Founder Profile: The Man Who Wants To Make The Vegan Lifestyle Mainstream

I have 6 kids, 2 of which are dogs. Less than 2 years ago I accidentally saw a short video about the dog-eating festival in China, which made me vegan in about 5 minutes. I’ve spent many months replacing all my food habits, clothes, cosmetics and dog supplies, reading the fine prints on every product, and contacting the vendors for more info.

Then, I bought a pair of vegan shoes on Amazon and when I got them, I found out that the glue was made of pigs’ bones. That day I decided to start Billion Vegans.

It’s a community marketplace, practically an online store that allow vegans in the US to purchase (almost) everything in one place. The uniqueness is that all products are vegan and went through a thorough vegan certification process.

We are witnessing rapid growth mainly amongst the millennials and the gen-Zer’s. There is no clear explanation to it. Another segment is the 40 – 50 year old that has become more aware of health and environmental issues.

Most sellers are interested in expanding their channels but most will bother only if the platform has enough traffic. However, most of our sellers are vegan themselves and were very happy to come on board and support us.

Most of the products are manufactured in the US, some others in Europe. At this point, i n which we don’t perform lab tests or visit the facilities (we plan to do so in the future), we have to trust the sellers’ legally-binding commitment about their ingredients and processes.

Once our brand will be well-known, representing our values, we hope to be the vegan seal-of-approval and launch product lines that will be carefully selected and vetted.

Beyond the numerous private messages that we get, thanking us for our offering, and beyond the high engagement of our social media, the KPI’s we’ve reached, in a very short period of time, indicating an outstanding product-market fit.

The retention rate is 17% which is very high considering we are selling for only a few months and most customers haven’t had the chance to make another purchase. However, some of our earlier customers made 2,3,4 or even 5 purchases already.

There are many vegan online stores but very few offer a wide range of products in all categories. Currently there are VeganEssentials and of-course Amazon.

We are receiving a lot of customer feedbacks, most are very enthusiastic and supportive. The pain is concrete and the need is totally underserved. However, we are getting some bad feedbacks about some products and about some of the sellers’ customer service.

Subscription boxes are a good and growing business but is still a small niche within vegan online shopping. Most people would still like to buy almost everything that support their vegan lifestyle in one place.

There are many. Here is a link to a report that we use.

Currently I’m handling the marketing and funding, Amir is responsible for the product and Elinor is responsible for operations (sellers, sales and customer service). Our office in LA handles the social media and community outreach. Over time, we’ll move the center of gravity to LA and make all future hires there.

Equity crowdfunding is our dream coming true. Billion Vegans was born out of the vegan community, serves it and is driven by it. We strongly believe that the vegan community should own a portion of Billion Vegans, be a part of its journey and share its success. We’ve contemplated alternatives to allocate shares to our customers but it wasn’t possible because of regulations. We came across the new regulations and immediately acted upon it.

The capital will be used mostly to scale up our marketing budget and subsequently our sales, reaching the required amount that will enable us to do a sizable A-round towards the end of next year.