by others in the past to implement digital circulars before the tablet and the mobile phone, from a user behavior perspective, the industry wasn’t ready. Without widespread smart phone and tablet adoption, the use case wasn’t clear – this is the key difference between then and now.

We formed business relationships with 12 prominent media companies, including properties like the Washington Post, Gannett and Hearst, to create this new product. We bought a couple of assets, Travidia, as well as iCircular of the Associated Press. We then stepped back and said what do we think this looks like going forward based on what we see people doing, shopping behavior and what they did historically with circulars.

So we start with access to more than 100 million unique shoppers per month. Not only are we the content in the shopping tab, we also control a portion of the web advertising on all these newspaper sites, and we own print assets in all of their papers which provides us with access to the set of shoppers who use the print circulars.

In April 2013, Wanderful Media launched a completely re-imagined Find&Save. Available on tablet, mobile and web, Find&Save is an online community for shoppers to discover products and sales in their local area. The service is free and allows shoppers to share sale items and lists across Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and email. To keep tabs on the latest sales of personal interest, users can follow their favorite retailers, shopping categories and user-created lists, as well as friends of other members of the community with similar tastes, creating a unique “wisdom of the crowd” effect. We are very pleased with the increased numbers for engagement, number of visits and time on site per unique visitor.

On the heels of the successful launch of Find&Save, Wanderful Media received an additional $9 million in funding from existing investors bringing the company’s total funding to $36 million. The latest round of funding emphasizes the continued enthusiasm from our core group of investors in the market potential and in our overall product strategy. The new Find&Save has also spurred interest from new partners and investors too, so look out for more news on this in the coming months.

In-store shopping and online shopping were once pretty separate commerce spheres, why do you think more consumers are looking for services that bridge this gap?

Tablets and mobile devices have made their way into retail, driving local retailers to evolve. There was a time when eCommerce and local stores were divided, I agree. Fast forward to today’s integrated social world, where shopping has fundamentally changed. The divide here has not only shrunk, it has disappeared as we have found that online and mobile browsing leads to in-store sales the majority of the time. As more people turn to mobile on a regular basis, they are increasingly browsing products and looking up local businesses from their mobile devices. According to a 2012 Wanderful Media survey conducted by Dimensional Research, laptop computers (77 percent) are at the top of the list of devices participants use to browse, check reviews, find a store, buy a product, or do other online shopping activities. However, smartphones are a very close second at 75 percent. These are ahead of desktop computers (67 percent) and tablets (53 percent).

Technology integration and cultural shifts are changing the shopping journey for consumers. The shopping journey begins with the serendipitous discovery of goods through an advertising circular, an array of products on a tablet, or recommendations from friends on social media, leading to a trip to the local store. Mobile devices and the array of digital shopping choices have empowered shoppers with knowledge and information not available in the past. In short, tech innovation has allowed shoppers to save money by offering more of, and improved deal choices. This is desirable for today’s tech savvy consumer.

Going off of your website, it sounds as if Wanderful is taking aim at daily deal and couponing sites. What do you think makes Wanderful a better fit for shoppers? And how do you plan to go about promoting these benefits?

Find&Save is much more than a daily deal or couponing site. We are similar to bits and pieces of different content aggregating and savings sites or apps on the market, but we offer a holistic view – there isn’t another company we can directly compare ourselves to. We are helping retailers bring shoppers into local stores, and giving shoppers an engaging way to discover local merchandise.

Our audience is really whoever is looking to find sales in their area. They are the “pre-shoppers” who are traditional circular readers and/or digital news readers who are also interested in sales on mainstream, and everyday goods. Find&Save is a site for those who love to shop or someone who is looking for better tools to make shopping quick and easy.

Your product Find&Save is being designed with media partners, advertisers and consumers in mind. What are the difficulties Wanderful has had always striking the balance between these parties given their conflicting interests?

With the purpose of bringing shoppers across the threshold of local retailers, the consumer experience comes first for Find&Save.

For consumers Find&Save is a fun way to easily flip through all the latest sales in your area and keep track of what you need, and want, before you get to the store. The retail advertisers are interested in Find&Save’s ability to engage shoppers around local sales and products, with the intent of driving shoppers across the threshold of retail stores. For our media partners, we are providing a single and proven platform to generate new revenues from local retail digital advertising, and to strengthen their brand with local consumers.

Find&Save is being billed as a way to discover local sales, but is there a way for shoppers to purchase from the app? If not, do you plan on adding this feature in the future, and how would this be implemented?

Our objective is to drive shoppers into local retail stores. We are not an eCommerce solution, we’re really not trying to solve that part of the shopping answer. Our objective is to drive people across the threshold of local stores, much like circulars do.

That said we do have future plans for Find&Save. We plan to roll out mobile apps for iOS and Android. This will enable us to use geo-location data to send push notifications, and to leverage for a more personalized experience for shoppers. We plan to make special enhancements to the tablet experience, where we are betting many shoppers will increasingly use to browse and discover sales in their area.

We also plan to expand from national retailers, to include local merchants. We aim to make Find&Save a sales and promotion platform for any retailer.