Product Vision

Purpose

This document defines what SellVia is, who it's for, and what "winning" looks like, so every downstream decision — business logic, architecture, UX — can be checked against a single source of truth instead of re-litigated per feature.

Vision Statement

SellVia gives every product a sales force that only gets paid when it sells.

Brands list products with a commission attached. Creators pick what fits their audience and apply. Every sale is traced to the exact creator and post, and payout settles automatically once the merchant's billing cycle for that sale closes via Swich — no invoices, no net-60, no spreadsheets.

The Problem (as validated on wesellvia.com)

Two groups have complementary, currently-unsolved problems:

Side	Current reality
Small/early-stage brands	Cold DMs with a media kit and a prayer. Campaign tracking across five spreadsheets. "Exposure" offered as payment. No affiliate manager, no ad budget.
Early-career creators	Chasing invoices for 60+ days. No proof a post "worked." No structured way to find brands that fit their audience without cold outreach.

Existing affiliate networks (Amazon Associates, ShareASale, Rakuten, Impact, CJ Affiliate) exist, but are built for enterprises with dedicated affiliate managers — not for a small brand and a 9k-follower creator who'd be a perfect match. That gap is the whole opportunity.

Target Users

(A) Business Owners / Brands — e-commerce retailers, SaaS founders, brick-and-mortar stores wanting performance-based marketing (pay-per-sale) with no upfront cost and no contracts.

(B) Content Creators — bloggers, YouTubers, Instagram/TikTok creators, affiliate publishers, and anyone monetizing an audience, including small/niche creators (e.g. 9k followers) who are underserved by enterprise-grade networks.

Value Proposition

• For brands: $0 owed until something sells. No ad budget, no sales team, no contract. Set a commission, go live, review applicants, done.
• For creators: Discover campaigns instead of cold-pitching. Every click/cart/purchase attributed to the exact creator and post. Commission is agreed before anyone posts — no "exposure" as payment.
• For both: One shared receipt per sale. Payout settles automatically once the merchant's billing cycle for that sale closes — no invoicing, no chasing, no 60-day wait.

What Makes This Different

1. Radical transparency as a trust device. The current landing page explicitly states "SellVia doesn't exist yet," shows zeroed-out metrics ("0 creators approved, 0 sales, $0 tracked revenue"), and frames signups as votes to build the product. This is a deliberate positioning choice, not a placeholder — it should persist into early product messaging ("you are literally here" / roadmap stage visibility).
2. Creators apply, brands approve — not cold outreach in either direction. Everyone in a deal chose to be there.
3. Attribution is automatic and mutual. Both sides see the same receipt for the same sale at the same time. No "did this post actually work?" ambiguity.
4. Niche-first go-to-market, not "all products, all creators" from day one — addresses the two-sided chicken-and-egg problem directly (see Business Rules / GTM notes in 01. Business Logic).

Success Metrics (from raw data + case study docs)

• Number of active merchants and active affiliates (both sides of liquidity)
• Click-to-sale conversion rate
• Time from campaign listing → first creator approved
• Time from sale → payout settled (target: near-instant, not net-60)
• User satisfaction / usability scores on both dashboards
• Waitlist → activated user conversion (current validation-stage KPI)

Guiding Principles

• Reduce complexity relentlessly. Contextually hide irrelevant fields (e.g. a digital-goods seller never sees a shipping field). Progressive disclosure over feature-front-loading.
• Don't favor one side. Every business rule and UX decision gets checked against both the merchant flow and the creator flow.
• No fake momentum. No fabricated testimonials, no invented metrics, no "trusted by 1000+ brands" until it's real — this is a stated design constraint (design.md § Section Design), not just a nice-to-have.
• Design system discipline. Black/lime, Outfit/Figtree, no gradients, no glassmorphism — see design.md and 09. UX for the full system.

Non-Goals (for MVP)

• Multi-currency support
• Complex analytics/BI dashboards
• Enterprise/large-brand tooling (dedicated affiliate managers, bulk campaign management)
• International tax handling beyond basic W-8/W-9

Open Questions

• What's the actual niche/category for the "beachhead" cohort — resolved 2026-08-23 as geography, not category: Pakistan-only for MVP (see Update below). Whether a category focus is also needed within Pakistan is still open.
• What follower/audience-size floor (if any) applies to creator eligibility? The FAQ on wesellvia.com implies "no," but this needs an explicit rule for moderation/quality control.
• Payout rails at launch: PayPal + bank transfer / Paddle — superseded, see Update below.
• How does "private beta, in join order, on founding terms" (from the roadmap) map to concrete product rules — is there a cap on beta cohort size? (Resolved elsewhere: 10–25, see Product Roadmap.)

Update (2026-08-23): Pakistan-Only Market, No Processor, Shopify-Only

Founder decision, full reasoning in 02. Architecture Decision Log:

• Target market narrows to Pakistan only for MVP — every Merchant is a Pakistani business. This is the resolved beachhead: geography, not a product niche.
• Currency: PKR only, replacing USD/EUR/GBP for MVP.
• Payment processor: Swich (swichnow.io), confirmed 2026-08-23 — replaces the interim "no processor, bank transfer" default. Covers both merchant billing (recurring invoice-links) and creator payout (disbursement across bank/JazzCash/EasyPaisa/Raast) under one vendor. Not a Merchant of Record like Paddle was — SellVia keeps its own tax responsibility. Signup/integration details unconfirmed pending a real vendor conversation; see MVP Scope's Still-Open Items.
• Merchant integration: Shopify only. Every MVP merchant's own checkout is a Shopify store, tracked via Shopify's native webhook rather than the universal snippet — "for now we are just going with Shopify only." Other platforms are deferred, not abandoned — see Full Product Vision (Post-MVP).
• Offer absorbs Campaign — "offer is offer, it is not turning into any campaign at all." No separate Campaign entity; see Product Glossary, Domain Model.

This changes the Value Proposition and Target Users sections above only in scope (Pakistan, Shopify, PKR), not in substance — the core mechanism (commission-only, creators apply, automatic attribution, shared receipt) is unchanged.

Correction to Vision Statement / Value Proposition wording above: both sections previously said payout "fires automatically the moment a sale is verified" — that overstated it. The resolved model is bill-first-then-pay: commission accrues to a creator's balance only after the merchant's billing cycle for that sale settles via Swich, not instantly on verification. Reworded above to match.

Related Docs

• 1. Business Logic → User Roles, Domain Model, Commission Engine
• 1. UX → Design System (design.md)
• 1. Infrastructure & DevOps → Environment Strategy