Our mission at Giantnerd is to be the web’s best outdoor social shopping community and we have received a number of prestigious press mentions for Giantnerd’s progressive and innovative social commerce platform. It seems as if Giantnerd has been consistently “in the news” since we launched into beta earlier this year. Mashable, Facebook, and Techrunch to name a few have all reported postively on Giantnerd Social Shopping.

Just yesterday we were honored to be featured in a major business magazine. Entrepreneur Magazine listed my top 5 Twitter feeds to follow to stay on top of new and emerging trends in e-commerce. If you use twitter like I do this list is pretty invaluable. 

In a relatively short amount of time Giantnerd continues to exceed expectations for disrupting the large retail market for outdoor sporting goods by integrating social networking with ecommerce best practices. Here is a big Powered by LOVE thanks for the loyalty and support of the Giantnerd Members, The Nerd Herd, and our strategic brand partners. As it is written in our founding description, “Giantnerd  is a coalition of product-savvy members, passionate vendors, and a small group of caring employees dedicated to serving the needs of the Giantnerd social shopping community.”  We wouldn’t have experienced the success and growth without your Love and we are forever grateful!

Now for the fun stuff. We couldn’t be more excited, driven, and hungry to continue to enhance the Giantnerd platform and our members experience in 2011. We have a laundry list of exciting new features and partnerships we will proudly unveil in the upcoming year. Think more social integrations, more ways to engage and interact, and more of the world’s best outdoor gear.  Our 14 core values have served The Nerd Herd well allowing for cooperative progress revolving around the best interest of our members. The Nerd Herd is passionate, determined, and nothing short of obsessive to deliver a fun and rewarding social shopping experience. Happy Holidays and Happy New Year. Here is to a Giant and Nerdy 2011 Powered by LOVE!

With Love,

The Head Nerd

Randall Weidberg

@GiantnerdCEO

It’s not easy in this day and age of uber competition to lead a company with the #1 Core Value of Powered by LOVE.  You can’t sit on the sidelines or be out the door at 5 or 6 or even 8pm. You need to successfully guide a team of dedicated and smart individuals who embody, believe sincerely in, and execute day in and day out the core values that make Giantnerd best in class. I take pride in our core values and try to lead by example with a hands on approach. 

The reality is that no CEO or Head Nerd can do it on her own. She must have faith and trust in the team to execute and be accountable each day, each hour, and on each decision made to reflect the spirit of the mission statement. It takes true sacrifice by the Nerd HERD to ensure Giantnerd is the leader in online social shopping and making our member experience a memorable one Powered by LOVE.

Sometimes late at night I reflect on how far we have come and how much further we plan on going and I couldn’t imagine doing it with any other group of Nerds. At the end of the day, we control our own destiny and I wouldn’t want it any other way.

Giantnerd Core Value #6 We Control Our Own Destiny: We will be faced with many challenges. It’s how we overcome these obstacles that are important. We are accountable and take ownership for all things Gianternd® and act accordingly with our solutions. We understand that when we collectively put our heads together we can solidify our success. Accountability and responsibility among our team, both individually and collectively, will lead us to great things. As a company, we’ll never run out of ways to improve—mostly because we’ll never run out of problems that need solving. And in that lies the inherent beauty of what we do: in a world of unlimited challenges, we have an unlimited list of successes that await us.

With Love,

The Head Nerd

Randall Weidberg

@GiantnerdCEO

In an effort to post more often I promise to keep my posts short and sweet. When I look at the evolution of the Facebook homepage i am reminded that it is not so much where you start but where you end up. You simply cannot allow your management team to rest on their laurels and past achievements no matter how successful or arduous a task it was to achieve. Strategic improvements must consistently be identified and executed speedily and effectively.

Facebook has grown to become one of the most dominant internet players of our time but they sure didn’t start out that way. Facebook set their site on what many proclaimed experts thought to be an insurmountable goal. In addition, their behemoth competition including Friendster and later MySpace didn’t view Facebook as much of a threat as these companies dominated the marketplace.

So, why did Facebook have a meteoric rise while their competition time and again lost market share?  Facebook did many things right and their rise didn’t happen by chance. What is most notable to me is the path of continues improvement and incremental changes Facebook made to improve their platform including opening it up to application developers (smart move) once it launched. This is in sharp contrast to the closed environment with lack of enhancements and strategic improvements Friendster (just typing this name gives me the creeps) and Myspace took.  In essence what you do with the platform and the changes and enhancements that are made once you launch are actually more important than what you launch with.

We are extremely proud of the current state of the Giantnerd platform and our launch but we are not naive. We have a lot of work to do and need to make the categorical improvements that will catapult Giantnerd ahead of our competition.

Giantnerd has a lot of exciting features that will launch in the next few weeks. We will simultaneously be working on both stabilizing the commerce experience and making the platform more social. From a best practices ecommerce perspective keep an eye out for improved search and navigation and a more efficient checkout process. From a social standpoint we are working on more intuitive ways for members to interact and participate in the social shopping experience.

In yesterday’s 4 hour marathon whiteboard meeting, (@jefflesser made the brilliant decision to supply us in the 25^th hour with skittles to keep our sugar levels high enough to stay focused. ) we detailed a plan to make incremental improvements to the groups, Q and A wall and email notification functionality. We discussed a lot of ways to improve the platform but in the end, our highest priority items are ways to increase participation in the Gianterd community.

I will conclude this post with what is most important to our decision making process at Giantnerd. Nerds, what features do you want? We need your feedback so we can work tirelessly to make Giantnerd the webs best social shopping platform.

With Love,

The Head Nerd

@GiantnerdCEO

First, shopping at Giantnerd® will get you the best products, service and selection including of course our amazing 365 day return policy. From bikes to shoes to limited edition shades, we stock an extensive inventory that is continually updating to match the evolution of the outdoor sports environment.

Second, we don’t tell you what to buy. Your peers are your guide to the right gear—use them to get product information and reviews (as well as collaborate, ideate and innovate on topics within the outdoor sports realm). Then, use us to make your purchase.

Third, we’ll make it worth your while with the Giantnerd® rewards points program. The Giantnerd® loyalty program is designed to hook up users with free gear who give back to the community. All you have to do is purchase items in the store or share reviews, ideas, and contribute to enhancing the shopping experience of other Giantnerd® members. The more you contribute and participate on the site, the more you can earn and redeem for FREE GEAR! To learn more about the loyalty program

Its more fun and rewarding to shop with your friends so take the discussion to Giantnerd®and communicate, collaborate, and research with like minded nerds on your community social shopping website. 

Embrace your inner Giantnerd®. It’s what we like most about you.

Giantnerd® is super excited to present to you Giantnerd® Social Shopping. Our family, friends and significant others may now finally understand why we have been so busy and preoccupied. I want to give a virtual Giantnerd® show of LOVE to the entire Giantnerd® Herd Team. Without your hard work, dedication, and the 14 core values we identify with (more in another post) this would not be possible.

Giantnerd® is designed to be the web’s best social shopping community. It’s a place where outdoor enthusiasts can utilize cutting-edge social technology to communicate, cooperate and collaborate with others, ultimately making smart, educated purchases in a hive minded community.  It’s a transparent environment where our users have the opportunity to share knowledge, opinions, and ideas about products among like minded gear nerds who are essential to a positive social shopping experience. Giantnerd® is a coalition of product-savvy customers, passionate vendors, and a small group of caring employees dedicated to serving the needs of the Giantnerd social shopping community. Ultimately, everything we do revolves around the best interest of our customers.

Being a nerd isn’t about pocket protectors and wheezing in front of pretty girls anymore. No, in this day and age it’s about getting stoked on that which is newer, faster, and better across the world that is outdoor sports. And being a Giantnerd® is about sharing your affinity for whatever is you do with a transparent community of educated peers who all have something to say about it.

Giantnerd® isn’t like other shopping sites. In fact, Giantnerd® has almost nothing to do with us. Rather, everything here is a product of you—the community—from products you see on the site, all the way down to our company policy. Giantnerd® is a social platform totally dependent on your presence; your opinions; your wants and needs. So it’s fitting that Giantnerd® should be the only source you’ll ever need for researching, shopping, and eventually copping, gear for every outdoor activity you geek out to.

Giantnerd® is in Beta. We have a lot of new and exciting features and enhancements in the works but we need your input. This is a call out to all of you, the nerds that make up our member community, to provide feedback. Its your feedback that powers the community!  Don’t be a stranger, we look forward to hearing from you!

With Love,

The Head Nerd