Startup of the Week: Tinggly
2019
Nov 25
Nov 25
![team-33](https://www.startuplithuania.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/team-33-1.jpg)
Tinggly is a gift solution, but the concept is so new it’s a little more complex. To put it as simply as possible, a Tinggly experiences gift box lets the recipient choose and enjoy a really amazing experience in one of over 100 countries around the world.
Just try to imagine that today is your mom’s birthday and you want to gift her something that she’ll remember forever. When she receives a Tinggly experience gift box, she can choose from over 600 hand-picked experiences right around the world. This could be a dinner cruise in Paris, a balloon ride in Egypt, or a luxury spa treatment in Lithuania. There really is a whole world to choose from.
On the environmental side of things, with every gift which is purchased, Tinggly guarantees to collect 15 kg of plastics and offset any CO2 footprint – by 200% – created by the experience which your mom has just enjoyed. Sounds interesting? Read the whole interview with Mantas Chodosevičius, CMO of Tinggly.
What are your competitors and competitive advantages?
At the moment we don’t exactly have what could be described as direct competitors, or at least they are too small to be seen as a serious competition. We see our main competitor as being stuff – material possessions that add little or no value to people’s lives. That’s why we are totally committed to our mantra ‘Give stories, not stuff’.
What were the reasons behind coming up with this idea and launching this product?
Linas our CEO is an experience freak and I am not joking. I am not a very big travel lover but after our team’s Bali trip – where we initiated a program to collect waste plastics from the rivers – I am a little bit closer to becoming an experience and travel freak also.
When exactly did you launch, what were the main challenges before launching?
If I am correct, we can say we really started our timeline with the first purchase which was in 2014. My colleague Lauris recalls that the toughest part was: “To find enough Tinggly experiences worldwide, arrange first contracts with suppliers, and explain the whole concept behind experience gifting”. Basically, to make the concept and product worth paying attention to, and to live up to the idea behind it.
What are your target customers? Both in terms of user profile and geography?
Moment hunters, by that I mean people who really understand the meaning of living for the moment. People who enjoy engaging in all kind of life-enhancing experiences, and who also want to share those moments with their loved ones through memories and stories.
What are the main challenges while working on this product and how are you overcoming them?
The main challenge is to change the universal understanding of the present-day gifting culture and to educate on how experiences make you better and help you grow you as a person. We are trying to spread the word that stuff is just stuff that you’re going to forget about once the novelty has worn off.
How are you funded? Do you seek extra funding?
CEO Linas Čeikus and his business partner Alex Gibbs are both founders and investors. We are interested in investment, of course, but at present, we are not actively treading those roads.
Please introduce your founders, your core team and your broader team?
We are a small dream team of 11 people.
To be more precise:
Marketing Manager – Eglė Abromaitė
Experience/Customer Support Manager – Greta Stakaitė
Project Manager – Urtė Puluikė
PPC Specialist – Donata Petkevičė
Experience Manager – Giedrė Česnulevičiūtė
Video wizard – Andrius Šešelgis
Storyteller & Content Engineer – Brendan Harding
Chief Marketing Officer – Mantas Chodosevičius
Chief Operating Officer – Laurynas Kundrotas
Founder – Chief Strategy Offer – Alex Gibb
Founder – Chief Experience Officer – Linas Čeikus
and
CHIEF SHREDDING OFFICE – BŪNIS
How has business been so far? Could you share some numbers to illustrate this (users, sales, etc)?
Year on year Tinggly is growing by 150% in sales and a little more in revenue. Up to today, we have sold our gifts in 110 countries right around the world.
Future plans, ambitions? Simply speaking – what’s next?
Our ambition is to continue to grow at an even faster pace, with higher returns. We hope to reach the 5m Euro revenue milestone and to continue to grow our sustainability plan. On the sustainability platform, we hope to gather more plastics from rivers and offset even more CO2, along with rolling out a series of environmental education programs linked to how we purchase, consume, and discard materials in the world today.