Sure the latest initiatives from the Teslas, Apples and Googles of the industry tend to dominate the tech news space — and with good reason. Still, the tech titans aren’t the only ones bringing innovation to the sector.
In an effort to highlight up-and-coming startups, Built In has launched The Future 5 across eight major U.S. tech hubs. Each quarter, we will feature five tech startups, nonprofits or entrepreneurs in each of these hubs who just might be working on the next big thing. Read our round-up of Colorado’s rising startups from last quarter here.
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Over the past two years, the e-commerce industry has seen its share of ups and downs. Online sales surged by 43 percent in 2020. In 2021, supply chain issues were exacerbated by a ship blocking the Suez Canal, a significant shipping thoroughfare. Now, businesses and consumers are preparing for a busy holiday season amid continuing supply chain shortages.
The e-commerce industry is still very competitive, and businesses of all sizes are doing their best to stand out from the crowd. One Denver-based startup is helping merchants on Shopify generate new revenue and improve relationships with their customers.
Adtech startup elteve built a web-based, self-serve platform that allows Shopify businesses to create custom shipping labels tied to advertising campaigns. Elteve CEO and co-founder Mike Weber said this is the first custom packaging ad platform for Shopify businesses.
“Elteve is a play on customer lifetime value, [and] pronounced like ‘LTV,’” Weber told Built In. “We wanted to create a mission based on the overarching focus of developing products to improve retailers’ connection with their customers and increase their customer lifetime value.”
Here’s how it works. Users create and design shipping labels with elteve’s built-in editor or choose from pre-designed templates. These labels feature QR codes and typically the company’s logo. It can also include a tailored message for the end consumer. Once the label and QR codes are designed, merchants print the shipping label as they normally would. Businesses can also create and print a secondary label, making room for more ad real estate on the exterior or interior of the package.
Elteve’s platform then tracks the ad campaign and provides real-time data to the merchant, including the scan rate of the QR code, how much revenue was generated from the code and geolocation data.
Elteve was co-founded in May by Weber and CTO Ben Fuller. The co-founders have built their entrepreneurial careers in the Denver and Boulder tech scenes over the last 15 years.
Before elteve, Weber launched ShipRelay, a SaaS platform that facilitates direct-to-consumer e-commerce order fulfillment, inventory management and warehousing needs. Fuller previously worked as the head of engineering at Onemata Corporation, a mobile location data platform for businesses.
“[Ben and I have] seen a lot of market changes over the last few years drastically impacting merchants’ ability to survive. At my last startup, I saw my DTC merchants struggling due to the hyper-competitive nature of e-commerce,” Weber said.
Increased competition paired with growing advertising costs led Weber and Fuller to launch elteve, a platform where businesses can create effective ads to drive brand loyalty and improve the post-sale customer experience, Weber said.
Elteve plans to grow its staff in the coming year. Currently made up of Weber, Fuller and some support staff based in Denver, elteve will hire up to 10 people across sales, customer support, marketing, product development, operations and tech support.
“We look forward to welcoming more third-party logistics, warehouse management software and e-commerce solutions to our platform over the coming months, allowing us to assist even more companies in ‘printing’ new revenue streams,” Weber said.
