Shipwire, a company that offers retail businesses a service for order fulfillment, has received a strategic investment from e-commerce giant eBay and Newell Rubbermaid, the company behind the Calphalon, Rubbermaid and Goody brands. Existing investor
Meakem Becker Venture Capital also participated in the round. While the company declined to reveal the investment amount, we hear the round’s value is $6 million.
For online merchants, the process of selling and delivering a product can be complicated. Sellers need to know where all of their available inventory is at one time (a seller may have multiple channels where inventory is being shipped from). Once retailers knows where this inventory is, they have to display the lowest possible shipping rate to a buyer. The entire process can be complicated to automate via software. Instead, many merchants can outsource all of this Shipwire. → Read More
Once again, we’re packaging some of the top news of the week in a quick-to-digest video format. If you missed some of the big tech stories this week, TechCrunched gives you the highlights. Take a look, have a listen and let us know what you think. Also, be sure to visit the below links for additional insights. → Read More
So you still haven’t gotten into the Google+ field trial, not even after Google allowed early users who did send invites for a while, and not even while there are loopholes abound?
Desperate times call for desperate measures: break out your wallet and head on over to eBay, where Google+ invites are being sold for up to $75.
What do you mean you’re not insane? → Read More
Earlier this month, eBay acquired Magento, developer of an open-source e-commerce platform. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but we’ve heard from multiple sources that the ecommerce and digital payments giant paid north of $180 million for the company, which will become one of the pillars of eBay’s new X.commerce group (alongside PayPal, Milo and RedLaser).
Apart from the purchase price, we’ve also learned that there is more to this deal than meets the eye, so we dug a little to find out what’s going on behind the scenes. → Read More
eBay announced its $2.4 billion acquisition GSI Commerce in March, and today the e-commerce giant has announced that the deal has been closed. In a release, eBay said that GSI’s stock holders approved the deal late last week, with the merger closing on June 17.
With more than 180 customers across 14 merchandise categories, GSI has long-term commerce services relationships with a wealth of retailers and brands. eBay says it expects GSI clients to benefit from eBay’s Marketplaces and PayPal services, particularly. → Read More
eBay acquired local product inventory and shopping site Milo.com for $75 million last December, and was fairly quick to start integrating the technology into its core products. For example, eBay launched GiftsNearby, which showed shoppers gift options available for pick up at local retailers in their neighborhood. Today, the company is debuting a new feature of Milo, called Fetch, which allows small and medium-sized retailers to upload their local inventory and automatically share the real-time availability of their products on eBay.
Fetch, which is still in beta, allows retailer to install Fetch on their point of sale systems (the platform is integrated with QuickBooks) one time and then they can simple publish their inventory to eBay’s marketplace. Fetch will update the retailer’s inventory every 15 minutes, says eBay. → Read More
Social commerce has taken on many forms; from purchasing items on Facebook to product recommendations from your social graph to daily deal sites. There are plenty of startups that offer the functionality listed above, but there’s one area of social commerce which no startup has yet to conquer and successfully take on Amazon and eBay—the marketplace. Today, Copious is launching an eBay-like marketplace that leverages your social graph on Facebook.
Copious, which has raised $2 million in funding from Foundation Capital, Google Ventures, BlackBerry Partners Fund, and a number of Facebook angels; is trying to disrupt the marketplace industry in a number ways. First, the site allows buyers and sellers to see if friends in common, which friends have bought or sold from a seller, bought from you, etc. As Copious co-founder Jonathan Ehrlich tells me, the site is centralized around using social data as a signal to help users understand and trust other parties. → Read More
eBay announced its $2.4 billion acquisition GSI Commerce in March and today the company is one step closer to its acquisition. The two companies have announced that they are settling claims filed in a Delaware state court; and GSI shareholders will be paid a settlement amount equivalent to about $0.33 a share.
The acquisition is expected to close this week, on June 17. With more than 180 customers across 14 merchandise categories, GSI has long-term commerce services relationships with a wealth of retailers and brands. eBay says it expects GSI clients to benefit from eBay’s Marketplaces and PayPal services, particularly. → Read More
Women’s clothing designer Tory Burch has been awarded $164 million in damages from online counterfeiters that have been selling copies of her shoes, bags and clothing on the web. According to Women’s Wear Daily, this is the largest amount of money awarded to a fashion designer for damages from online counterfeiters. For background, in 2008, eBay was forced to pay Louis Vuitton $61 million over the sale of counterfeit bags and accessories on the auction marketplace.
Tory Burch filed lawsuit in December 2010, alleging trademark counterfeiting and cybersquatting by a group of counterfeiters (believed to be based in China) that had set up hundreds of websites selling fake Tory Burch goods. → Read More
It’s no secret that eBay has been pushing a significant mobile strategy of late, and today the company is rolling out a new app in its mobile family—an eBay Motors iPhone app.
eBay said it made sense to launch a dedicated app for the Motors vertical (one of the company’s strongest auction place verticals) , which sells cars, parts and accessories, because the volume of purchases made via eBay’s main mobile apps. Currently, 90,000 parts and accessories and 2,000 cars are purchased per week globally from eBay’s general mobile apps. → Read More
It’s no secret that eBay has been heavily investing in a local commerce strategy. The central core of this is trying to capitalize on the $917 million online-to-offline buying market, which Forrester estimates will eventually reach $1.3 trillion (although this number seems low) and account for nearly 50% of total retail sales by 2013. Virtually every acquisition in the past year (besides the company’s $2.4 billion purchase of GSI Commerce) has been of a company that is dabbling in local payments or linking to merchants (Milo, RedLaser, Where, FigCard). If you look closely, a clear strategy is emerging that positions eBay at the center of mobile shopping, local commerce, and payments (through PayPal). Let’s connect the dots.
eBay’s first foray into the local commerce arena was though the acquisition of barcode scanning mobile app RedLaser last June. RedLaser’s barcode scanning technology allows users to comparison shop on the go. Anyone can scan a barcode on an item at a store and then automatically access any eBay listings of the product on the marketplace. Sellers can also use the scanning technology to scan an item and list the product in very little time. RedLaser’s technology was quickly integrated into eBay’s dedicated iPhone and Android apps. → Read More
eBay last month announced that it has agreed to buy GSI Commerce, a provider of ecommerce and interactive marketing services, for $29.25 a share, or total consideration of approximately $2.4 billion.
Under the terms of the merger agreement, GSI Commerce reserved the right to solicit acquisition proposals from alternative parties for a period of 40 calendar days.
That “go shop” period has now expired, and GSI Commerce and its financial advisor Morgan Stanley say they have not received any alternative purchase proposals in time, although they claim to have contacted “numerous potential acquirers”. → Read More
eBay has been acquiring companies left and right recently and today is announcing the acquisition of yet another startup (this time a nonprofit)—MissionFish.
MissionFish has actually been powering eBay’s Giving Works program, which allows sellers to donate items and proceeds from sales to charitable causes and enables buyers to donate to these causes. MissionFish, which is an independent nonprofit organization, screens nonprofits that want to become members, and processes the millions of dollars in donations that result through eBay Giving Works. The platform is a collaboration of the Points of Light Institute, Pew Charitable Trusts, and The Case Foundation. → Read More
Many years ago, after graduating college, I came home before moving to NYC, wondering how I would scrounge together the money for the first month’s rent and security deposit so my friends and I could all live together in the Big Apple. I had one month to get the cash, and instead of going out for traditional, hourly-wage work, I decided to go through all of my old stuff and throw it on eBay. In those days, I got online through dial-up, would have to mail a hard copy of the pictures to interested buyers, and would ship items to auction winners only when their check arrived by mail and cleared into my bank account. In one month, I got rid of winter jackets, sports equipment, and baseball cards to the tune of $7,000, tax free, enough to buffer the move to NYC.
A few years later, when I moved to San Francisco, it was Craigslist to the rescue, helping with initial sublets, furniture, stereo equipment, and the odd jobs I did to soften the transition. Without knowing it, I was stumbling through life fueled mainly by a peer-to-peer (P2P) network and economy that helped me connect supply and demand, as well as time and money. Instead of using consignment shops or hosting a garage sale, or instead of buying new items in a traditional store, I buffered my moves to NYC and SF primarily fueled by P2P networks.
That was P2P 1.0, anchored by eBay and Craigslist, networks that have connected billions. And, while these companies continue their march, we are already into the next peer-to-peer evolution: P2P 2.0. → Read More
The Royal Wedding is finally over, and William and Kate are hitched. The wedding goes beyond just a ceremony, the event is actually a huge business. Between replicas of Kate Middleton’s engagement ring and Royal Wedding china, retailers are profiting off of the nuptials. And eBay and its merchants are part of this business. Here are a few stats related to the searches and purchases of wedding-related items on the marketplace. → Read More
eBay just reported first quarter earnings today posting revenue of $2.5 billion, an increase of 16% from the same period of 2010. eBay’s net income on a GAAP basis of $475.9 million, or $0.36 per diluted share, and non-GAAP net income of $619.0 million, or $0.47 per diluted share, representing a 12% increase compared to the same period of 2010. The retail giant narrowly beat analyst expectations, which were 46 cents per share on revenues of $2.48 billion. eBay says that the first quarter increase in earnings was due primarily to sales growth and a lower effective tax rate.
PayPal continued to help buoy eBay’s results, net total payment volume growing 28% to $27.4 billion in the first quarter of 2011 compared to the same period of last year, driven primarily by strong 38% year-over-year growth in its Merchant Services business across global markets, increased merchant adoption and greater usage by customers. PayPal now represents 39 percent of eBay’s total revenue. → Read More
Why is eBay buying Where.com? It’s all about trying to link mobile ads directly to payments. Where will fall under PayPal. The geo-location service and mobile advertising company already has millions of active users across many mobile platforms (it is stronger on Android than on the iPhone). Where serves up both recommendations for nearby places to places to eat, drink, play, or shop and geo-targeted ads. Its WhereAds run across more than 350 mobile apps and publishers, and reach 50 million people with 3 billion impressions a month.
A few months ago, I had a pretty in-depth conversation with Where CEO Walter Doyle. He hinted at the direction he wanted to take Where. “The promise of mobile is on our doorstep,” he told me. The ultimate goal is to close the loop “from intent to purchase,” he said. “Whether you are searching, or you get deals or relevant display ads that drives you to a product or opportunity.” To do that, Where needs to offer local merchants “reach, relevancy, and redemption.” It’s got reach with its WhereAds, and is working on relevancy with its mobile recommendations. And now it can solve the redemptions challenge with PayPal. “Advertising of the future is really participating in the commercial event,” Doyle told me. “We make money when you make money. We want to participate in that on mobile because that is where commerce will occur.” → Read More
eBay has acquired location-based media company Where.com, the ecommerce giant tells us. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed and the acquisition is expected to close during the second quarter of 2011. UPDATE: Boston Innovation says that the acquisition price is $135 million but this is unconfirmed.
Where, which has raised nearly $20 million in funding, builds location-based mobile apps across every major mobile device platform—including Android, iPhone, and Blackberry—and boasts about 4 million active users a month. The apps show local listings for restaurants, bars, merchants, and events, and also suggests places and deals for you based on your location and past behavior. Last year, Where acquired daily deals site Local Ginger, which is now WhereBuys. → Read More
eBay is announcing the acquisition of Turkish auction marketplace GittiGidiyor. The deal follows eBay’s acquisition of a minority stake in the company in 2007. With the new investment, eBay now owns approximately 93% of the outstanding shares of GittiGidiyor. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Launched in, 2001, GittiGidiyor has more than 6.4 million registered users. GittoGidyor is essentially an eBay clone, but localized for the Turkish market. The business also includes a mandatory escrow service for payments between buyer and seller. GittiGidyor’s largest categories are Fashion and Consumer Electronics. In addition to eBay, the company previously raised capital from iLab Ventures, founded and led by Mustafa E. Say. → Read More
