Today,
Website Planet‘s Marko Velimirovic had the opportunity to interview Jim Fields, CEO of relay.club. We discussed the story behind the company, how it evolved over time, and what are the plans for the company for near future.
Please present relay.club to our audience
relay.club is an online platform specifically designed to help Asian cross-border brands reach international social media influencers on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. We offer a transformative solution for Asian brands that want to reach global audiences.
We’re a multilingual (Mandarin Chinese, English, Tagalog, Russian), International-based team of experts in technology and influencer marketing.
Please describe the story behind the company: What sparked the idea, and how has it evolved so far?
Being a content creator myself, I gradually started to receive more and more inquiries from Chinese brands for collaboration as my channel grew. But I noticed these inquiries were not very effective. Often the emails I received were filled with grammatical and logical errors and just a general lack of understanding of my channel. Sometimes these emails from brands would even get my name wrong!
I realized there was a tremendous opportunity to help Chinese and other brands in Asia that are interested in working with global KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders), otherwise known as influencers. Given my deep understanding of Chinese brands and also my personal experience as an influencer, I realized that there was a great opportunity to help connect these two unique groups – brands and influencers.
What services do you offer?
We provide two packages tailored to any brand’s needs.
relay.club’s DIY – “do it yourself” package allows brand owners to log on and use relay.club on their own. Customers can discover the best influencers for a specific campaign, connect, manage, pay and track ROI all on their own. This option is best for early to mid-stage startups that have their own in-house influencer marketing managers and need a software tool to supercharge their efforts.
For brands and businesses that don’t have their own in-house influencer marketing manager or for larger corporations that want to save time, there is a second option – relay.club’s VIP package. We have a team of influencer marketing experts do the job for you – from drafting a brief to outreach, content posting, payment, and tracking ROI. With this VIP option, we have created something that is customized for the needs of busy brand owners that want to outsource a lot of the busywork of influencer marketing to a third party – while benefiting from our amazing tech tools in the process.
What is the mission of relay.club?
Our mission is to connect innovative Asian brands with influencers overseas and give each group an opportunity to grow and expand their business prospects. Up to now, these Asian brands have been poorly served by existing software tools. With relay.club, we allow these brands to use influencer marketing to grow and scale their businesses overseas – and allow global influencers to monetize their content, turning their passions into careers.
What separates you from other similar websites/companies?
Right now, most competitor influencer marketing platforms are only targeting foreign brands in markets outside China – and also don’t offer tools optimized for brands in China.
Given our team’s deep understanding of Chinese brands and also the specific needs of foreign influencers, we have designed a set of systems that make this process smooth and seamless for both parties – thereby connecting the world’s largest eCommerce market with an extremely fast-growing segment of global social media influencers worldwide.
What are the plans for relay.club for the near future?
Our business has already grown extremely rapidly. We officially started building our platform in November 2021, and our product launched (out of beta) in April 2022. Since then, we have roughly doubled our number of paying subscribers month-on-month – and we expect this trend to accelerate in the future.
At the same time, we want to build a sustainable business that continues to closely listen to and monitor customer needs, and continue to develop and expand the product to make it even more useful to brands and influencers. Additionally, we plan to finance our growth primarily through customer acquisition and re-investment of revenue into our business – unlike other competitors that have relied mostly on venture capital funds to scale.
Within the next 3 years, we anticipate becoming the dominant cross-border influencer marketing platform in China, as well as opening branch offices in three to five additional markets in Southeast Asia. Within the next 5 years, we aim to have multi-regional offices in both Asia and in at least two other global hubs – most likely India and North America.
