Digital River, the most experienced global ecommerce enabler for established and fast-growing brands, announced today that SPACES, which delivers immersive virtual reality (VR) experiences, is leveraging its MyCommerce platform to offer its new SPACES VR video conferencing application to users worldwide.
In response to social distancing restrictions, many companies have had to quickly adapt their current business model to remain operational. Traditionally, SPACES has provided cutting-edge VR experiences for theme parks and retail locations around the world including the National Geographic Museum in Washington, D.C., the Two Bit Circus in Los Angeles, Sega Joypolis in Japan, and Songcheng Dreamland in China.
To stay relevant and future-proof its business in a fast-changing and uncertain market, SPACES set out to evolve its product offering to create new revenue streams. Within a matter of weeks, the company transformed its core technology into an app that integrates the power of VR with video conference solutions, such as Zoom, Skype, Google Hangouts and WebEx, which are experiencing record growth as millions around the world shelter in place and work from home.
With Digital River’s MyCommerce solution, SPACES was able to quickly get its ecommerce operation up and running with a flexible, subscription-based offering and features like free trial and product upgrades. MyCommerce allows SPACES to enter global markets with ease, letting Digital River handle all the back-end complexity of taxes, compliance, fraud, risk and localization.
“Over the last several weeks, our team spent all of its resources and energy on fine-tuning the app, which has seen rapid adoption for the free beta version. We simply didn’t have the bandwidth to build our own ecommerce platform from the ground up. We knew about Digital River, with some of our team coming from the gaming industry, and heard their technology and reliability as an ecommerce provider was top-notch,” said Shiraz Akmal, CEO and co-founder at SPACES, Inc. “From the start, their sales and technology teams were extremely helpful and great to work with. Once we brought Digital River fully on board, we were able to integrate into the commerce engine within a week and start testing immediately.”
“It’s been extremely exciting to see the initial interest we’ve received in the app and the different ways it’s being used for business meetings, live events, classroom teaching, and everyday entertainment,” said Brad Herman, CTO and co-founder at SPACES, Inc. “We’ve put a lot of focus into making the user experience as frictionless as possible, and now we’re focused on moving as fast as possible to get the PRO version fully into market. The team at Digital River has jumped all in to help us accelerate the curve of user adoption and quickly grow the business.”
“SPACES is bringing a unique offering to the market at a time when we’re all spending the majority of our days on video conferencing platforms, whether for business or personal use. We knew how quickly they were looking to set up their ecommerce presence and we were confident that our team and solution could deliver,” said Jason Nyhus, senior vice president of sales, marketing and partnerships at Digital River. “MyCommerce is an ideal option for a fast-growing company like SPACES that is looking for a turnkey solution that provides end-to-end capabilities and instant access to sell into new global markets, quickly.”
