Excess inventory becomes the largest culprit damaging a company’s bottom line when demand forecasting techniques and processes fail. To counter that, Armenian product validation platform Prelaunch.com has secured $1.5M in a seed round led by Big Story VC with Formula VC, Granatus Ventures, BANA (Business Angel Network of Armenia), and Vahe Kuzoyan, co-founder of Service Titan participating.
The fresh funds will be used to help the company expand its presence, notably in the US market, as well as develop new product capabilities.
By incorporating product launches into an important phase known as pre-launching, the platform assists companies and innovators in showcasing their product concepts, testing customers’ willingness to buy them, gaining early supporters, and gathering vital data to decide whether to launch the product or abandon the idea.
“I was running a successful marketing agency. Despite our many achievements, we kept spending months working on products that held great promise, only to end up as failures,” says Narek Vardanyan, founder and CEO of Prelaunch.com. “So, I started to research ways companies understand market interest. And I found that every current method was tied to discovering peoples’ opinions. The drawback here is that people don’t always do what they say. And this planted the seeds for a new concept — reservation funnels — which, unlike traditional alternatives like surveys or focus groups, is a system where customers place an actual monetary reservation providing tangible proof of their genuine purchase intent.”
To avoid dust accumulation on warehouse shelves, Prelaunch allows firms to test their product concepts and measure potential customers’ willingness to pony up and purchase before turning on the manufacturing line.
Customers who use Prelaunch will be able to provide their consumers the option of putting their money where their mouth is, putting down $10-$20 to reserve a space in the purchasing queue and receiving a discount in exchange for their loyalty.
Prelaunch then does a series of analytics to determine whether a product will be successful in the market and to identify its actual customers.
“When potential customers place a reservation — that’s when their opinions matter!” adds Vardanyan. “This reservation confirms their actual buying intent and shows whether they really desire to buy the product. And unlike focus groups which pay random sample populations to share potentially irrelevant opinions, the insights and opinions gathered through Prelaunch.com’s surveys, and discussions are highly-qualified and relevant as the buying intent has already been confirmed. It changes everything.”
One year after its introduction, Prelaunch has 2,000 registered businesses as users, including e-bike and e-motorcycle manufacturer Fuell, and approximately 1 million community members, a.k.a. potential purchasers.
