Hey everyone,
Just wanted to say thanks for being here and following along with OtterList. Here’s a quick recap of what we’ve accomplished so far and a preview of what’s to come.
Over the last 7.5 months, my small team and I have been building the foundation for OtterList. While we’ve been working behind the scenes, we’ve onboarded 100+ small, sustainable brands and have listed over 2000 products that meet our standards, linking directly to their websites to help you find and support them. We’ve also grown to over 44,000 followers on TikTok, and over 4,000 have subscribed to the newsletter here.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be rolling out a full OtterList checkout experience for some products. This is several months ahead of schedule and a direct result of your support. And don’t worry! We’re committed to protecting the brand/customer relationship (unlike Amazon!). OtterList is a “discovery” platform, meaning you’ll still be working directly with brands, we just help you find and support them. They’ll still be in full control of their pricing, shipping, customer service, etc.
I’m self funding, and committed to growing organically so we don’t take on investors who may pressure me to sell or put profits over ethics. Without your support, the purchases you’ve made from brands on OtterList and the paid subscribers who support the mission on Substack, we wouldn’t be this far along, ready to start onboarding brands directly to our platform at a much faster pace.
Going forward, there will still be constant tweaks, new features and better systems to implement, but my focus will be on outreach to great, sustainable brands and spreading the word to potential supporters… aka shoppers who care about supporting small businesses and shopping their values.
If you know any small business owners, artists, or authors who might be a good fit, feel free to send them our way! Anyone interested in selling with us can fill out a seller application on the site.
By the way, since so many of you have asked… once we have enough products for sale directly through OtterList.com, we’ll start developing an app!
- Kyle