Invest in Blackcart

Blackart.com:
The platform that increases
sales and customer happiness

The Try-Before-You-Buy (“TBYB”) movement has picked up steam with a projected $75B in ecommerce products purchased via TBYB in 2023. However, only 17.5% of retailers have actually adopted a TBYB program because it’s complex to build, both in terms of processing and fraud protection. This is where Blackcart comes in.

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Read more about Blackcart's Series A Round in the news: 

• BlackCart raises $8.8M Series A for its try-before-you-buy platform for online merchants
• Blackcart Claims $50 Million Valuation Following $11.2 Million Series A Round
• “Try-before-you-buy” platform, BlackCart secures an amount of $8.8 M in Series A funding

The market is changing and brands are being left behind

It's becoming increasingly expensive to acquire customers due to recent privacy related changes in the industry led by the iOS 15 rollout, and inflation-driven pressure to discount products. With inflation and recessionary fears, consumers are less willing to make impulse purchase decisions. By going back to in-store shopping, consumers are able to try products before being forced to make a decision. Brands that are able to couple the experience of in-store shopping with the convenience of eCommerce gain an unfair advantage.

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TBYB programs are difficult

The Try-Before-You-Buy (“TBYB”) is picking up massive adoption right now because it's a win for shoppers (flexibility + easy returns) and a win for retail / e-commerce brands (larger avg. order value). It's projected that $75B in e-commerce products will be purchased via Try Before You Buy in 2023. Yet, only 17.5% of retailers have actually adopted a TBYB program. Amazon alongside an increasing number of massive online retailers have developed TBYB programs internally, but the vast majority of e-commerce stores out there are yet to support a TBYB program because it’s complex to build, both in terms of processing and fraud protection. 

Meet Blackcart: Give customers a frictionless shopping experience

Blackcart is an out-of-the-box Try-Before-You-Buy program for online retailers. Blackcart integrates into an e-commerce store as a plugin (i.e. Shopify, Magento, & custom storefronts), enabling consumers to add clothes to their shopping carts, get them shipped to try on at home for free, seamlessly return unwanted items, and automatically pay for only what they keep. Blackcart is offered to merchants for free and only charges a 4%-6% per-transaction fee on the total gross merchandise value of each order.

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Blackart's Try Before You Buy (TBYB) Solution

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Turnkey integration within 24 hours, with no impact on the merchant's existing order management, fulfillment, returns processing, and accounting systems.

A robust, out-of-the-box TBYB platform

Blackcart offers each merchant a robust set of customizable features that can be configured prior to and following program launch. Merchants have unparalleled control over all aspects of the TBYB experience and can implement item caps, item minimums, exclusions, deposits, restocking fees, and more. Everything, including web copy placements, messaging, design, and up-sell offers, is customizable through the merchant portal.

Blackcart’s platform has been proven to increase both average order values (“AOV”) and conversion rates while providing improved consumer experiences. On average, a Blackcart merchant will see a 57% increase in net AOV (after returns), 23% increase in conversion rate, and 55% increase in return on ad spend. Blackcart merchants find that almost 40% of total checkout volume is powered by Blackcart’s TBYB option, indicating a strong consumer preference while making the platform very sticky with merchants.

Once launched, the Blackcart TBYB program is completely automated for merchants. Blackcart manages the entire lifecycle of each order, from checkout to returns and payment. Kept and returned items are reconciled automatically and consumers are charged accordingly. Funds are transferred directly to merchants’ bank accounts daily. Blackcart also assumes all repayment risk on each transaction, including fraud, credit, and charge-back risk, and offers automated merchant settlements regardless of reason.

Risk-free, scalable model unlocks network effects

Blackcart’s current business model boasts an 80% gross margin. The company charges a 3%-4% service fee and a 2.6%+30¢ transaction fee (combined 6.6%+30¢) on the total gross merchandise value of each order at the time of checkout. A typical merchant doing $10M/yr in GMV yields approximately $104k in annual revenue for Blackcart.

Blackcart takes advantage of processing fee arbitrage by charging merchants based on items tried while paying volume-discounted payment processing fees only on items kept. Blackcart processes all TBYB orders, and fees are recognized and collected at the time of checkout. Kept and returned items are reconciled automatically and charged accordingly. By integrating directly with merchants’ accounting and order management systems, Blackcart is able to transfer payments to merchants’ bank accounts daily. The company’s per-order costs include order decisioning and cloud hosting fees.

Adoption is rapidly increasing among retailers and ecommerce brands

We activated commercial efforts in Dec 2021,
and are seeing rapid growth.

Blackcart has been on a tear lately growing 34.5% MoM. Today, Blackcart is at $1.25M CARR → $2.8M EO22 → $14M EO23 → $42M EO24. They currently support 90K+ shoppers and 30+ merchants including notable customers like Dia & Co, Paka, ThirdLove, Boundary Supply, among many others.

$75B+ total addressable market

There are over 45K qualified ecommerce stores in the US alone, representing an average top-line revenue opportunity for Blackcart of $40K per store per year. In 2018, over $17B in US ecommerce purchases were transacted through TBYB, and this number is expected to increase 4x to $74B by 2023.

Blackcart has unlimited potential due to the massive total addressable market of ecommerce retailers, macro-level trends driving ecommerce growth and increased TBYB adoption, and the need for innovation in an industry that demands it.

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The only company offering a true TBYB solution

Blackcart is tangential—or even complementary—to most players in the TBYB space and only directly competes with a small handful of vendors.

The only TBYB provider with a proprietary fraud engine which lets customers try with no credit card authorization/hold required.

Customers choose Blackart TBYB on the product page as opposed to the checkout page — allowing Blackart to intercept more customers earlier in the shopping journey compared to BNPL.

Create a fantastic
retail experience

that keeps bringing customers back for more.

In the future, Blackcart plans on generating SaaS revenue streams with product add-ons and up-sell features such as advanced analytics dashboards. Due to the sheer volume of consumer accounts created and the consumer data collected via the fraud prevention process and beyond, Blackcart sees an opportunity to eventually also introduce new features and products directly to consumers:

  Reward points for kept items that can be used at any              Blackcart-powered merchant

 Virtual credit cards that can be used to TBYB from any            online store, to create consumer platform loyalty, and              diversify revenue streams

 Blackcart-powered payment plans for settling kept                   items as an alternative to paying with credit cards

 Blackcart-powered warranty options for protecting                   higher-value products

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Blackart has compounding network effects today that open up powerful new opportunities.

Meet the Team

Donny Ouyang, CEO and founder, has been a founder and builder since he was 12 years old, starting Kinkarso Tech while in high school, and growing it to over $100k in sales building and selling web properties. While attending the University of Toronto, Donny founded Rayku - an online on-demand tutoring platform, where he raised $500k in funding and grew Rayku to thousands of customers and hundreds of tutors. Following Rayku, Donny joined Caravan Ventures — a seed-stage VC firm in Toronto — in a product role, where he helped portfolio companies with product development and product management.

In addition to the carried interest Republic Deal Room Advisor LLC is entitled to for the syndicated investments it organizes, certain principals of Republic Deal Room Advisor LLC may have a personal interests in these investments, as disclosed below. When making an investment decision please review any applicable disclosures as they represent pre-existing financial interests held by those principals of Republic Deal Room Advisor LLC.

We do not represent that the information contained herein is accurate or complete, and it should not be relied upon as such. Opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice. Certain information contained herein (including any forward-looking statements and economic and market information) has been obtained from and/or prepared by Blackcart or other third-party sources and in certain cases has not been updated through the date hereof. While such sources are believed to be reliable, Republic Deal Room Advisor LLC does not assume any responsibility for the accuracy or completeness of such information. Republic Deal Room Advisor LLC does not undertake any obligation to update the information contained herein as of any future date.