Boanerges Limited acquires WeShop
LONDON, UK: Boanerges Limited General Meeting confirmed that the WeShop Limited shareholders have passed their resolution to approve Boanerges acquiring the WeShop assets, business and the WeShop name.
WeShop is a social commerce technology platform. Social commerce, which combines the fundamental human need to connect with commerce is an exciting space – expected to grow by 24% per annum to reach £1.1 trillion by 20251.
Major social media platforms, online retailers, existing reward sites, and numerous start-ups have tried to unlock this opportunity but as yet have not succeeded at scale.
The WeShop technology allows people on the platform to buy and recommend products to their trusted networks as well as seeking advice and inspiration across multiple product categories.
Whilst the technology is important, the key to unlocking this enormous opportunity lies in the ability to acquire and retain an active community on the platform. To initially acquire and then to retain any digital community is a very expensive marketing exercise, as platforms are competing for people’s attention in a crowded digital landscape.
Deploying a disruptive acquisition and retention mechanism, the team at Boanerges plan to make WeShop into a majority community owned platform that will allow consumers to own equity in the company (WeShares).
WeShares via the ShareBack mechanism will be awarded for direct, and indirect, transactional behaviour as well as for referring friends to the platform.
Boanerges believes that community ownership of WeShop will drive increased spend and activity on the platform as well as increased referral rates.
Not only will the WeShop community benefit from the financial success of retailer affiliate revenues but they will also get the financial benefit of any monetisation of their own data by the Company as they will be shareholders.
The COVID-19 pandemic has seen significant growth in online retail and social media usage. Over the same period there has also been a huge increase in individual stock ownership as demonstrated through platforms such as RobinHood and eToro.
The Company does not believe that the combination of the three pillars of e-commerce, social networking and individual share ownership in one platform has been previously implemented on the planned scale.
Richard Griffiths CEO commented, “ThisIsHow Boanerges plans to launch WeShop initially in the UK. The majority of the top 1,000 retailers in the UK will be available on the platform.
Just by continuing their existing online activity (purchasing goods online and interacting and recommending products to friends) the community is expected to become the majority owners of the platform and business over time, thereby sharing directly in its financial success. We believe this model is new, exciting and equitably shares the potential success of the business with its community.
I look forward to updating our new and existing shareholders with the fast moving developments as we progress towards the initial launch in the UK.”
BrandShield Systems currently holds 508,809 shares in WeShop Limited, representing 10.5% of WeShop’s current issued share capital.
Yoav Keren, CEO of BrandShield Systems Plc, has, as a result of the asset acquisition, resigned from the Board of WeShop Limited.
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