USC Student Creates Online Marketplace
Taggle started out as a small print shop in a garage. It has since grown into an extensive network with thousands of customers and more than $150 thousand in annual sales.
Working out of CEO and co-founder Jason Wei’s off-campus apartment at Marshall School of Business – USC, the company continues to see revenue growth, thanks to their dedicated team and a sound business model.
The company was launched out of the USC Viterbi Startup Garage, a business accelerator for new student-led enterprises. Taggle serves as an online market place for customers and screen printers for hundreds of print shops, allowing vendors to compete for customers in an auction-oriented environment. Buyers can search for the best deal that they can find and pay through Taggle’s payment processing system, with Taggle receiving 15 percent of the sale in revenue.
“The idea was to use technology as a way to connect customers with the best print shops in a much more efficient way,” Wei said. “We set out to create a reverse auction marketplace where vendors would compete with quotes on the orders.”
Marketing is done nationwide through email campaigns and social media engagement. Word of mouth from customers is an important part of the strategy. According to Wei, the return customer rate is at 35 percent and growing.
The Viterbi Startup Garage, founded by tech entrepreneurship professor Ashish Soni, provides an opportunity to start a business. The incubator program provided the brothers behind Taggle, along with nine other selected startups, with office space, hands-on training and $20,000 in capital and access to a network of investors.
Soni was an early believer in the enterprise.“They have the right team, which includes a great mix of business and engineering talent and domain expertise,” Soni said. “They have all the right ingredients to build an amazing venture.”
