Springleap.com has once again appeared in the pages of the respected South African business magazine, Finweek.

This time around we received praise for how we have grown our Facebook community so effectively.
The article mentions how even though Springleap has a modest marketing budget compared to some major companies, we have still managed to grow a community many times larger.

Springleap currently has a staggering amount of ‘likes’ – 180 000

Growing a community this large and as quickly as we have is by no means an ‘easy feat’.
It takes serious effort and the right kind of social media ‘know how’.

Our founder Eran Eyal, mentions a few points on how we have managed to reach such an impressive number and also sustain its growth!

We are very happy to see that Finweek has noticed this growth and shared it with their readers.

If you would like to get your hands on the article you will find it in the 22 March edition of Finweek on page 45.

Onwards and upwards, things are only going to get better!

 

Springleap has recently appeared in Finweek (issue – 19 January 2012).

Yes indeed, we have just been mentioned in one of South African’s most popular business magazines. This is such great news for us!

It is always fantastic to see that publications, especially those in influential circles, are recognizing our achievements and sharing them with their readers.

This Finweek article highlighted the fact that we have over 120 000 members and are now the fifth largest branded online Facebook community in South Africa. Well, actually now we are third largest ;)

We are ecstatic, thank you Finweek!

 

This competition is going to be music to your ears!

Springleap.com brings you the Stepdog theme competition, in association with Turbovite. It’s time to celebrate the very best in South African music, with our first ever band competition!

Stepdog, would like to challenge your design skills by asking you to create their new band t-shirt, which will be sold at gigs and right here on Springleap.com

Music is undoubtedly one of the most influential experiences of human society!
It has the ability to make us smile, laugh and cry.
Music has the ability to get you on your feet, to make you shout with happiness, or even join a social revolution.

Stepdog is a South African Folk rock band, based in picturesque Stellenbosch. They have been described as a “ super tight three-piece bearded wonder and produce a funky blend of Creedance Revival meets Bob Dylan with really raspy vocals and toe tapping rhythms ”.
If you listen to their music you will understand why this description is so appropriate.

DANCE ALL NIGHT!
The well known energy supplement specialists, Turbovite, were awesome enough to sponsor the prize money for this rocking theme competition.
Turbovite is a body and mind energy booster that can power your life, no matter how active your lifestyle.
Find out more about Turbovite

We are all… Powered by music!

This is the core concept behind our latest theme competition.

It’s time to get creative. How does music power your life?

Create a design that shows how music has the ability to influence our lives and gives us the power to be who we truly are.

Illustrate to us the underlying theme: Powered by music.

THE BRIEF:

1.) Listen to the Stepdog songs on the brief page, choose one and use it as your theme. If you would like to read the lyrics please go to www.stepdog.co.za
Let your imagination do the rest!

2.) The Stepdog logo needs to be used in the design.
Download the vector by clicking the link below.
Stepdog vector

3.) Designs on Black t-shirts ONLY.

THE PRIZES:

Turbovite have put up an awesome prize of US$700 [or R5000] for the winner of the Stepdog ‘Powered by music’ competition.

The winning design will be transformed into a t-shirt and will be sold by the band at gig venues and across the world through Springleap.com’s online store.

THE RULES:

1. You know the drill NO OBSCENITY, NO HATE SPEECH, ONLY ORIGINAL WORKS …all that jazz.

2. You can submit up to 5 designs so go wild! The more designs you submit the greater chances you have of winning!

3. Winners will now be chosen using votes as an indicator. The top 10 voted designs will get the golden stamp of approval and go in for review. The final verdict will come down to our esteemed design panel here at Springleap in conjunction with Stepdog.

4. Standard Springleap terms and conditions apply over and above.

5. Stepdog and Springleap reserve the rights to request the high-resolution artwork of any entry submitted into the “Powered by music” competition for non-commercial benefit such as an even media covering the process – but do not own the rights to any of the designs except the winner and thus may not print these runner-up designs for commercial resale unless by consent and arrangement in writing with the designer concerned.

Everyone WINS!!

THE DATES:
Dates to diarise:

Submissions for designs open: 11 April 2011

Submissions for designs close: 02 May 2011

Voting starts: 02 May 2011

Voting ends: 12 May 2011

Winner is announced: 16 May 2011

In order to get started on your designs download the Springleap t-shirt Submission Kit and get started right away!

Confused or uncertain about anything?
Post your questions about the ‘Powered by music’ theme competition on the brief page or click our online support button to the left of our page.

Good Luck and Happy Designing!

More About Springleap.com
Springleap.com is an online crowdsourcing t-shirt design website, launched in 2008 by co-founders and long-standing friends, Eran Eyal and Eric Edelstein. Springleap has since grown into a well-established design platform that empowers up-and-coming designers and artists from across the globe by providing them with a platform where they can display their work, gain exposure and valuable feedback from a design-focused online community, and start earning great cash prizes and royalties on their winning designs.

Regular open-theme and ad-hoc brand- or band-sponsored competitions are hosted on the website to source great designs for t-shirts, apparel and other purposes. Local and international artists submit designs from all around the world to win large cash prizes, royalties and exposure. The public and online community then vote for the top designs, and a seasoned Springleap judge-panel (along with the sponsor for brand-sponsored competitions) selects the final winner.

In addition to it’s regular design-sourcing services, Springleap also offers corporate and promotional printing services.

Some of Springleap’s great achievements include a second place at the 2008 Innovation Awards in California, and winning the South African e-Commerce Award in 2009.

Quote by Amy Abrahams (Marketing/PR manager at Springleap): “ I have always been really passionate about music and design. The Springleap Team is fueled by the constant creative flow in our environment and it brings us great pleasure to be collaborating with Stepdog and Turbovite on Springleap’s first ever band competition. As Springleap’s Head of PR and Marketing, I’m constantly on the look-out for new and exciting creative and artist-focused ventures, and music seems to be the natural progression for us. We are thrilled to be involved with Stepdog and Turbovite, and have no doubt that the Springleap community will deliver designs that truly capture the band’s spirit ”.

For press information and interviews, contact Tim Hill at Tuned In Publicity on tim@tunedinpublicity.co.za .

LINKS:

Facebook: www.facebook.com/stepdogband
Music Download: www.stepdog.co.za
Music Video: www.youtube.com/stepdogmusicvideos

Management:
Brendan Sterley
Apollo Artist Agency
brendan@apolloartists.co.za | 082 3361836 | 021 8839056

BUILD. GATHER. SOLVE. ANYTHING

Cape Town – South Africa, evly.com will be launching the first crowdsourcing social network that utilizes a custom built drag and drop website builder available for free to any registered user. Evly is an online network of crowdsourcing communities where users can create advanced crowdsourcing websites in a few clicks to bring people together to constantly solve new challenges.

Crowdsourcing is the method of sourcing a solution from a crowd, community or social network as opposed to a single contractor with the understanding that the wisdom of the crowd is greater than the wisdom of the individual. This method not only gives rise to a variety of stimulating solutions but also powerful viral marketing potential.

Evly websites function much like the group or fan-pages on other social media websites, however evly provides users with their own unique website and the ability to grow a network based around their particular interest or need. In addition, evly will provide advanced crowdsourcing and social networking features which will enable website owners to easily manage and grow their own community.

CrowdTech, the holding company for Springleap.com, evly.com and eKomi.co.za, utilizes the insights acquired from Springleap.com’s crowdsourcing model. Along with two years of research in the development of evly, CrowdTech combines these learning’s in the development of this distinctive crowdsourcing social media platform. CrowdTech recognises the need to provide a service that will allow anyone through the medium of the Internet, the opportunity to source solutions by harnessing collective intelligence, skills, talent or collaborative efforts through a large network of people.

Co-Founder, Eran Eyal suggests: “The social web is no longer going to be about idle chatter on a platform populated by reactive users: evly.com is about a world of PRO-active website creators and community members constantly looking to solve new problems and build solutions in an environment saturated by the right tools.”

Evly provides the tools that enable general users and large brands to achieve various objectives: the platform allows community engagement, the ability to source answers to any possible question, fund raising for various ventures, and the gathering of market research through analysis of comments, feedback and voting.

CEO of CrowdTech, Eric Edelstein, proposes that the future web will be centred on goals, objectives, purposes and challenges. “evly.com allows interaction with a purpose rather than people just interacting for the sake of it! Companies and individuals from all across the globe are now beginning to see that they can solve problems by tapping into a larger knowledge base, at a fraction of the price and in a much shorter time through the Internet.”

Evly – the “network of networks”, will open up a world of hybrid crowdsourcing communities to every evly user. Just by joining evly.com or any community built off the evly platform, users will be encouraged to explore the evly network through their own personalised dashboard. There they will be able to search, discover and participate across the entire evly network of crowdsourcing communities. Analysts predict the estimated growth of evly over the next 36 months will be around 35 million registered users, along with 1.5 million active websites and 4000 corporate clients.

Level 1: Starter – Individuals and companies can set up crowdsourcing websites and pose challenges for free. All evly websites will benefit from participating through evly.com’s ‘network of networks’ in order to utilize collective knowledge.

Level 2: Customisation – Building on from Level 1, the first premium model of evly will give the website owner more control over the design and branding of their website. Website owners will be able to create a fully customized website in minutes.

Level 3: Independence – Will afford website owners the option to remove themselves from the evly network. Website owners will also have 100% custom branding, as well as ownership of all member information.

Evly.com is currently opening up 450 spots for BETA testers. If you would like to be one of the select few to test this revolutionary platform register now at www.evly.com

###

About CrowdTech

Co-founders of Springleap.com, Eric Edelstein and Eran Eyal, have driven their t-shirt design crowdsourcing company to become the success it is today. The online design crowdsourcing community and t-shirt store has thus far won various awards during its short lifespan, including winning the 2009 SA e-commerce awards. The company earned second place at the Innovation 100 awards held by The Standard.com in California in 2008. Other awards include the Silver Trophy in the South African Online Publishing Association awards. Recently Springleap was used as a case study for Joel Comm’s authoritative book : “Twitter Power” and Jon Reed’s upcoming book : “Get up to Speed with Online Marketing”.

Eric Edelstein co-founded the incuBeta group, which launched the global search marketing company clicks2customers.com, Affiliate Marketing Network trafficsynergy.com and website builder yola.com. He is currently the CEO of CrowdTech, the holding company of Springleap.com, evly.com and eKomi.co.za.

Eran Eyal is a technology forecaster, journalist and entrepreneur. He spearheaded launching iiyama Benelux in South Africa and has worked closely with major technology manufacturers internationally specializing in conceptual design solutions. He is currently the Director of Business Development for CrowdTech and heads up Springleap.com and ekomi.co.za.

I registered :} Can’t wait! shoutBack on 19/11/10 by Infinity

Springleap.com’s holding company Fashion Evolution has acquired the rights to sell the online customer feedback service – eKomi – in South Africa. eKomi allows online businesses to publicly showcase their customers’ views and ratings. We chatted to Eran Eyal, Co-founder of Springleap.com to find out more about this service and how it can effect the South African ecommerce market.

Why have you launched this service?
South African ecommerce providers have suffered from many setbacks thus far ranging from payment options to shipping and bandwidth. Whilst many of these are finding a path of resolution the fact is that many customers fear shopping online – 92% of ecommerce customers site security as their PRIMARY reason for not shopping online. The real issue at play here is actually a lack of GLOBAL standards. With this in mind we seek to launch a fast-growing standard of ecommerce trust and authenticity in South Africa to remedy the issue at hand.

eKomi has processed over 1 million customer feedbacks to date and has over 3000 clients in Europe with fast growth. It is becoming the standard in customer reviews and feedback which not only empower the customer with the knowledge that the site rating is not open to fraud, but also the ecommerce client with a method of talking directly to their customers and converting them into prosumers. That means trust and authenticity for the market and greater revenue streams for the ecommerce trader.

As a well known company trading in ecommerce locally and abroad (last year our site Springleap.com won the SA ecommerce awards) we understand these core needs intimately and the value of a solution that is easy to implement, a global standard, best-of-breed and reasonably costed.

How does it differ from other similar services?

Whilst there are a few other customer feedback systems in the world, eKomi stands apart – head and shoulders – as the only one that is transactionally tied. This means that both the customers who come to a site who see an aggregated customer rating (for the site and it’s services) as well as the ecommerce client themselves knowing that all the customers who give them feedback are real customers with real problems, creates an atmosphere of trust, accountability, transparency and reciprocity.

So when a customer rates the site – they can only do so after a transaction occurs – this way the client knows that all the reviews and issues are authentic and can be directly and easily addressed. There is an arbitration system that comes to play here where once the customer’s issues are addressed, the customer can re-rate the site based on the manner in which the whole service and transaction took place. This is an AMAZING opportunity for the ecommerce client to convert customers who would never shop with them again into happy customers, positively increase their site rating and show their existing and new customers that they are trustworthy and look after their clients. That translates into greater revenue and trust in ecommerce language that’s power.

All the comments also go directly into SEO for the site and push their organic SEO up.

For enterprise clients we can push the feedback into their CRM systems or wherever the feedback is going to be most meaningful for that particular client.

It is also a constantly and aggressively evolving product and now even an iPhone application is possible for managers.

Where are you targeting this?
There are 2 major targets: every ecommerce site in South Africa (and later Africa) as well as educating the market that when they see the eKomi widget – it signifies that the site is trustworthy and authentic; it’s the mark of ecommerce trust.

Where does the name come from?
The product originates from Germany where certification is highly valued – in fact it’s a must. So the name finds it’s origin in eKommerce.

Isn’t it dangerous to expose yourself like this?
How? Clients are already exposed. There are sites and social media platforms where people are CONSTANTLY complaining. There’s word of mouth. Sticking your head in the ground like an ostrich in the face of onslaught really isn’t a solution – the ecommerce players know this. This is a solution where they actually actively get to take control, have power they never had before, a global standard of trust, it’s cheap as chips, there’s a free 30 day trial, they get to talk to customers directly without being held to ransom by third party websites… There is only gain in this case. It’s a win-win scenario.

Sure sounds like a great opportunity for clients and customers! Thanks a lot Eran for telling us more about eKomi – a customer feedback service that will seem to rock the South African ecommerce world.

by Yolandi van Rensburg

Read the article on the Ideate website