Any time you can tap into the crowd, it’s a powerful thing. When you can narrow and target that crowd to a community of like-minded individuals with a shared passion or interest, it’s even more valuable. That’s why so-called "enthusiasts," whether they be car fanatics, audiophiles, fashionistas, horologists, scrapbookers, quilters, or any number of other similar group of super-fans make some of the best customers around.

Massdrop is a community-driven commerce company that is tapping into the power of the enthusiast crowd to power group-buying around these interest areas. The company today announced $6.5 million in Series A funding in a round led by Mayfield fund, with participation from existing backers First Round Capital* and Cowboy Ventures. The company has now raised a total of $8 million.

Group buying is not a new phenomenon and routinely occurs in the online forums that are ground zero for these enthusiast communities (yes, forums still exist, and in fact, they’re insanely popular). But without the benefit of a purpose-built platform like Massdrop, these purchases are typically organized by a single community member using paper and spreadsheets, and require that fellow community members trust that individual with their cash, sent via PayPal or other similar means. According to Massdrop CEO Steve El-Hage, the fraud rate in these deals is approximately one in 15.

Massdrop, on the other hand, offers a number of benefits. The first and most obvious is the trust and transparency of an independent company handling the commerce – with millions in venture backing and dozens of “drops” (group buys) in progress simultaneously, the company is hardly a fly-by-night operation. Secondly, due to its scale and track-record of completing several multi-thousand unit sales across numerous categories, Massdrop is in a far stronger position than the average enthusiast community member to negotiate deep discounts with product manufacturers.

An example of a recent sale is an order for a custom Audi grill that retails for $650 but several hundred Massdrop community members were able to purchase for just $150 delivered. For the buyers, the savings are an obvious benefit. But for the vendor selling into this community, Massdrop offers a quick and efficient way to tap into the most fervent consumers in any category. The company also recently completed a sale of more than 2,000 pairs of ultra-high-end headphones. In some cases, Massdrop is satisfying as much as 10 percent of domestic demand in a single sale, according to the company’s suppliers, making it an increasingly important wholesale partner.

Massdrop launched in 2012 and quickly found traction within autos and audiophile communities, according to El-Hage. The company generated $12,000 in sales in its first week, $20,000 in its second week, and $50,000 in its third. With this as all the market validation it needed, the company was off to the races, raising a seed round and building out its product and community to address a wider swath of interests.

El-Hage views group buys as the gateway drug with which Massdrop builds relationships in these communities, but longer term, he plans to build out richer experiences with the aim of engaging with the company’s buyers between purchases. The company has already hosted a number of offline meetups in San Francisco around its most popular communities and plans to extend this program nationwide. This community-minded approach hints at where the Massdrop Web product is headed as well.

Long-term, Massdrop is moving closer and closer to competing – El-Hage would prefer it be described as complementing – the very forum communities that the company relies on for customer acquisition with discussion and social features. It’s a risky strategy, but also one that seems badly needed given the archaic user experience offered by most forums, even those which are massively popular. Soon, the Massdrop website will be segmented by enthusiast category, rather than the mashup user see today which list “drops” for headphones alongside those for auto-grills.

“We’re moving toward a community and discussion-first product, with commerce coming second,” El-Hage says. “We still expect commerce to happen, and it will be our main source of revenue, but the deeper the engagement level we can generate and the more organic that commerce, the better for everyone.”

Massdrop isn’t the first startup to target group buying. Higgle is taking a similar approach, while Mercata tried and failed to corner this market in the early 2000s. Panjo is another company targeting enthusiast commerce, but rather than focusing on group buying, it is building a commerce layer on top of existing forums to allow user-to-user commerce, similar to eBay.

El-Hage has assembled a 20 person team, all of which are members of at least one enthusiast community, but anticipates this figure growing now that he has more capital in the bank. In addition to building out new community engagement features, the company desperately needs to address mobile and to expand into additional enthusiast categories.

Believe it or not, Massdrop's best customers, as measured by repeat purchase rate, are actually quilters. With this as the reference point, it would seem all rules, and all preconceived notions about where the opportunity lies, are out the window. There are tens of millions of consumers, male and female, young and old, that could be described as enthusiasts, all dying for a better experience and a few perks for their enthusiasm.

Since the dawn of the Internet, these communities have been relegated to the digital equivalent of storage rooms and basements, sharing their unparalleled passion, knowledge, and purchasing power behind closed doors. Massdrop is shining a light on this activity and inviting them out into the open. Early indications are that they'll bring their wallets with them.

(Image via (e)Spry, Flickr)

[*Disclosure: First Round Capital’s Josh Kopelman is an investor in Pando.]