Shopify’s Frenzy – Sell to the most loyal customers in a new way
getfrenzy.coyou guys need to read up on QA
The only way to use it between launches is to delete app and re-download from the app store
And the only way to figure that out was to follow them on twitter, 4 minutes before the launch. Anyone else just couldn't open the app
Awesome work guys, how about testing on "normal" products before asking companies to give you their most important launches of the season
I think this is a brilliant move. I've seen people lining up around the block at the sneaker shop near my house for a new release, so I'm sure there is the online equivalent.
It happens online as well, some people build "snipe" browser plugins to put shoes into baskets as fast as they become available.
These scripts are used both by fans and resellers, but there is another angle: The developers behind the plugins include their own reseller-id in all orders, so they get a bit of money for every sale.
The reseller ids is given to these developers, which makes me think that the brands are in on it as well, they don't care who buys the shoes, as long as they sell them, and they maintain scarcity.
Hello! I'm Tucker, Product Manager on Frenzy.
Frenzy came to be from one of Shopify's quarterly hackdays projects, with the goal of changing flash sales for both merchants and consumers forever.
Frenzy is the best way to buy from brands you love. Whether you’re looking to buy rare products, discover new ones, or learn about new brands, Frenzy is the place to do it. Rather than waiting in line at a retail store, missing out online, or simply forgetting about a sale – Frenzy puts the hype of the best product releases in your pocket. When you buy from a seller on Frenzy, it’s just like buying from them in person – but you can do it anywhere in the world.
Frenzy will be launching this week with merchants Kith, Love Your Melon, Raised by Wolves, Off the Hook, and more, who will be selling products exclusively on the app.
Happy to answer any questions!
> Rather than waiting in line at a retail store, missing out online, or simply forgetting about a sale – Frenzy puts the hype of the best product releases in your pocket.
So I was attempting to decipher this sentence, which while apparently written in English, appears to be incomprehensible. I've identified the subject as "Frenzy" and the verb as "puts" and the object as "hype" but then I got a little lost and wandered off.
In all seriousness, learning how to present product in way that's free from content free superlatives and meaningless phrases will help greatly in communicating with customers.
Would it help you if they phrased it as "Frenzy helps their clients grow their business by delivering results-oriented digital solutions?"
I do not think anyone working for a 'digital strategy firm' should be the first to throw stones.
Seems to me that the opinion of someone running an agency that, among other things, implements Shopify integrations, would fall under the general category of customer feedback.
I hope you two know each other IRL. If not, maybe you should - you both have a good sense of grammar. And humor.
Made me laugh, at least...
Working at a Shopify expert company [1], I'm curious about Frenzy's relation to / integration with the rest of the Shopify platform, and e.g. whether it will be possible to manage via (additions to) the Shopify API? Is this currently intended only for high-volume retailers, or the entire long-tail of the Shopify customer base?
Thanks!
> When you buy from a seller on Frenzy, it’s just like buying from them in person
I think shopping online is great, but calling online flash selling "just like bying from them in person" is a bit of an exaggeration.
That's because most of his post was just marketing patter copied and pasted from their FAQ page:
Out of curiosity could anyone build an app like this with Shopify's apis? Or does it rely on internal private Shopify functionality?
I've wanted to integrate with Shopify but seem to get confused by the limitations.
For one, it would be cool if the sellers had the options to let their products be on an open market place where anyone could write an application and sell their products for commission.
Anyone could build an app like this with Shopify's apis. We used https://developers.shopify.com/sales-channel-sdk.
You can also build a shopping app for a single store using: https://help.shopify.com/api/sdks/mobile-buy-sdk
well not quite anyone... you need to be approved to be able to use the sales-channel-sdk.
To date I haven't been approved, which is one of the reasons why after 10+ years of using shopify we're moving off the platform. Biggest reason is limited API calls even on the Shopify Enterprise Plan...
Shopify is a great option if you've got a few skus, e.g. want to sell a few T-Shirts, however try to do anything complicated (like merging customer accounts, editing orders etc, even changing a billing address of an order) and it falls over :(
But what is better? Magento takes 1 sever per 10 customers due to how bad the perf is.
Here is the news coverage: https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/22/shopifys-experimental-prod...
I see that it's iPhone only. Does anyone know if they are making an Android app?
Yes, the team did an AMA on /r/sneakers yesterday: https://www.reddit.com/r/Sneakers/comments/5e5d9a/ama_were_t...
Disclosure: I'm at Shopify, but not part of the Frenzy team.
Seems to be like ibood.com but as a service. Really like the ibood concept as its European based, a lot of the deals you see online are exclusive to the US, hope that won't be the case with getfrenzy
Ottawa tech :)
I wish Amazon used this for their sale of the Classic NES (https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/11/nintendowned-amazon-sells-...) flash sale.
That would be sweet!
Damn. Wonder if we'll see any merchants using this on Black Friday.
Shopify has been piloting the app with retailers that have the same target market as Restocks (YC W16).
The first pilot was with Kith in October sometime and now they're definitely doing some Black Friday stuff and are launching Yeezys for Off the Hook today.
Stay tuned! Lots more to come.
This seems oddly worded:
"With Frenzy, there’s no limit to your sales volume, the number of products you can sell, or the bandwidth you need." [emphasis added]
Let's not get pedantic! Sales of limited-stock goods will ideally run their course in a super short span of time. For example if I am running a Magento site and am anticipating 100k+ visitors per minute, then I have to start worrying about the need for load balancers, etc. Shopify removes this burden. I think it's clear that that's what they're saying.
I guess they're playing on the idea that some people like to see big traffic spikes during sales.
Add a 1 GB image to your store and watch how the no limit thing plays out...
This sounds exciting specifically for selling tickets to anticipated events. The amount of servers crashing under load is too damn much in my experience.
Thanks! We hope to ease some of that pain soon.
This looks cool. Shopify seems to be one of / the most competent players in the eComm space. Wonder if it will pan out successfully.
Shopify is the best, but it's not a high bar. I've been on the platform for almost 7 years. I have two major issues:
1. They're still lacking some major features imho (ability to sell in multiple currencies, can't put tracking JS on checkout pages, access to payout reports for bookkeeper, got lots more)
2. They do terrible product marketing - no email about newly launched features. In an extreme case, they launched a feature that sent emails to customers when their order was out for delivery, delivered, etc. Problem is that I was already using an app for that, so when they launched the feature and enabled it by default without letting me know, customers got two emails telling them their order was out for delivery, delivered, etc. It was a terrible customer experience (for us and for our customers) and I can't imagine how that decision was made. ("Hey, want to enable this feature that sends more emails to our customers' customers without announcing it? Yeah? Great!")
If you shell out for Plus, you can add the tracking and your account manager sends out #2 on a weekly basis.
The example you give was extremely frustrating though (wasn't on Plus at the time).
>>can't put tracking JS on checkout pages
Holy shit, that sounds awful. How do you perform conversion optimization if you can't do tracking on checkout pages?
https://help.shopify.com/themes/customization/order-status/a...
They try to make it slightly harder to write a store that steals credit cards.. not a terrible thing..
Thanks, will look. Last I checked you could put a tracking pixel on the confirmation page that appeared after a purchase was made, but not in the intermediate checkout steps.
If this is possible it's another example of poor product marketing: I've asked for this feature multiple times via email and forums over the last 6 years, and I hear about it from HN? That's a broken experience for a customer who's paid them approaching 5 figures.
They have some incredibly frustrating brick wall limitations that you find once you start really working with the platform, but it's still the best I've used by an order of magnitude. And the "there's an app for that" mantra totally holds true, which is often convenient for rapidly growing or testing features.
What limitations have you hit or found to be the most frustrating?
No native support for multi-tier pricing is the most frustrating thing I come up against. Often have clients wanting a wholesale/reseller tier. There are add-ons for it and kludges, but it'd be great to have even basic built-in options.
This is the same issue I have run into with my clients most frequently. It seems like they are not interested in fixing this issue sadly.
1) Very limited promotions system (one coupon code per order hard limit, limited options) - mitigated somewhat now with Shopify Pro and the script editor, but only somewhat.
2) No multiple currency support.
3) 100 variant limit per product (I've used a couple different ways around this in different stores, but none of them ideal).
Apps mitigate many of the other missing features and annoyances, but sometimes having to rely on apps is a tough pill to swallow (like needing to use Power Tools just to create smart collections with any kind of advanced rule set.)
I don't see why not. Their customers appear quite loyal and their product features continue to expand in a way that hasn't added too much complexity for people new to the platform and since their brand recognition in their vertical is so positive and we'll communicated I don't see that added complexity turning off to many new users, because their experience of that complexity appears to be, 'well because it's powerful and awesome, so I expect I'd have to spend some time learning it and I'm prepared for that', versus 'ughh I don't get it and it costs and I don't know if it'll deliver what I need so I'm going to quite right now... Company-x sucks'. Just commenting on what I'm seeing from others.