Overview
Two highlights this month. We made real progress on the ticker symbol front, and we successfully raised the first chunk of money in our debt offering.
The one big disappointment this month … after early success with our debt offering, we didn’t make any real further progress.
Marketing – Member Growth
47,454 Members!
We continue to be very cautious in our marketing expenditures, which directly translates into slower member growth. Given that our capital raise fell short of our goal, we’re saving our marketing money for when our ticker symbol is issued.
We’re continuing to refine our member acquisition targeting, so that the members we do attract are more likely to be profitable, sooner.
The best recruitment comes from our members. You have the opportunity to help the company you own become bigger, better, more profitable, and more valuable. As we’re able to demonstrate our enterprise value better (think ticker symbol), we expect to get even better at recruitment.
Revenue & Gross Profit
I repeat my mantra – I believe the best number to watch for iConsumer is our cash gross profit (also sometimes called cash gross margin). Since we haven’t yet published our third quarter financial results, I’m not going to be too specific. We continue to work on improving our numbers, both on a per member basis, and in the total number of members who are generating gross profit for us.
We continue to say that the magic number of members is about 250,000. At that point, our cash gross profit should exceed our costs of operation, which means we’ll have a positive cash flow (also called nirvana).
I use the term cash gross profit to highlight the difference between that number and our accounting rules dictated “gross profit”. Our gross profit (as shown in our financial reports) includes the cost of the equity (shares of stock) that our members receive for joining, shopping, and referring. Because that cost is a “non-cash” expense, it distorts our financial reports. To understand our ability to pay our bills, we need to focus on cash, and ignore the amount of stock we issue.
The are reasons to understand the affect of our stock issuances on financial health, but focusing on cash at this stage of our growth is vital.
Financing & Regulatory Compliance
FINRA – the road to a ticker symbol
A big sigh of relief. Yesterday, we learned that our broker dealer had submitted our documentation (now grown to 10,000 pages) to FINRA. This road has been far slower than we ever expected.
To recap. FINRA is the regulator that, when happy, will issue our ticker symbol. Once we have that ticker symbol, we intend to be quoted on the OTC QB market. With that, you’ll be able to type our symbol into Google and learn the price at which people are offering to buy and sell our stock.
We’ll have a whole new set of issues and challenges when that begins. I can’t wait!
The first thing to understand is that just because we have a symbol, there may not be anybody who wants to buy our stock. And even if they do, there are still going to be some hurdles for shareholders to overcome to make it easily possible, not just possible. As we get closer to that day, we’ll have more to say.
At this point, we’re waiting for FINRA to respond with their further comments on the filing. FINRA has no obligation to even respond, or respond in a timely manner. However, so far they’ve been taking about three weeks to issue their comments. And, it is possible, but not likely, that our filing has answered all of their questions and comments, and the next time we hear from them is when they issue the ticker symbol.
If that happens, you may be able to hear my shouts of joy from miles and miles away.
Financing
We launched a Regulation D 506(c) convertible debt offering aimed at accredited investors in August on Crowdfunder. We were looking to raise $1,000,000. We’ve actually received about $180,000 of that amount at this point. We are taking additional steps to finish the raise, but if we are successful, it’s going to take longer that we had hoped.
This mainly reduces the cash available to spend on marketing.
SEC Filings
No new filings this month, other than the reporting that is necessary to document the Reg. D raise mentioned above.
As always, you can see our latest SEC filings here.
Member’s Stock Issuance Delay Continues
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.
We’re working to have an open, qualified offering as soon after FINRA has issued us a ticker symbol as is possible. Once the symbol is issued, we’ll submit a new offering to SEC. They’ll need to qualify it, and at that point, we’ll be able to issue and transfer stock. We believe that the SEC process will take less than a month, but there are no guarantees.
8 Comments
Conspiracy Cat, October 19, 2017 at 3:56 pm
This would actually go further if you included crypto currencies and and a separate plateform for gamers looking for item. Electroneum is catching the attention of a lot of people especially in the gaming world where items from other players from the same games can be sold and bought. If you were to make some acreage for the means for of simply using Electroneum you would expand on 2.2 billion customers in the gaming world. There is another currency that does the exact same thing, but with Electroneum it can be mined without DMRs (digital mining rigs) or earned through gaming. If you start accepting Electroneum you would jump continents ahead of the competition.
Robert Grosshandler, October 19, 2017 at 7:40 pm
Thanks for the input!
Matthew Harris, October 19, 2017 at 11:21 pm
What is the expected share structure when finally listed on the otc?
Robert Grosshandler, October 20, 2017 at 8:26 am
I’m not exactly sure what you mean by share structure. The class of stock that we intend to list on the OTC QB is the same class as all investors have received, whether they got that stock by purchasing it, or by earning it from activities at iConsumer. That class is our Preferred Series A. You can see details on that in our SEC filings, conveniently arranged for your review at http://support.iconsumer.com/kb/a298/sec-filings.aspx .
IF somehow I”ve missed answering what your asking, just let us know, and we’ll try again.
Thanks for your interest!
Aaron Camacho, October 23, 2017 at 4:40 am
Cutting edge companies cut out the red tape, 10,000 pages, and the FINRA by going ICO. Issuing a Utility Token (not a security) that is required to use the membership benefits is the way to go. Reading this just proves that this whole SEC, FINRA, Accredited Investor, Etc… is an outdated impediment to progress and benefits only the already rich by requiring compliance to be outside the financial ability of a startup or an avarage investor. The first person to copy your business plan and skip the traditional true “pyramid scheme” of bureaucracy will win this game.
Thank you for all of your effort though <3
Robert Grosshandler, October 23, 2017 at 10:40 am
Thanks for your thanks!
Our goal is to make ordinary people reap the benefits of ownership. The challenge with a utility token is that we can’t convey ownership with it, nor give holders a share of a revenue stream, either. The moment we do (in the U.S. anyway) it becomes a security and securities are regulated. So the only play on a utility token would be people’s perception of the likelihood it would appreciate in price. That is, only the speculative portion of ownership, not the whole ball of wax.
As it happens, all of the work we’ve done with the SEC and FINRA would make issuing a token that was a security easier, but it still would be a regulated offering.
DoubleD, October 23, 2017 at 10:06 pm
Hello Robert it’s good to see you doing all this work to change the way people invest in companies. I think this has been suggested in the past also if you keep your Giftcards.com offer at 1% cash back and a small stock offering you will tap into a big community who purchases those. I see you are already at 0.9% and making it 1% will make iConsumer on par with others and provide a good incentive.
Robert Grosshandler, October 24, 2017 at 10:58 am
Thanks for the suggestion. Between the cash and the stock, we’re way more than on par. Rebating 1% doesn’t make sense for us, it may make sense for them.