Michael Burns is the Co-founder of Wedzee and Kadlee (acquired in 2018). Michael’s background is 20+ years of Digital Marketing, Sales and eCommerce. Michael’s new startup has been featured in TBBJ (Tampa Bay Business Journal), Tampa Bay Inno, The Florida Wedding Podcast and Medium and is here to share his startup journey with others.
Please tell us a little bit about your company – what is Wedzee all about?
Myself and two co-founders started Wedzee. Wedzee is wedding focused smart marketplace that gives brides, newlyweds, artisans and businesses of all sizes an inclusive community to easily buy and sell their new or used wedding items. Wedzee also gives our users a more personable, custom shopping experience not seen on any other marketplace with our AI driven “style guide”.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you started your company?
This is our second venture into the wedding industry. Our first company was an eCommerce bridal boutique called Kadlee which was acquired in late 2018. We knew early when starting Kadlee that that we wanted to build Wedzee as we saw an enormous gap in the market when it came to having an inclusive community where brides, newlyweds and businesses of all sizes could meet and resell their pre-loved wedding items or find great deals on new trendy items. The acquisition of Kadlee finally afforded us the means to get Wedzee going.
What would you say are the top 3 skills needed to be a successful entrepreneur, and why?
You need to LISTEN to your customers and how they feel about your product or services. Let them guide you in building an amazing product.
You need to understand that a startup is a marathon and not a sprint. Things will sometimes come quickly, sometimes slowly…just always being working to improve on your product and hustle.
Have determination. You are your biggest fan and can get anything going if you have the ability to listen, be coached, grit and hustle. Try to work smart but also be obsessed with your dream.
What are your plans for the future, how do you plan to grow this company?
Currently, Wedzee is in public beta, and we plan for an official launch in late Q1 of 2021 (thinking Valentine’s Day). The response we have received from initial users is overwhelmingly positive and we already have over 1,200 users signed up and over 1,600 listings without having done ANY paid ads or marketing whatsoever. As we start our first round of fundraising in early 2021, our vision is that Wedzee will become synonymous with the wedding industry as we aim to be more than just a resell or a way to find great deals on wedding items. We want to be a bride’s go to tool for helping to plan their wedding day, staying with them throughout the journey and we plan on doing so by building further features such as a Wedding Checklist and Guide, ISO forum, and a Rate My Dress/Rate My Wedding Theme tool.
How do you separate yourself from your competitors?
How much time do we have?! Wedzee is the ONLY smart marketplace for the wedding industry that allows for this inclusive community while executing in the sense of a traditional marketplace. Wedzee also allows brides the ability to have a custom shopping experience not seen on any other marketplace thanks to our proprietary AI driven “Style Guide”. We offer our buyers and sellers security on each transaction with our “Wedzee Guarantee”, the ability to print and ship discounted labels from home, direct deposits, and free listings on as many items as you want. We only market to shopping brides so sellers can be assured that reach the exact audience they are looking to sell to.
What have been your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?
Building a marketplace is a beast. It takes a lot of time and capital to get going. The biggest challenge, by far, for any marketplace startup is going to be supply…which I firmly believe you must start with, otherwise you are just sending buyers to a site with little to no inventory. For us, Craigslist has been some “low-hanging” fruit as we can reach out to sellers on the platform and inform them of Wedzee and why to join us. Usually its very easy to get them to come over, this is also been great for doing market research and interacting with our users once they are on.
What is the one thing you wish you knew before starting your business?
Fundraising. We should have started earlier, however bootstrapping has allowed us freedom to do more testing and interact with our users to ask what they like and don’t like about the site. This was imperative for us to build, and keep building, a product the users would want.
If you had the chance to start your career over again what would you do differently?
Nothing. I love being an entrepreneur as it is just in may blood. I come from a line of business owners and working for myself better suits my talents anyways. To your question, I may have started working with a local incubator sooner (we work with Embarc Collective and Wave of Tampa Bay; two stellar organizations). The tools an incubator can give are amazing, take advantage of them.
What is your favorite quote?
“Don’t put off tomorrow what you can do today”
– unknown
What’s your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?
Believe in yourself, period! You are your biggest fan and if you know your idea is amazing and believe in it, want to do the hard work involved in getting something going then by all means go for it! You can literally do anything you want, you just need to do it.
Random: With the game on the line and 5 seconds on the clock, who takes the last shot? Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, or Lebron James?
Michael Jordan, who else? Have you seen his highlights with seconds left? No more explanation needed.🏀
How can we get in touch with you?
You can visit my company website Wedzee, find me on social media via Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. You can also email mike@wedzee.com
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