This creator commerce platform will now allow Indian creators to directly sell their digital products on YouTube to their audiences across the world

• Spring, a social commerce platform that has close to 500,000 creators on its platform globally, has officially launched in India.
• Spring has a partnership with YouTube, which will enable creators to sell their digital products to anybody watching their content on YouTube.
• We talk Chris Lamontagne, CEO, Spring about what its entry in India could mean for creators here.

Social commerce is slowly but steadily finding its place in India. 2020 kept most of us stuck at homes and we ended up spending a substantial amount of time on different social media platforms. It also became a year when many people got used to buying online, not just from e-commerce platforms but even from social media platforms.

2020 also became a watershed year for influencers and creators across the spectrum. As people were stuck at home, they turned to their favorite creators, for everything ranging from entertainment and content recommendations, to fashion and work-out advice. It also made people open up to the idea of buying products that they were recommending. Meanwhile, it opened up floodgates for our creators, who now had the opportunity to sell their own line of products online.

Spring, formerly Teespring, is a creator commerce platform that has been working on empowering creators to build and scale their commerce businesses. While it has been in business since 2012 and has been simplifying the way in which creators can create and sell their products to consumers across the globe, its recent partnership with YouTube has made it possible for creators to sell digital products, while watching their content on YouTube. And Spring has now expanded its offering to India, which gives creators in India an opportunity to sell digital products which could range from tutorials, e-books and fitness guides to filters and even NFT’S, directly on YouTube, allowing users to monetize their products instantly.

“We have been in existence since 2012 and as an organization, we particularly identify with the creator economy. Over the years, we have seen creators come up with wonderful products but their full-time role isn’t commerce, its being a creator. That’s where we come in, we've created a platform that is designed to support creators in commerce, by which we mean the sale of goods, both physical, digital,” explained Chris Lamontagne, CEO, Spring.

Globally, Spring has integrated with YouTube, TikTok, Twitch and Instagram, among other platforms, to enable creators make the most of their following on each of these platforms. Over 92,000 creators from India are already on the platform and have collectively earned around $49,993,039 through Spring. The platform currently has over 500,000 creators on its platform, a number that is going up steadily.

The model they follow is simple. Any creator with over 10,000 followers are eligible to use the YouTube Merch Shelf and can create a product on Spring. The creators get to decide the price and Spring takes a small share out of the product, while taking care of most hassles related to commerce, including logistics, sales tax and customer service.

Spring had plans of launching here last year but couldn’t due to the pandemic. However, it has already been building a team in India that is engaging with creators here. On what particularly excites him about bringing Spring officially to India, Lamontagne said, “We have already seen a good traction among the creator community in India and we have been working on reaching out to these creators and getting to know who they are, why their communities are important and what they represent. I really feel the spirit of entrepreneurialism in India is unparalleled. We also love the cultural representation on the platforms. There has been an increase in video consumption and a change in how people ingest information which presents a huge opportunity. It also feels like every 3-6 months, there’s something completely new in the creator economy. So there's a lot of excitement, and we see the same excitement about India in YouTube team too. Right now, the creator community is primarily relying on brand deals and sponsorships. I think it's really important, and we've seen this in other parts of the world, to build a sustainable way for creators to make money.”

Spring had started out helping creators sell physical products like hoodies, t-shirts and mugs. However, in 2020, creators started coming up with newer ways of connecting with their fans and coming up with new kinds of products like fitness routine manuals etc. That’s when Spring started building tools to allow creators to build these digital offerings. “We realized this was an extension of the creator’s online engagement. We started seeing lifestyle creators selling photo filters or animators selling digital coloring books and this whole digital ecosystem started to be created. So we build our ecosystem to represent that. And we have witnessed a boom in creators thinking really creatively about what their audience wants. We are now seeing tremendous growth in vertical like gaming and lifestyle,” he shared.

However, the concept of selling digital products and of people finding value in those products might still be some time away and the platform will need a fair amount of educating to do, in terms of telling creators that such digital products can also find takers. And that’s what Spring wants to do over the next few months in India. The organization is putting a team together in India that will be responsible for tracking creators, educating them about the possibilities and bringing them on board.

The platform has already been on a steady growth trajectory. Last year it grew by 53% and has been witnessing double digital growth for eight quarters straight. On the kind of growth he anticipates in India, he said, “We haven't really had a presence in India and yet have close to 100,000 creators already which makes me think that if we can open up in the right way, we can really start to pick up some steam. My ambition is to try and achieve triple digit growth, over 100% growth in the next few years.”