Company description
Chipkos is revolutionizing the cause shopping model by allowing users to tie any product they wish to purchase with any cause they chose to support. The company leverages social media and a proprietary "collection" engine to allow users to curate and shop to support social good. Chipkos features popular stores including Amazon, Toms, Perry Ellis, Sketchers & Guess, and has been featured by TIME, NY Magazine, AOL, HuffPost, Glamour and more. Shop For Good™.
Team
Ruben is a seasoned executive with 10+ years of experience in marketing, e-commerce, product development, social media & Internet marketing. Prior to cofounding Chipkos, Ruben cofounded the job-based social network Deevana in 1999 and Dreamcrowd in 2007. Ruben lectures at conferences, MBA & eMBA courses. Ruben speaks Hindi & Spanish and enjoys percussion, travel, biking, scuba, snowboarding. Ruben received his B.A. from USC and M.B.A. from LMU.
Business model
Our business model entails referring customers to merchant sites and receiving a 5%-25% commission based on purchases. We then give a portion of our commission to the charity specified by the purchaser. Customers never pay more for products than what they would pay on the merchant site, and sometimes they even receive a discount from us. Our sales are a result of social media sharing, SEO, retention and adoption.
Competitive advantage
Chipkos revolutionizes the cause shopping model to become user-centric and cause-agnostic. Our patent pending technology enables anyone to shop for millions of popular products for discounted prices [on the sites they love and trust] AND have a portion of sale go to the non-profit of their choice. Additionally, our business model entails the same (or lower) prices for products that people already purchase, thereby allowing us to capture those outside the cause space.