Panjo Enthusiast Marketplace – Jennifer Arrington

The Situation

Panjo is a marketplace for auto, sport, and hobby enthusiasts. Popular departments include: BMW, Porsche, Audi, radio control cars, and skis.
I joined the team of 5 as creative lead, and drove their print, mobile, and web UX and UI.

The team doubled GMV from $500K weekly in Q1 2013 to over $1Million weekly in Q2 of 2014.
The team kept a focus on gaining traction in the form of conversions and GMV. Ultimately, team efforts to iterate product, promote services, and address customer support paid off. Panjo achieved a $4.6M Series A!

Marketplace Plugin

One of the creative projects I worked on was the marketplace plugin for forums.
The team had a successful mvp, a forum marketplace plugin, that needed to be redesigned. They needed to accommodate a more diverse set of clients, and promote the core site for sales, effectively drawing customers from the mvp solution to the marketplace on panjo.com. Once on the site, transactions could be monetized and build viewership.

I worked directly with our product lead and full stack developer to build a more flexible version of the marketplace plugin. We studied competitor classifieds platforms, and talked to our most active users. Working with storyboards from our product lead, I constructed wireframes and UI compositions for our developer.

Search/Browse

Item Detail

Information Graphics and Emails

I conducted marketing and promotional outreach projects aimed to strengthen Panjo’s bond with enthusiast networks, and awareness of our brand with buyers.

Panjo had a blog and some presence on Facebook and Twitter, but the team had little time or attention for online promotion or out-of-the-building interviews with clients.
I leveraged our existing outlets to promote our sellers, and to highlight several enthusiast tastemakers who used the Panjo marketplace.

Some outreach included phone interviews and feedback sessions with Panjo sellers. Some of the marketing campaigns I produced included
Interviews with tastemakers published to Panjo blog:

Rick Hesel, Creator of Lighted T, Perfects the Tesla

Randy George, Founder of Mazdaroadster.net Talks About His Favorite #Mazda

Coordinated and directed video profile of Bimmerforum member Steve Bierbaum.
The interview with Steve Bierbaum was featured on Panjo Angellist profile, and was a highlight in the team’s successful Series A pitch.

Some of the explorations and promotions I worked on include:
Promotional R&D – promotion themes and outlets, key contacts, goals, and high level plans. View More >

Market Analysis and Positioning Exercise – competitive analysis, customer pain points, opportunity positions, and brand development View More >

Customer Interviews and Feedback – View More >

Ken Smiley – Founder, Planet-9
“I was using photo posts and another classifieds solution before, but wound up spending much of my time updating things. I couldn’t do what I wanted. Chad and the Panjo team offered a better solution. Panjo is easy and straightforward for the Planet-9 members to use. It’s made transactions much easier.”

Anthony Marino – Audizine
Wants a white-label Panjo Marketplace and says, “Panjo is the best solution out there.”

Bram Maharaj – NSX Club
“I ordered a set of wheels for a member. Three were damaged. The Panjo team quickly resolved the issue with Paypal. I was really happy with the service.”

Robert VanName – Planet-9
“I’ve found Panjo easy to use, convenient, well put together. And I like the purchase/sell history feature. I’ve sold most of my equipment through Panjo. It’s been a handy service.”

Positioning Pyramid: We had an opportunity to work with the media team at investment firm, Lerer Hippeau to conduct brand positioning exercises that would help us align our promotions with our revenue strategy. I created outreach for buyers and separately for marketplace sellers. We found we were best able to connect with sellers and seasoned network members. They appreciated our responsiveness to their pain points as sellers, and offered cross-promotion for upcoming events.