Hoping this will help...  Gemstra Boutiques is the first social selling marketplace in existence - Think of it as a decentralized and democratized Amazon meets Amway - giving all retail brands the ability to participate in social selling.  (Especially important as global retail faces consolidation and brands need more sales channels)  The $180Bn social selling industry has been walled off from broader retail and dominated by an oligarchy.  We are building an ecosystem that unlocks social selling for the $24 Trillion retail market to crossover to social selling without disrupting existing sales channels.  What makes us unique is that we have a live business that went from 0 to over $5MM in less than a year.  So - we don’t just have a MVP - we have a viable organically.

There is a Merchant layer in the blockchain infrastructure that allows brands and retailers to build their own version of Gemstra Boutiques. (A bit more complex and stay tuned for an AMA for deep dive)

Cheers, Jay Cheng ceo @gemstra

I'd like to humbly submit my thoughts on utility vs more mainnets...

If we’re going to call it “cryptocurrency”..
If we’re going to incorporate the word “currency”..
If we’re going to argue that it’s “valuable”..

... Then people who hold it have to be able to use it.
And that needs to happen ... like... right now.

So what does crypto need today?  It needs projects that are going to have token throughput to put a product up that people can benefit from.

We probably don’t need another eth killer.  We’re better off if we work together and make what we got useful.

I’m proud to be working on a solution that uses crypto to benefit real people.  I hope you’re working on or investing in something that does that too.

Cheers,
J

Boutiques is a successful but single marketplace that will grow quickly.  It helps retail brands by giving them sales channel.  But we see an opportunity to bridge “anyone” - including existing retailers (called “Merchants” in our ecosystem) - to social selling.  An ideal merchant would be Sephora - who has over 1000 brick mortar stores carrying 350+ brands.  The Astra platform alllows Sephora to build a social selling channel alongside their brick mortar biz.  A broader solution like Astra bridges entire $24 trillion retail market (brands and retailers) to social selling - instead of just brands.   That’s why this project is so compelling.  We will unlock social sellling for EVERYONE.

Is your question regarding the investors and partners of  the project or the brands diagrammed in the Boutiques Marketplace slide?  The investors and partners listed have confirmed investments and/or contracts to support us.  Re : the retail brands in the slides are examples.  Currently there are 8 smaller brands partnered w Boutiques with more signing up daily - we get ton of inbound interest but have stayed integration to focus on the ICO.  Brands have huge appetite for new sales channels and growth.  The brands listed however are examples for the pitch deck.  We would not want to support such large brands in early days as they would require a ton of attention.  Instead, our strategy is to help younger brands achieve growth results and add more established brands later.  It’s more in line w the culture of Gemstra which is to help the independent “little guy” first.  Social selling is about helping a LOT of “little guys” become “big guys”.  We feel similarly for brands competing to create noise / grow brand equity in a retail environment dominated by monoliths.  Please read the abstract in our whitepaper to learn more.