Letter From the CEO – September 2017

By: Robert Grosshandler | September 23, 2017

Yes, I skipped August.  Nothing much to report in the middle of the month.  But, since then, we’ve been busy!

Overview

Three highlights this month.  The first two have their own blog posts.

We filed our six month financials: Form 1-SA.

We have begun our next raise of funding, to help us grow large enough to be cash flow positive.  This raise, a Regulation D 506(c) offering, is aimed at accredited investors.

We continued our membership growth.

Marketing – Member Growth

46,000 Members!

As we’ve talked about previously, we slowed our growth rate on purpose.   We wanted to better understand the shopping habits of the members we were recruiting before spending more money on customer acquisition.  Plus, we needed to raise additional cash to fund customer acquisition.  Our raise this month is primarily to get the funds necessary to keep growing.

Really important – the members we’ve added since August 1 are behaving wonderfully.  It appears that they generate sufficient cash to pay for the cost of attracting them in less than a year.  That is, for every $10 we spend on customer acquisition marketing, we see more than $10 cash in a year.

Revenue & Gross Profit

While revenue is important, I want you to more carefully watch our gross profit number.  I talk much more about that in my post about our six month financials.  Basically, it’s easy and somewhat meaningless to just boost our revenue.  It’s boosting our gross profit (the cash we have after we pass along our members’ rebates) that is vital.  The 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.

 

Financing & Regulatory Compliance

FINRA – the road to a ticker symbol

We continue to wait for the regulatory process.  FINRA needs to finish its review and assign us a ticker symbol.  We submitted over 7,000 pages of  documentation, all of which need to be reviewed first by our broker / dealer (market maker).  After that, FINRA does its thing, and once happy, 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 from Issuer Direct into shareholder accounts (for instance, at Schwab or eTrade).

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.

Financing

We launched a Regulation D 506(c) convertible debt offering aimed at accredited investors  in August on Crowdfunder.  We’re looking to raise $1,000,000, at this writing we have reservations for over $500,000 of that amount.  There is an additional conversion discount for those investors who commit by September 28, 2017.

SEC Filings

We filed our unaudited semi=annual financial statements.  These cover the period January 1, 2017 – June 30, 2017.  While we’re not required to file these with the SEC, we think our shareholders want to be see this information.  And, we’re particularly proud of the improvement in gross profit.

As always, you can see our latest SEC filings here.

 

Member’s Stock Issuance Delay

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.  Latest thinking from our market maker (the folks who actually do the submission) is that they’ll have the over 7,000 pages of documentation completely reviewed and submitted to FINRA before the end of the month.

 

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12 Comments

FELICIA ARMOUR, September 24, 2017 at 4:30 pm

great info

David, September 24, 2017 at 5:25 pm

I tried and tried to shop thru the app one day, and it kept bumping me out to the wrong place, or got stuck on an endless loop, and I had to give up and use Ebates instead.

    Robert Grosshandler, September 24, 2017 at 6:08 pm

    That’s not good. Did you touch base with our support folks? We will have them follow up to see why you had a problem.

Aubrey, September 24, 2017 at 6:12 pm

very well detail of process in short direct form truly apprecieted

David, September 24, 2017 at 7:03 pm

Raise cash back up slightly for Visa gift cards and you will immediately gain a substantial amount of business. 1.25% or higher will do the trick.

    Robert Grosshandler, September 24, 2017 at 9:39 pm

    Thanks for the input. We’re focused on gross profit (what we get to keep after your rebate), not on total volume. With the equity portion, you’re getting 1.6% currently.

Kevin, September 24, 2017 at 7:16 pm

I was really hoping to be able to have an opportunity to buy stock before being listed. Seems current shareholders are going to be fodder for the investors currently being allowed to acquire huge blocks at an unknown discount. Not exactly transparent IMO

    Robert Grosshandler, September 24, 2017 at 9:47 pm

    Us too. We need an SEC qualified offering to be able to sell stock, and we can’t do that until FINRA gives us a ticker symbol. The best our lawyers came up with was a convertible debt offering open to accredited investors. We are considering doing an offering that would be open to non-accredited investors. The current convertible debt offering converts at $.075 a share for those folks who invest before the 29th, and at a discount of 25% for those folks who invest afterwards. If our next equity offering is at $.12 a share, they could convert at 75% of that, or $.09/share. But if the next equity offering is at $.25/share, and they choose to convert, they would pay $.1875/share. Which is a lot higher than anybody has already paid. Plus, the stock they get when they convert they have to hold for a year before they can sell it.

    All in all, we think it’s a pretty good deal for new investors, and helps to protect the price of the stock current investors have come in at.

    Also, remember that the stock you earn from shopping and having friends join and shop is calculated at $.09 a share.

Clinton Wayne Wilburn Jr, September 24, 2017 at 7:41 pm

How do I sell my stock?

    Robert Grosshandler, September 24, 2017 at 9:51 pm

    The quick answer – you find somebody who wants to buy it, and you tell the transfer agent (Issuer Direct) to transfer it to the buyer.
    The long answer is here, over at support.iConsumer.com

matt s, September 25, 2017 at 10:44 am

There is one thing that is confusing and frustrating. I provided my SSN for the initial shares that were offered, but I have seen NO way to contact Issue Direct to get any type of confirmation that they have X shares of the stock issued in my name!!

I’m sure they’re there, but I have seen no emails from iConsumer or Issue Direct nor any direct links or specific instructions on iConsumer to register or “see” my shares once they’ve been issued.

I really hope you guys succeed and appreciate how candid and open you are with the whole growth process, but I’m pretty good at being able to track down things normally and I sense I’m not the only one frustrated with monitoring shares once they’ve been issued.

    Robert Grosshandler, September 25, 2017 at 12:13 pm

    We agree that the process needs improvement. Issuer Direct had challenges getting emails either sent or received for the first batch of shareholders. They got better during the year. You can write them at issuerservices@issuerdirect.com and let them know your problem.

    When we issued and transferred shares, we also sent out an email. You may want to check your spam filters. But, since you just got the email about this posting, that’s probably not the problem.

    If you still have a problem with Issuer Direct (I don’t expect that), just go on over to http://support.iConsumer.com and drop us a note. Somebody way better than me will be right on it.

    Lastly, we have a stats section on our site that tells you what we know. Unfortunately, once shares are issued and transferred to the transfer agent, we lose insight as to their status. But, the law requires us to do that, and we don’t want run afoul of the SEC.


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