Loomi is a Social Store user that caught our eye with their amazing looking product – we had never seen a light quite like it! We got in touch with them to have a quick chat about their business, how they created such an amazing product, and how they are using social media to connect with their customers.

What is the story behind Loomi? How did you get started?

Loomi is a design that has been around for a long time and it’s been copied on and off for about 30 years. The trouble was that they’ve always been made out of white plastic (like milk cartons), which makes the lamp pretty boring. We’re young hacker-types and wanted something we could make into our own art… paint it, cut it, draw on it, glue it, whatever. So we made it out of paper and found out it was awesome. Then we put it on Kickstarter and other people felt the same way. We sold almost 1000 Loomi’s in December on Kickstarter and now we’re trying to build a business out of it.

What makes Loomi different from other lights?

There is a lot of amazing lighting out there and some of it is really freaking cool, but it’s cool like a mix tape… it’s other people’s art that you are using to make a statement about yourself. We wanted to create something where people could show off their own art. Loomi is sort of like the world’s coolest canvas!

Do you sell exclusively online? Or do you have retail stores/distribution also?

Currently only online but we’re chatting with some retailers and think it would be a perfect fit for design galleries, craft and art stores, or gift shops.

Which social media channels have you been using to promote Loomi, and how have you been using these?

We use Facebook a lot, Twitter, and Tumblr. What we post on one we usually mime or somehow reference in the others. We try to post something interesting about once a day and something specifically about Loomi, like an event or special version once a week. We’ve got an overwhelmingly visual product and have been experimenting with Pinterest and have seen great results.

How are you measuring the success of your investment in social media?

We have no formal evaluation of that right now. We’ve tried some ads and found that generally there was little conversion (we can tell using Google Analytics and Shopify).

Do you have any particular social media success stories that you can share?

Kickstarter is our big story. We had crazy exposure and near the end of our project we were making about $2500/day in pledges. On top of that the people were incredibly supportive and we saw huge spikes on social platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Lots of that exposure was driven by Kickstarter featuring us on their product and main pages.

What made you decide that you wanted to have a Facebook store?

It’s another in our long stream of experiments to try to determine how best we can interact with customers to drive them to purchase. I guess we tried it because the risk is low and we need sales!

What have you found most useful about the Social Store so far?

It’s still pretty new for us, so we’ll have to get back to you on that one.

Anything else you would like to add?

Thanks a lot for the interview opportunity. I’m excited about the potential for Social Store and I think you guys are really doing a great thing! You can buy your very own Loomi on their website, or in their Facebook storefront powered by our Social Store app. You can also find them on Twitter & Tumblr.