VC + Marketplace Update
Without us pursuing Venture Capital, there has been a natural uptick in VC interest in WeLivv. Some of this interest has led to formal meetings earlier than we had planned on commencing the process of pursuing institutional investor opportunities. While this is very much still up in the air, based on the interest we're receiving, we're considering opportunities that could fill the remaining 50% of our $1 million target, effectively resulting in the early closing of the Republic-offering.
On the operations side, we have been focused on validating and developing resources for one of our primary 2020 priorities. We have performed a marketplace expansion program test which is driven by and integrated with our computer vision system, and have seen very promising results. To manage the scaling of this, we are entering into an agreement with two industry veterans. We expect to launch a full-scale merchandising program push in January, and in conjunction with a proportionate user acquisition effort through our proprietary model, believe we can grow revenue to $2 million per month by the end of 2020.
Let me unpack it a bit. As you know, at the core of our ultimate visual search, discovery, and shopping user experience is our ability to not only amass millions of curated interior design images but, more importantly, our unique ability to identify and tag the contents of these images at a SKU level. This is what sets us apart from competing image-based search platforms, including Google, Pinterest, Houzz, and others. Comprehensive, accurate image tagging enables a rich, efficient, visual discovery (i.e., image-based refinable search) and shopping experience, the likes of which are not being offered by any other known platform today. Especially given the absence of recognizable brand names in the home-goods category, consumers are able to better understand and connect to products when seeing them in their authentic contexts via curated, professionally photographed interiors, rather than in the generic studio photography which is the norm on all search platforms and e-commerce sites today. The micro effects of this are that consumers who would not have otherwise been able to decide on the purchase of a high-ticket aesthetic item purchase before, now can. The macro effect is that we are able to increase online market penetration for the category in general.
While this leads to a significant opportunity to set ourselves apart, positioning us to dominate a major industry, our various stakeholders are stand to benefit in direct proportion to us. While many of the manufacturers in the home-goods space, especially on the mid to higher-end - out of fear of cannibalizing their existing businesses - have very restrictive online dealer programs, they clearly see the value opportunity through the WeLivv platform. We put this to the test. We selected 20 manufacturers who produce products that are frequently being identified and tagged in photos that have been published to WeLivv, and we used these images to pique their interest in selling through the platform. Recognizing the exposure that they can receive through WeLivv, as well as the opportunity to capture untapped segments of the market, all 20 of them have signed up to our marketplace as sellers.
We are confident that this approach can be scaled across the millions of products (represented by thousands of manufacturers) that are being shown across the millions of images on our platform. We are entering into an arrangement to manage this massive merchandising growth initiative, not just in terms of brand acquisition, but also all of the peripheral elements, including content management, traffic generation, and image mapping. The growth of our product marketplace in conjunction with the expansion of our image library and respective image tagging, is a significant component of the ultimate vision of our platform as it facilitates both more efficient product tagging, but is also necessary for an end-top-end user experience whereby users can purchase all items that they discover, right on platform. In the interim, the growth of our marketplace is one of the two primary factors of revenue. We believe we will expand our product marketplace to over 1 million products by the end of 2020, enabling us to generate over $2 million per month in gross monthly revenue, among the 65,000 design professionals we also expect to onboard by that time.
Look out for additional updates on the VC possibilities before us, as well as the implementation and scheduled full-scale launch of our marketplace initiatives, which will coincide with the launch of our user acquisition efforts, as well. As always, thank you for your continued support.
Best, Andrew