INNOVATE 2009, SAN FRANCISCO — Nov. 3, 2009 — Storenvy.com, an online store system and social shopping community, launches today at the PayPal X Innovate 2009 conference. Storenvy connects independent merchants with shoppers in a social setting.

Storenvy offers merchants worldwide a feature-rich and customizable online store that is completely free.

Storenvy’s social shopping features allow shoppers to interact and see each others’ tastes and comments on products across all stores, creating a crowd-curated selection of “Most Popular” items for new users to discover.

PayPal’s new Adaptive Payments application programming interface (API), the first from its open payments platform PayPal X, allows Storenvy shoppers to use one shopping cart and make one payment transaction, even when buying from multiple stores.

“Storenvy is democratizing e-commerce,” said Jon Crawford, Storenvy co-founder. “We’re bringing shoppers and sellers together in a setting that’s extremely interactive and very fun. We live in a time when online shopping should feel more like shopping in a real store. The new Storenvy site is a big step in that direction.”

“Storenvy is a great example of how the power of PayPal X can eliminate the complexities that come with global payments,” said Osama Bedier, PayPal’s vice president of platform. “Storenvy is one of the first adopters of PayPal’s new Adaptive Payments APIs, which give developers the tools to create breakthrough global payment services.”

“PayPal’s new system offers us a lot of advantages over other online payment options,” said Crawford. “We can now facilitate transactions between people on different sides of the world while making sure that our merchants get their money fast.”

In addition to social shopping and online stores, Storenvy also offers a high-quality screen printing service. Storenvy’s online stores can be offered for free on account of the profits brought in by Storenvy Printing, which is a favorite of many top apparel companies. Storenvy store owners are encouraged to use the company’s printing services when needed, but are not required to do so.

Storenvy helps shoppers give back by incorporating a feature called “Give at Checkout” by MissionFish, where purchasers can opt to add $1 or more to their order to support charities selected by Storenvy. Upon launch, Storenvy has partnered with Invisible Children, to help fight child slavery in Uganda.

Storenvy was created by three young entrepreneurs: Crawford, development; Nick Roccanti, business operations, and Scott Anderson, design; with no outside investment.

… and from Lionel Richie.

Exactly one week from today, “Storenvy Social” goes live! Check out this video of Jon and his short presentation at LessConf for a preview of exactly what’s in store.

When we decided to transition Storenvy’s payment system to PayPal several months ago, we got in as early adopters of the new PayPal API. Now, PayPal wants to use our site as a case study for how developers everywhere can run with the platform, and they’ve asked Jon to speak at the PayPal X Innovate conference in San Francisco next week. Jon, Nick and Scott will all be there to represent.

Thanks to PayPal for all the support. But more importantly — we can’t wait to see what YOU think of the new site!

As of yesterday, we have transitioned our payment system from Amazon Payments to PayPal.

If you are a store owner, you now need to have a PayPal email address listed in your Store Admin Panel in order to keep getting paid. We tried to give people a heads-up as we were transitioning, so hopefully everyone got a chance to enter their PayPal account into their store.

People have asked us why we went through the trouble of transitioning away from Amazon Payments when it was working perfectly well. I already explained the main reasons over on Emptees.com, but I thought I’d repost here so everyone can get a chance to see it. Here were our key influencers in our decision to ditch Amazon Payments for PayPal:

1. We can now have international stores.

It’s our goal to allow businesses from every country on earth to take part in the Storenvy community. However, Amazon Payments doesn’t allow non-US businesses to accept payments or even register. We’ve already had quite a few disappointed would-be Canadian and UK Storenvy store owners get their hearts broken by the US-only restriction. We’d asked Amazon when they would expand internationally, and their (optimistic) timeline was longer than we or our users wanted to wait. PayPal is available in 190 countries and regions and accepts 19 currencies.

2. Amazon’s evil 14-day reserve.

Amazon has a very subtle policy that can really cause a headache. In the first six months of opening your account, each sale you make is held for two weeks before you can withdraw it. You just see the money sitting there, but you can’t get to it. This would really hurt if you had a successful store and for the first two weeks, you’re running to the post office every day paying out of pocket for shipping expenses because Amazon won’t even let you withdraw the money people have paid you for shipping and handling! And this isn’t just for the first two weeks. You’re always two weeks behind on money. Receive $5 on the 1st of the month and you can’t withdraw it until the 15th. Receive $250 on the 13th, and wait to withdraw it until the 27th. We couldn’t do that to you guys. It’s a strict policy that Amazon has put into place to reduce fraud, but somehow PayPal has made much less strict policies work, and we have to just go with the solution that makes everything easier on our users.

3. Internet users are used to PayPal and don’t need as much education on it upfront.

For our Great LessConf Ticket Giveaway of 2009, we used Random.org to randomly select our winners from all the blog comments and Twitter RTs. And the lucky two are…

Cate from Gifts.tv, which will be the first e-commerce store with full video interactivity!

David, who is an engineering and AutoCAD consultant and aspiring Ruby on Rails developer!

Congratulations to both of you. We look forward to meeting you on the 17th!

Many thanks to the rest of you who entered and helped spread the word.

Here at Storenvy, we get asked to sponsor a lot of events by providing T-shirts. Unfortunately we’re not able to support them all, but we like to lend a hand to groups and events we believe in. One of those events, coming up this Saturday, is SocialChangeCamp NYC. Here’s the description from their website:

SocialChangeCamp is a conference for forward-thinking public interest organizations seeking new and diverse ways to leverage technology to recruit volunteers, build communities, inspire grassroots movements, reach donors and facilitate effective advocacy. SocialChangeCamp empowers socially conscious organizations with channels and techniques that help them find relevance and accessibility in social media and related technology, regardless of their current levels of engagement. By educating, empowering, and connecting our community members, we act as a catalyst for social change.

It will be a BarCamp-style event where attendees pitch themselves as presenters at the beginning of the day, and people can stay for as many or as few events as they like. It will only be as good as the people attending.

If you’re in New York, check it out! Tickets are just $10… and you’ll get an awesome new Storenvy-printed T-shirt!

Kat, one of the event organizers, will be passing our business cards and spreading the word on our eco-friendly water-based screen printing. If you’re there, say hi!

We at Storenvy are really excited to be sponsoring and attending LessConf next month. “What’s LessConf and why should I care,” you ask? It’s been organized by our developer/designer/marketer friends at LessEverything, and in six concise points, you should definitely attend LessConf because:

• It’s like a one-day SXSWi conference. I mean, Gary Vaynerchuk will be there! Plus six other awesome speakers you should hear.
• Everyone who attends gets a copy of GaryVee’s brand new book, Crush It, for FREE.
• The first 100 registrants get to have lunch with the speakers.
• It’s in sunny Jacksonville, FL, where we can all go to the beach afterward.
• It only costs $207 for the first 200 who register, but for a few of you out there, it’s…
• FREE to the TWO OF YOU who win our LESSCONF TICKET GIVEAWAY!

If you still need convincing, how about this:

Here’s one more bonus reason to go – if you pay a little extra, you could get the chance to pick Gary up from the airport. (Details on that come later.) Also, Barcamp Jacksonville will be the next day, so stick around for that.

Good luck!

Anvil came to us and needs get rid of some of their blanks. So we are passing their deals onto you!

50¢ off fashion tees (980) for any size order

75¢ off organic tees (420) for any size order

25¢ off standard blanks (779) for any order of 100 shirts per design

Read more »

Last Thursday night at the print shop was awesome. Thanks to everyone who came out, and especially to I Am The Trend, who hosted this amazing video podcast. I know it’s an hour long, but there’s a lot of useful info in it, like…

• All about Storenvy’s next big website launch, which will be coming in a month. (I revealed lots of secrets about the system that you can only hear if you watch!)
• How to run a successful T-shirt company — how much money to start with, how many shirts to print, how to promote yourself, product photos, customer service, etc. Good stuff from Tim at about 16:00.
• Tips on tee printing for bands.
• Iain schooling everyone on screenprinting at about 41:00. (Half-tones: Let Storenvy do them for you! Pantone numbers: Iain knows them all by heart.)
• My food cravings right now.

From left to right in the video are Craig and Tim from Assault (they publish some great tutorials, check them out), Adam from I Am The Trend, me, and Beau from IATT. Jumping in later are Jud from ShirtFight and Iain, who runs the Storenvy print shop. (Sorry that it starts with me rambling, but someone forgot to hit the record button earlier.)

Tune into I Am The Trend’s weekly video podcast every Thursday night at 8 p.m. CST! Thanks again everyone!

If you are in the area we would love to meet you! Let us know if you think you can make it!

UPDATE: We are super excited to be hosting IATT.tv, I AM THE TREND’s weekly video podcast.
Tune in live at 8pm CST!