With $three.2M in Funding, Fragmob to increase Multi-level advertising App
Bruce V. Bigelow October 12, 2015
Jonathan Shapiro says some 100 million individuals around the world consider themselves to be in the direct promoting industry—and it goes with out announcing that virtually all of them have smartphones.
San Diego-based Fragmob set out about 5 years in the past to serve that market through growing mobile software that particular person sales reps can use at multi-stage advertising companies like Canada’s Organo Gold, Mexico’s Grupo Omnilife, and Utah’s LifeVantage. (Organo Gold sells espresso, tea, non-public care objects, and “nutraceuticals,” while Omnilife and LifeVantage sell dietary supplements.)
gross sales representatives for multi-degree advertising and marketing firms like these in most cases work independently, and earn profits by means of both promoting the corporate’s products (which the sales rep purchases in my opinion) and by recruiting others to work as distributors.
Some multi-degree advertising companies have engendered controversy thru their questionable claims and gross sales practices. but Fragmob’s Shapiro says the industry probability is huge—the trade generates annual gross sales of $ 34 billion in the U.S. and $ 182 billion globally.
ultimate month, Fragmob said it raised $ 3.2 million in convertible debt funding so that it will be used for working capital, to rent more employees, and to expedite the advance of Fragmob’s cellular, analytics, and e-commerce merchandise. (the worldwide technology Fund of world belief crew, a general contractor based totally in Kabul, Afghanistan, with an administrative center in Las Vegas, NV, led the seed spherical.)
according to Shapiro, Fragmob had one client and 15 staff a 12 months in the past. He says the cell app developer now has 50 workers and 5 consumers.
And after webhosting a two-day technology meeting for the direct sales business remaining week at the Andaz hotel in downtown San Diego, Fragmob said it additionally had signed two new partnership agreements.
Jonathan Shapiro (left) and Jade Charles
in a single deal, Fragmob and InfoTrax programs of Orem, UT, will work together to combine Fragmob’s cell platform technology with the backend operations systems and on-line distributor tools that InfoTrax has developed for the multi-level advertising trade. in the different deal, Fragmob agreed to integrate its mobile know-how with PayQuicker, an FDIC-licensed online payment platform based totally in East Rochester, big apple.
Shapiro, who grew up in New Jersey and worked in new york in funding banking and personal fairness, says he co-founded Fragmob in 2011 with Jade Charles, a San Diego instrument engineer who specializes in cell e-commerce and social platforms. Their thought was once to enhance a cell model of enterprise instrument developed for multi-level advertising by means of corporations like Silicon Valley’s AboveGem and Utah’s iCentris and InfoTrax.
“Most corporations in the house have legacy tool,” for his or her gross sales and marketing groups, Shapiro says. “once they go cell, they regularly attempt to take their internet-based software and port it over to a cell surroundings.”
making a cellular app from scratch enabled Fragmob to focal point on the customers’ experience, Shapiro says, pronouncing Charles all in favour of making the shopping expertise as straightforward as imaginable.
They named their startup Fragmob, as in “fragmented mobile,” for the reason that mobile sector was once initially so fragmented, Shapiro says. however he says the name additionally alludes to a “frag grenade” as a result of they want Fragmob to “explode on the scene.”
Shapiro says Fragmob carried out beta checking out of its cell device completely for one customer. After that contract expired, alternatively, Fragmob made up our minds to offer its mobile tool for a couple of multi-level advertising buyers. according to Shapiro, Organo Gold, Omnilife, LifeVantage, ItWorks, and ViSalus all became Fragmob shoppers.
Fragmob configures its instrument for every purchaser. Shapiro says the compensation plans for the businesses are very sophisticated, however Fragmob configures its cell tool in order that gross sales reps for every company can practice their progress and ranking, step-by using-step.
“Our app helps to mentor gross sales reps,” Shapiro mentioned. “We combine with the corporate’s software and provide the information they need so they take note every step a [sales rep] has completed and what they wish to do to get to the subsequent stage.”
Fragmob’s flagship product is the Frag DS platform. the corporate says its technology “turns a gross sales rep’s smartphone into an instantaneous point of sale, a tracking system for orders, and a guide to the best sales and team movements to absorb real time.”
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