INTRO
Throne is a leading creator commerce platform driven by gifting and recommendations.
Using Throne, creators can make product wishlists of items they actually want in a gamified and fun way. Creators then share this wishlist with their followers. Their audiences can browse the wishlist and purchase gifts for them as a form of connection. While fans may follow a creator on Twitch or YouTube, they interact with these wishlists inside of Throne’s own platform. After seeing the wishlist, fans can purchase gifts without leaving the platform. Importantly, Throne provides a layer of abstraction between the gifter’s payment info and the creator’s address where the product will be shipped. The result is a personalized and secure relationship between creators and their communities.
Soon, Throne will allow creators to partner directly with brands, and recommend and sell products within the platform. They refer to this as bi-directional commerce.
PROBLEMS
Throne was growing fast and processing a lot of orders manually. Without direct merchant connections, they were forced to rely on inaccurate data and piecemeal processes that were expensive and could not scale.
Inaccurate product data
Throne was relying on legacy tactics like web scraping and affiliate links to populate product catalog data. This resulted in incorrect product and inventory data, selling products that are out of stock, charging the wrong amount for an item, or worse.
Manual processes & high marginal costs
As CEO Lenny Soenke explains it, “before Violet, when a fan placed an order, it would get routed to an internal dashboard monitored by Throne staff. That team would then go to the website from where the product data was scraped and manually enter in the information to place an order for the item with the merchant using company funds. This came with a number of operational complexities, delays, data errors, and issues with returns.”
Indirect merchant relationships
Throne knew they needed more direct connections to merchants and their products. They investigated building ecommerce platform integrations to connect directly with merchant systems as one possible solution.
“Building integrations ourselves would’ve required a large team and a long time. . . With Violet, we had integrations with every major e-commerce platform with two developers in just one month.”
- Leonhard Soenke, CEO, Throne
SOLUTIONS
Direct Connection
By providing ecommerce integrations across all major platforms Violet solved Throne’s data challenge. Direct connections to merchant product catalogs delivered real time information about product variants, pricing changes and inventory levels. “We’ve now built an internal product catalog where we sync information from our partner stores via Violet. Instead of having to manually paste in a link to a product they like, creators can browse this catalog like any other marketplace, and with one click add an item to their wishlist.”
Order Writeback
With Violet’s instant order writeback, any purchase made on Throne’s site is sent straight to the merchant, exactly as if it had been purchased directly from the merchant’s store. “And,” Soenke points out, “as soon as the fan clicks buy on the wishlist, this order now directly pings our partner store’s API instantly, as opposed to taking hours or days to process.”
Violet Connect
Violet Connect is Violet’s authentication layer that makes adding merchant partners fast and easy. “Adding merchants to the Throne community has never been easier,” COO Heiner Stinner told us.
“Using Violet now means that with our merchant partners we become a marketing channel and a sales channel: fans can not only purchase for creators on our site, but through unboxing videos and shoutouts our creators then become ambassadors or promoters for those products in a highly authentic way. So the partnership becomes much more valuable for Throne, the creators, and the merchants.”
– Heiner Stinner, COO, Throne
RESULTS
From 36 hours to instant writeback
Before Violet, fans and creators would experience anywhere between a 24 to 72 hour delay between when the order was placed on Throne and when the merchant processed it. With instant order writeback, Throne cut their processing time down from 36 hours to 300 milliseconds.
Reduced cost by 95% (while increasing speed)
Throne was able to eliminate its reliance on duplicating orders with manual labor, instead writing orders directly back to merchant systems. The result was a massive cut in costs, while accelerating Throne’s processes and scalability.
Order tracking at the creator’s fingertips
Before Violet, creators could only obtain shipping & tracking information on their gifts by sending a request to Throne. As Soenke puts it, “with Violet, the tracking is sent automatically via webhook, and that’s something our creators really appreciate.”
Easy Connection and Attribution
Before Violet, Throne placed manual orders on a website, with limited tracking and attribution. This made it difficult for merchants to develop the relationship with Throne as a reliable source of new revenue. For COO Heiner Stinner, “talking with partner stores is now a joy because the benefits to them are obvious. It’s so hard for merchants today to see which channels are working, but with Violet’s integration, merchants know which creator and fan their purchases come from. And they only pay when they sell. It makes us an ideal marketing and sales partner.”
