Xuba founder Julie Mahloch speaks to the audience gathered at Nomad Lounge. Photo by Danny Schreiber.
At tonight’s Xuba launch event, the social commerce startup’s founder, Julie Mahloch, took the stage around 6:10 p.m. to a crowd of over 80 people. “We have our first site out in beta and it’s called Bloom Circle, and it’s social beauty,” announced Mahloch halfway through her eight-minute talk. “We’re about women helping women find the perfect beauty products for them,” said Mahloch.
Then looking at both the past and what could come, she said, “Like we did at Hayneedle, we started with one store, Hammocks.com, and in less than five years we grew to over 200 stores.”
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Here’s the homepage of Xuba‘s first social commerce site, Bloom Circle (found at bloom.com):
Screenshot of bloom.com, taken January 12, 2011
The focus of Bloom Circle is women’s beauty products, and even more so, women themselves – men are not allowed to sign up for Bloom (seriously, I was rejected). The site is currently in beta, and in her presentation, Mahloch indicated they’ve been working on the ecommerce side of it for quite some time.
“We’re layering in more and more social layers to Bloom Circle, but we haven’t revealed many of them. We have a great team working on them, and as Doug (Nielsen) said, we’re looking for a really great technology team specifically to help us bring our last social layers to bear on our site.”
But Xuba will be more than Bloom. Xuba itself is a “social commerce platform.” This means that as Xuba grows, Bloom.com will only be one of many categories implementing the technology that Xuba is developing. Over time, the Xuba name will fade into the background as consumers get to know the names of the stores that Xuba has implemented. Xuba.com won’t be the place for social commerce, instead it’ll be sites like Bloom Circle.
“We have a number of categories that we think are really exciting for the social commerce space,” said Mahloch.
When describing Xuba’s approach to social commerce, Mahloch said that they won’t be expecting their costumers to go find products, instead they’re going to be bringing products to them. In other words, she said that they would be simplifying the ecommerce experience. “Our definition of social commerce is knowing the customers through social and having costumers help each other through connecting, and helping each other find the right products for them.”
In addition to sharing details about Xuba, Mahloch reflected on the work she and her brother, Hayneedle and Xuba co-founder Doug Nielsen, have been doing together for over a decade. “It’s been really a fun ride to be a part of this in Omaha, and we feel good about being able to create companies here and employee over 400 people at Hayneedle and really be a part of what’s going on here in the entrepreneurial community.”
Mahloch’s conclusion reiterated that they’re not slowing down. “Check out Bloom Circle and you can see the beginnings of what is social commerce, but there are many more to come and we look forward to telling you more as the months go on.”
To learn more about Xuba and the executive team they’ve assembled, see our article: “Xuba, a ‘well-funded’ social commerce startup prepares to launch.”
Here are more photos I took at tonight’s event, where entrepreneurial energy was permeating throughout Nomad Lounge.
Attendees were greeted at the entrance by Xuba employees.
Attendees gathered before the presentation began. On the projector screen in the background were slides of other social commerce startups and social media facts.
Xuba co-founder Doug Nielsen took the stage to introduce Xuba founder and sibling Julie Mahloch.
Julie Mahloch spoke to a captivated audience.
Following the presentation, Julie Mahloch and Nick Hudson (far right), Xuba’s chief marketing officer and owner of Nomad Lounge, spoke with Ross Boettcher, a reporter for the Omaha World-Herald.
Doug Nielsen (center) speaking with a couple of the event’s attendees.
David Vana, Xuba CFO, speaking with an attendee.
