Overview

Three highlights this month.  First, over 42,000 member / shareholders have joined iConsumer.  Second, our FINRA application made progress.  Third, our focus on revenue is beginning to bear fruit.

Marketing – Member Growth

42,000 Members!

We continued to add new member / shareholders at the rate of  around 250 – 300 per day.  Our cash cost of acquisition stayed low. It bears repeating: the 99% are truly building a new kind of company.  We’re going to reduce our marketing budget during the balance of the summer to focus on revenue generation.  We’ve proven that we can get people to sign up.  Now it’s time to work with our members to make our company stronger and more valuable through shopping.

Revenue

We published a new article on how revenue (and even more importantly, cash generated by shopping) affects the valuation of iConsumer.  The article focuses on Amazon, but it applies to all 1,700+ stores.  As I’ve stated before, cash generated by our members’ shopping is the lifeblood of our business.  It provides the cash we need to operate, and provides most of the basis that investors are going to consider when they decide whether to invest in us or not.  And that directly affects the price you’ll receive when you go to sell your shares.

So, before you continue reading this post, go buy something.  You’ll earn more shares and usually get some cash back, too.

Earlier this month, we tried some new promotions.  The results were interesting (and good).  And in this context, good translates into people shopped and earned us money!

Financing & Regulatory Compliance

FINRA, the SEC, and Cash

A quick review.  Closing our offering was the first step in getting FINRA to review and hopefully approve our submission.  Once they do that, they’ll assign us a ticker symbol.  We submitted over 3000 pages of  documentation, all of which needed to be reviewed first by our broker / dealer (market maker).  They’ve reviewed each and every page of our submission, and in turn, they submitted our documentation to FINRA.  I am told that FINRA may take a long time, and then when they do respond, they’ll have comments we’ll need to address.  After that, we get a ticker symbol and we’ll be quoted on the OTC QB, and then, the final step will be to have our stock DTC qualified (that’s the process that allows our stock to be electronically transferred into shareholder accounts that are NOT held at Issuer Direct – our transfer agent).

The end result of that process is that the stock you own (whether you purchased it or earned it) is more easily traded.  In other words, while you “can” sell your stock today, it’s hard to do, because nobody knows that you want to sell it.  Getting quoted on a market makes it easier.

Again, we grew over 10%.  We’ll need more cash to fund continued growth.  I spend most of my time on that subject.  We’re talking with a lot of potential funding sources.  Because we’ve used a new way of financing our growth, iConsumer requires more explanation than many companies.  And that means the number of potential investors is smaller than it might be if we were the standard, boring company.

It looks like we’ll be doing a Reg. D debt offering aimed at accredited investors (wealthy people) this time around.  In great part, that’s because until FINRA issues us our ticker symbol, we can’t sell more stock.

As always, you can see our latest SEC filings here.   No new filings since my last CEO letter.

Become an Investor – But Not This Month

We’d love for current member / shareholders to consider investing cash to help us grow.  However, until we have an open, qualified offering, we can’t accept your money.  We expect to be able to accept your money later this summer, about three weeks after FINRA issues our ticker symbol.  It’ll depend on the SEC and how fast (and if) they qualify our next offering.  We’ll be certain to let you know.  The $25 minimum is a wonderful way to get your feet wet.

Member’s Stock Issuance Delayed

Until we have an open, qualified offering, we can’t actually issue and transfer our members’ stock.  Please see this article for more on that.