Social e-commerce company ThisNext recently raised a Series C round of $1.2 million, which we reported based on an SEC filing. The Santa Monica, CA startup has now confirmed the financing round and also announced that it has acquired smaller rival Stylehive for an undisclosed amount.
ThisNext set up an entirely new parent company, Curatemedia, which will be the corporate brand that will operate both ThisNext and Stylehive henceforth.
ThisNext says its latest round comes from Clearstone Venture Partners and Anthem Venture Partners, which as far as we can tell were all prior investors in the company, and Lightspeed Venture Partners. According to the CrunchBase profile for ThisNext, entrepreneur and angel investor (and TechCrunch50 partner) Jason Calacanis was an early backer of the company and serves on its board.
According to the startup, the capital will be used to develop additional shopping tools, facilitate commerce functionality and to fuel the growth of Curatemedia into new verticals and categories. Stylehive, its first acquisition, is a fashion and beauty community and claims over 600,000 registered users. Stylehive made an acquisition of its own back in 2007, scooping up fashion social media startup Stylediary for an undisclosed amount.
In related social shopping business news, Time Inc. last week acquired StyleFeeder for “well into eight figures.”
ThisNext is a social commerce site where people recommend their favorite products so others can discover what’s best to buy online. It blends two powerful elements of real-world shopping otherwise lost for online consumers: word-of-mouth recommendation from trusted sources and the ability to browse products in the way that naturally leads to discovery. ThisNext has also developed a suite of distribution tools for bloggers, online communities and commerce sites
Stylehive is a social bookmarking site that is focused on shopping. Stylehive helps its users to follow and share styles they like by creating tagged collections. Stylehive’s members can comment and speak with other members and professionals can promote themselves and get noticed by the world for their style. Stylehive lets its members build and share their own shopping wishlists for the holidays, weddings and parties.
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