We write business updates that are shared with our board, investors, and Moment team members. These are not status reports, instead they represent a chronological journal about what we’ve learned in building Moment. Writing these updates forces us to think about what we’re doing, what’s working, and what isn’t.
Below are updates from 2021. You can read previous updates from 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016 and 2015.
We are testing a new course format...live workshops.
We tested this format again with our Mobile Film Festival, offering a two day online workshop. Students could attend the workshop live or buy the full workshops afterwards. By attending the live workshop you get to meet fellow attendees and engage directly with the teacher through Q&A. It's already our second best selling course
Although attendance was high, we have a lot to learn in dialing in this new format. The feedback data is limited, but the audience was split between loving the workshop and having feedback to make it better. A lot of the feedback is tied to setting expectations so we can match the technical level of the workshop to the attendees.
What makes this format even more interesting that just online courses is the community engagement plus the sponsorship opportunity with brands. It increases the revenue and enables us to pay the teachers more. We are working on new workshops that use a similar format, focused on different segments in Film and Fuji Cameras.
BUSINESS UPDATE
We're at $9.7M YTD, up 41% without counting $611K in backorders. Backorders are down from $1.8M to start the year, which we expect to clear in May. Overall we are still struggling to balance our lean inventory with long lead times. With more capital we would be able to buy in larger quantities to stay in stock longer.
Repeat purchasing in 2021 is at 51% YTD, up from 38% last year. We created our first dedicated growth team this year and are finding success with upselling to existing customers as our catalog expands. This includes accessories (filters, straps, etc) and online lessons.
We've driven 26 million search impressions this year, up from 11.7 million at the same time last year. One of the biggest wins here is competing on top search terms for brands like Sony and DJI. Rising in the search rankings on these high volume search terms has resulted in organic visitors up 56% so far this year and driving 65% more revenue year over year. We still have room to drive way more growth here with over 10K search terms currently ranking on page 2 of search results
Our brand reach on social is now close to 1.5M with a current 2% monthly growth rate. Short form video content, especially on Instagram and TikTok, are working the best to grow our reach. YouTube has been a slow burn for us as we'll need to look at how we re-energize channel growth going into T2.
We're getting faster at announcing new offerings when companies like Apple introduce new technology. Moment for AirTags opens up a new security market for us, helping creatives make sure they don't lose their gear. By leading with a Moment product we're able to drive immediate press on launch day, bringing new customers to Moment.
We are launching Moment for Creators in the coming weeks.
This is a big step for us, expanding the number of creatives who can build their business on Moment. It takes everything we've learned over the last 18 months in making trips and courses for creatives...and turns it into a new service model.
We're starting with three main services.
1. Click Revenue - helping creators to direct all of their traffic to one page that curates everything they recommend and everything they sell. It comes with a managed service to maximize the affiliate revenue and potential campaign deals with the brands we carry.
2. Sell Anything - creators are already selling a variety of physical/digital goods all over the internet. We're going to enable them to sell all of that on Moment so they can stop having to manage their business across multiple platforms or multiple tools.
3. Make Something New - reserved for the creators with higher engagement, we invest our time and resources to help creators make a new course or even a new product. Sold exclusively at Moment this enables creators to grow their revenues without the financial risk.
Why are we starting Moment for Creators?
The Creator Economy is exploding and it's our job to lead it. More creators building on Moment means we drive more traffic, more new customers, and more revenues. While providing unique offerings that differentiate our marketplace. Ultimately enabling us to grow faster so we can support more creators.
As for creators, it enables them to increase their revenues with lower risk. Using Moment as their commerce platform they can focus their energy on growing their audience, which ultimately leads to more personal revenue.
Over the coming months, you'll see more and more projects dropping at Moment with some of the most popular creators.
BUSINESS UPDATE
We're at $5.6M in revenue YTD, that's up 35% YoY. That doesn't count the $800K in backorders we still have from our CineBloom Filters and our new MagSafe gear. Overall we're seeing more revenue across the board with retail categories growing significantly YoY. Audio, Filters, Lights, Tripods, and Camera Straps are all up 2-2.5x YoY. Film is a category we did not have last year that is doing $200K/month. And we had just launched our first mirrorless cameras with Fujifilm this time last year. Now with Fujifilm, Leica, Blackmagic, Sony, and more camera brands in the shop, the category is up 10x YoY and driving $400K/month in revenue.
Shipping costs are eating us alive. They've risen to 13% of revenue over the past few months. Moving to FedEx improved our customer experience but the total cost of shipping is higher than we expected. It's a combination of having a broader catalog (bags to cameras) and how FedEx charges fees with extra charges based on item and location. In recent weeks, we have added several internal processes to make sure we're not getting overcharged and are improving our shipping tables to make sure going forward we can get these costs back.
Over the last year we've improved the quality of our inventory from older to newer items. We've increased the number of items we carry by 4.5x to over 1,800. Despite reducing the inventory value per product by 70% our total inventory levels have risen to over $5M. We are trying to keep inventory levels under $4M at our current scale.
We added Leica to the marketplace. This is a big deal as it's a premium camera brand that opens us up to a network of new creators. More creators means more links, which means more traffic. In the short term it hurts our cash position but in the long term it adds another category leading brand to the site that we can build around.
With Moment for Creators we're going to be adding a lot more digital goods to the marketplace. Both increasing the quantity of offerings in our current categories (i.e. Courses) and expanding to new categories (i.e. Luts & Presets). Currently 2% of customers have bought a digital good and we expect this to be much higher by year end.
We announced MIFF 2021. It's our most important year yet with a contest, a two-day online workshop, and 25 creator grants to help people submit a film. We were able to raise $250K from sponsors this year, including $75K from Ford Bronco (yes the car) to be the presenting sponsor. Most important we able to expand the festival to 27 finalists with over $150K in gear and cash on the line.
Our new MagSafe gear is starting to ship. This is the most anticipated line of gear we've ever made. The early reviews are strong and we're excited to move from pre-orders to being in stock later this month. When in stock we often see daily run rates at 10x pre-order rates.
We've been on this journey for seven years.
What started as a single product company has grown into a community with millions of creatives, thousands of customers, and hundreds of teammates. We've built a brand that creatives love and a budding marketplace that put $400K in creatives' pockets last year alone. Along this journey, we've grown with our customers: making them products, selling them the gear we recommend, and teaching them new skills.
We've also grown as a team from 4 to over 45 employees, organized into small 3-7 person teams. We've developed owners, team leaders, and a tight remote culture. All of which has us ready for what is next.
Our new mission is to build the marketplace for creatives.
We make it easy for creatives to find the right gear, learn new skills, explore new places, and celebrate each other’s work. We will do for creatives what Etsy did for makers, Reverb did for musicians, and Goat did for sneakerheads.
Our market tidal wave is creativity because each generation gets more creative than the last. Adobe has proven that you can build a multi-billion dollar business servicing the creative in all of us. We will do the same.
Over the next three years, we want to grow Moment from a $30M business to over $100M. From a transactional business with great customers to a re-occurring business with active members. From a retailer to a hybrid model with some inventory, lots of digital goods, and third-party sellers. From an organic content brand, to a sophisticated acquisition machine.
We have a long ways go to, but we're planting a new flag as the Marketplace for Creatives. We are heads down in building mode...adding more marketplace features, adding more digital offerings, and adding more sellers/pros. All of this means we expect you to hold us accountable to the performance of other marketplaces.
How you can help. We need more expertise in two areas...
Onward.
BUSINESS UPDATE
We'll end 2020 just under $30M in revenue. Unfortunately, we ended the year with $2M in backorders, which is not something we planned. With iPhones coming out later, supply chains delayed with 3rd party sellers, and new Moment products selling faster...we were short on our best sellers. Although we grew in 2020, we still face headwinds until people are traveling again. Traveling is a key driver for creativity and with it comes the need for new gear and advice.
We expect the first quarter to be a fast start. Sales are up 30-40% YoY plus we're shipping 2020 backorders. We still have $1.2M backorders to work through.
We are changing how we measure customers to New & Reactivated, Active Buyers. and Total Buyers. It's a measurement shift we're seeing from other marketplaces and better reflects our intent to acquire active customers. We expect to launch a membership this year so we can begin measuring members and how active they are.
Digital revenue is a big focus for us this year, growing from sub 7% to 20% of revenue in the future. To get there we're moving beyond Lessons & Courses to include Trips & Workshops. LUTs & Presets, and Books & Print. All of these are categories pros rely on to drive significant revenue. The more our pros can drive their audience to Moment the more we grow. The more we grow the more their revenue streams grow. More importantly, these let us expand our digital revenues, which improves cashflows.
More sellers mean more revenue growth. Currently, we have brands we inventory and pros who sell their digital goods with us. Over time we'll focus inventory brand to our top sellers and add more drop shipping. But we still can't add enough new sellers fast enough.
In order to grow revenue for our Pros, we need to expand what they can sell on the site. Currently limited to lessons, we're building out additional categories so they drive a majority of their revenue on Moment. Replacing Shopify stores with a commerce platform that includes account management to help them grow their business. More than tools Pros are looking for a high touch service model.
We continue to expand our Moment Creator Grants. Empowering creatives is a big reason the team is here. These grants are one way we help up and coming creatives to get their start.