What If Consumers Voted on Which Products Got Made

01 /The Concept

KIKI World wants to bring consumers inside the product development process.

The concept: creators and influencers propose ideas for new cosmetics products on the platform, and users vote on which ones get made. Products that clear the vote threshold go into production; the original creators receive a share of sales revenue (exact splits aren't disclosed).

Voting happens in stages:

- Round one: vote on the general product concept. - Round two: vote on the "super-features" the product should have. - Round three: "what's next" – how should the product evolve, or what should come alongside it?

Voters also get compensated, though differently from creators. Users earn points redeemable toward future purchases – and toward limited-edition NFTs issued by the startup. Blockchain underlies the voting system, and KIKI World claims to have brought Web3 to the beauty industry, though the concept could have worked without it.

KIKI World launched in May 2023 and already has products available for purchase, with others in pre-order. The startup raised $3.5M before launch last year and has just closed an additional $7M. Investors include a16z crypto and Estée Lauder's investment arm.

02 /Why It Matters

The founders' argument is that in a $500 billion industry, brands have structured the relationship with consumers entirely on their own terms – consumers pay, brands decide what gets made. Meanwhile, brands collectively spend $75 billion per year studying their customers through indirect research methods, then advertising back to them based on what they learned.

The cost of customer acquisition has risen 80% over the past three years, partly because people are spending 40% more time on social media – where they respond to creator recommendations far more than to direct ads.

KIKI World's thesis: remove the intermediary. Bring manufacturers and consumers together directly inside a community where people propose, react, and discuss. As the startup puts it, "commerce works better when it happens inside a community"

Within that community, users can watch product-in-use stories, vote on concept proposals, receive samples, and participate in events and giveaways. Samples almost certainly flow through the points system rather than being handed out freely – rewarding genuine participants rather than opportunists.

KIKI World is already building a tiered engagement structure. Accumulated points can unlock access to a private "super-user" group. The smart model would require continuous activity to maintain enough points to hold membership – creating an ongoing loop of contribution and reward.

One early internet forum organizer once noted that a "status badge" system is fundamental to sustaining communities. New members want to earn badges; old members want to show them off and keep accumulating new ones. The loop has to be infinite.

Strong communities are held together by horizontal connections between members, not just by a central authority broadcasting to an audience. That's exactly what KIKI World is building.

In the fashion space, Off/Script ([covered previously](/review/dazhe-chast-ot-2-trillionov-jeto-ogromnye-dengi)) built a nearly identical platform – without the blockchain – where influencers propose products, users vote, and the startup handles production and distribution for whatever hits threshold. Off/Script raised $7M in its first round.

03 /Opportunities

Producing physical goods under your own brand on third-party factories has become commoditized. That's driven the growth of D2C (direct-to-consumer) brands in virtually every category. The bottleneck isn't production – it's building an audience willing to buy.

KIKI World, Off/Script, and similar startups solve the distribution problem by building the audience first. Kickstarter pioneered this model, but it now looks like it could become a mainstream format across many categories:

For starters: as the number of competing brands grows, differentiation has shifted from product features to audience loyalty. Building your own audience from scratch is hard – the alternative is showing up where one already exists. This is the same logic that drives sellers to choose between running their own Shopify store versus listing on Amazon. KIKI World and Off/Script are the "marketplace" equivalent, but operating through a creative community model.

Beyond that: people increasingly buy based on peer and creator recommendations rather than advertising. That means successful commerce needs more than a product – it needs community infrastructure around the buying decision.

The direction worth exploring: building community-first commerce platforms in specific product categories.

Which markets are large enough to matter? Which have enough active D2C producers to prove that production under private label is easy and demand is real? Which categories have high enough purchase frequency to sustain ongoing community engagement?

This model is still early. That's a window. When Estée Lauder and a16z both put money into KIKI World, they're signaling something. Worth paying attention to.