Before founding dipp, Jennifer Chen and Mikhail Abramov spent 15 years working as art directors in New York. During this time, Chen says they realized that the marketing, sales and design process has remained the same, despite the introduction of new technologies and tools in the market, and is often riddled with bottlenecks.
“Sales people have sales needs, they communicate with the marketing team, then once the marketing team has a direction, they let a designer know, then the designer goes back to the marketer, then the marketer goes back towards the designer,” she said. “There’s this vicious cycle that slows down the whole process because no one understands the other department’s needs and workflow.”
Dipp was launched three years ago to automate much of this workflow and allow marketing and design teams to collaborate more effectively, while focusing on their own performance metrics. For example, if a marketing team wants to update a price on their ad, they simply enter it into a spreadsheet instead of asking a designer. The Taipei-based startup recently raised $1.5 million in seed funding from investors including SparkLabs Taiwan, Palm Drive Capital and content tech unicorn Tezign, and will soon launch generative AI-powered features .
To use dipp, brands first set up a brand directive with information such as fonts, colors, and layout (or they can upload an Adobe Photoshop file). This data is then transformed into a Dipp file with everything remaining editable. Then pricing and other ad information is uploaded to a spreadsheet, with each row representing a product, so visuals can be changed in batches. This helps marketing and design teams keep up with the massive amount of visual content needed to sell online. According to Chen, brands typically generate 300-500 images at a time, which dipp can help them do in minutes.
the dip team
The brands Dipp works with are typically Fortune 500 companies in the apparel and beauty industry that sell a large number of products, over 500 SKUs. They have high product turnover rates, often with weekly launches of 20 or more products, and sell in three or more markets, alongside social media advertising campaigns. Chen says most have big sales and marketing teams, but a shortage of designers. Its customers include Levi’s, Estée Lauder and Rakuten. Dipp also works with e-commerce facilitators or agencies that help brands distribute products across multiple channels.
Since its launch, dipp has primarily focused on Taiwan, but is expanding into Southeast Asia, with new customers in Singapore, the Philippines and Thailand. Dipp started in New York, but the team decided to move to Taiwan after entering Taipei-based accelerator Appworks due to the market potential they saw in Asia.
For example, brands hold a high number of sales promotions here. “Throughout the year, it’s not just Black Friday or Christmas, there’s a sale every month,” Chen said. “There is a busy season starting in June and going until Chinese New Year.”
In terms of competition, Chen says potential clients often ask how Dipp is different from Rocketium, which helps creative teams create really big marketing campaigns. Chen says dipp differentiates itself by focusing on e-commerce, as brands in Asia often sell through multiple online channels at the same time, including PC Home, Momo, Shopee and Lazada. Each marketplace has its own unique guidelines for visual content, including file size and dimensions. This information is integrated into dipp’s platform, so brands can automate their advertising to meet different requirements.
Dipp is currently working on integrating generative AI into its platform to help bridge the gaps between the marketing and design departments. For example, it will allow marketers to use prompts to generate images as a first draft of ideas to present to designers. It also automates the process of reviewing designs or checking details like character limit and formatting to meet the requirements of different markets and social media platforms.
Dipp’s new funding will be used for the expansion of the team, particularly in its R&D and commercial departments.
In a statement, Palm Drive Capital founding partner Seamon Chan said, “With global venture capital investments in generative AI reaching $1.7 billion in the first quarter of this year, we are thrilled to to help Dipp improve its e-commerce solution with AI capabilities. . As the company has validated its value proposition in Taiwan by providing a much-needed solution to global brands’ multi-channel e-commerce operation, we are optimistic that this solution will have a disruptive impact on e-commerce operation workflows. in the APAC region.
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