Dive Brief:

• Crowdfunding and preorder company Celery Wednesday announced Celery Launch, a new e-commerce platform that enables companies to launch their idea on their own branded site or app.

• Companies are able to continue crowdfunding and pre-order campaigns without a deadline or the need for a site change once their products are available.

• Celery’s fees are 2% of revenue, lower than Kickstarter’s 5% of crowdfunding totals plus 3% to 5% in payment fees.

Dive Insight:

Until now, Celery has pitched itself as the place to go after a successful Kickstarter campaign, but with Celery Launch, creators and inventors can launch and never stop taking orders, all on their own sites.

Kickstarter has made a point of “not being a store,” and has essentially given up the post-launch space. Meanwhile, point-of-sales and inventory management platforms like Stripe and Square aren’t built with what Celery founder-CEO Chris Tsai calls “non-inventory commerce” in mind.

And while this may seem like an area dominated by smaller idea-makers or whiz kids, Celery has a roster of bigger companies opting to use crowdfunding or pre-ordering to launch new products or brands, gauge consumer interest in new products, or keep an efficient flow of inventory. 

The process can not only prevent build up of unwanted inventory, Tsai has told Retail Dive, but can also cement more intense buy-in and a closer relationship with customers.

“With crowdfunding becoming mainstream, the buyer/seller relationship is changing dramatically,” Tsai said in a statement Wednesday. “Consumers today, particularly millennials, expect more than just an exchange of cash for goods and services. They desire a more personal buying experience. By enabling sellers to host crowdfunding campaigns on their own sites, they are owning the customer relationship from the very beginning, which breeds loyalty throughout the customer lifecycle, as well as sets the stage for additional revenues.”