We recently connected with Ash Cintas and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Ash, thanks for joining us today. Can you talk to us about serving the underserved.

As former small and midsize businesses (SMB) and startup executives, we have personally experienced the pain points our SMB colleagues experience daily. SMB shop owners may not fit the traditional definition of an underserved community, but I can personally attest that across age, gender identity, and race, the one factor that unifies this group is their marginalization in the e-commerce community.

At City Shoppe, we have witnessed the huge gap in success determined not by the quality of products, but by how much money SMBs can spend marketing their products online. Unfortunately, there is a tremendous gap in revenue between retail giants with near infinite marketing budgets, and SMB owners looking to introduce quality products to the marketplace.

When I started my first company 15 years ago, sellers were limited to Etsy and Amazon to reach large audiences; shockingly, retail platforms have not changed much since then. Since the current path is diametrically opposed to SMB e-commerce success, we at City Shoppe decided to forge a new path: One where local small businesses have not only the opportunity to sell at prices that won’t cripple their bottom line, but also helps them reach shoppers hungry for the locality and diversity of their offerings.

Our vision is to change the status quo and disrupt what it means for businesses owners and shoppers to find success – and each other – online.

Ash, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

City Shoppe prioritizes products made not only in the United States, but in the best cities across the country. Our online marketplace helps customers find what they need with solutions from small businesses, instead of impersonal e-commerce giants who dominate the market with imports.

On average, the small businesses City Shoppe supports spend $100,000 on advertisements that simply cannot move the needle for revenue in comparison to Goliath competition. Instead of operating as an “every shop for itself” system which has proven to be ineffective, City Shoppe creates a community of companies sharing the acquisition, cost, and audience to garner actual return. We are the first company to build alliance, community, and togetherness into e-commerce for small businesses, because we know small businesses and want to see them succeed. We operate by the mantra, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

City Shoppe is helping SMB owners amass millions of customers at a fraction of the cost. Our B2B SaaS allows SMBs to sell to a massive community of customers, and unlike Facebook and Amazon, we give them access to all the aggregated data and then leverage it into profitable marketing. Through our platform, small businesses now have the capability and resources to connect globally on a person-to-person level while making small business shopping— once thought of as a localized market — global.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

I came up with City Shoppe while I was working at another startup. I knew starting an idea like this would need capital and my full-time attention, so I started saving my money. I saved for two years before I decided to leave my job and start City Shoppe. I bootstrapped the company for a year and a half, while working without an income. Once the company proved its MVP, I went out and raised a pre-seed round from angel investors and venture capitalists.

Sometimes, we feel like we need to jump on an idea immediately or rush a process, but timing and patience are invaluable assets in a startup journey.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

Life and startups are all about pivots! There is always a sign when it is time to pivot; it’s leaping to make the pivot that is scary and challenging. I’ve had to take many professionally, in life, and with City Shoppe.

Recently, we pivoted to launching our software offering sooner than we had initially planned. In late 2021, I observed that discovering small businesses online was a challenge for consumers, and simultaneously small businesses simply could not convert consumers online. E-commerce is pay-to-play, and small businesses have two acquisition channels: social media and Google. When both only prioritize showing customers businesses with million-dollar ad budgets, it creates an unlevel playing field and zero results for SMBs. When Apple announced they would make IOS updates on privacy and tracking, I knew that it would be the final break of the system. So I rounded up the City Shoppe team, and we brainstormed how we could create a solution to serve SMBs and consumers.

That pivot is the evolution story of  City Shoppe AI, our partner email campaign software. We made the pivot at the beginning of 2022 and have seen tremendous growth and success for small businesses since. Pivots may be scary and challenging, but can offer tremendous reward. Especially in the startup world.

Contact Info:

• Website: cityshoppe.ai
• Instagram: instagram.com/cityshoppeusa
• Facebook: cityshoppe
• Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/ashleycintas
• Twitter: cityshoppeusa