By Sam Mintz - BostInno Reporter
November 19, 2021, 11:12am EST
A Boston College entrepreneur who created a platform years ago to use unwanted gift cards is now pivoting to pitch her app as a tool for brands to connect with teens and get the full value out of the cards themselves.
Brooke Yoakam founded GiftPocket, a digital gift card management platform, when she was 12. The BC sophomore has been steadily growing the company to the point where its app now has more than 7,000 users.
GiftPocket is looking to ramp up ahead of the holiday season. Yoakam said in an interview that the app currently has 250 brands from which users can buy, send and exchange gift cards, but is looking to build out more partnerships.
“Our long-term strategy is working with these brands and becoming the Facebook of advertising gift cards — becoming the Venmo of sending gift cards,” Yoakam said.
The company is currently raising a $500,000 convertible debt financing round as it works on proving its concept.
A big part of Yoakam’s pitch is that college students are an under-utilized market.
“A lot of our competitors in the space are focused on the transaction side, or they focus on buying gift cards at a discount, and none of them let people under the age of 18 use their platform,” she said. “So they're missing out on a huge demographic of people that use gift cards.”
Existing gift card management apps have focused on people with higher spending power, like parents.
“But we're focusing on the people that receive and use gift cards the most, and that's teenagers and college students,” Yoakam said. “And so not only will that help differentiate us but also our strategy of helping brands produce the $3 billion in unclaimed revenue that they have each year.”
The company is marketing at colleges like BC, placing QR codes on signs around campus and working with “micro-influencers” to get students free gift cards that get them on the platform.
The supply chain shortages that have some experts worried about the impending holidays could mean a boom for gift cards and GiftPocket.
“A lot of brands are going to actually be emphasizing gift cards, to make up for a lack of supply to match the holiday demand, so I think gift cards might be really prevalent in this timeframe,” Yoakam said.