Like Milo before it, Wishpond launched in late 2010 to build a local search engine that aggregates realtime inventory and product listings from brick and mortar retail stores — from big chains to mom and pop shops. The startup has since focused its efforts on developing social commerce solutions for retailers, launching tools like Social Store, which allows any business to quickly create and deploy a storefront for their businesses on Facebook.
While Wishpond, like so many others, is looking to capitalize on the growing interest in social commerce, its solutions have really been developed as means by which to expand on its core competency: Consumer-facing product aggregation and search for retailers. And today, Wishpond is leveraging its technology for the sake of a segment underserved by but perfect for eCommerce solutions: Shopping malls. → Read More
At a J.P. Morgan conference held in Boston on Wednesday, Netflix CFO David Wells said that the company was looking up and, more importantly, customers who cancelled the service because of the Qwikster rebranding, plan repricing, and subsequent poor PR are now returning.
The company drove users away due to a considerable price hike on its cheapest disk plan – from $9.99 to $15.98 – as well as its ham-handed decision to split the company into a streaming arm – Netflix – and a disk-in-the-mail arm – Qwikster. Wells said:
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Maybe I’m thrifty or maybe I’m just too busy to go and try on a pair of jeans in store. Either way, I know I’m not the only one. In the US alone, the apparel and footwear market is a $300 billion business with an estimated 10 percent of transactions occurring online.
But a major issue for both the consumer and retailer boils down one thing: fit. Far too many times have I had to return all manner of wares because fit was an issue. It’s even worse when it comes to jeans. (Look how terrible little Kevin Arnold looks in those jeans.)
While the ladies have been enjoying the services of True Fit since last fall, the “fit personalization software” specialists are rolling out their patented service for guys shopping for jeans at Macys.com. → Read More
Facebook has a plan to squeeze more ad dollars out of ecommerce sites and anyone else selling products on the web. It’s quietly testing a new version of its Offers coupons that can be redeemed at online stores, not just at physical shops. Sources clued us in and Facebook has now confirmed with me that users will see Offers in the news feed, ads, and Sponsored Stories that feature a promo code or special link to click through for a discount on off-site purchases.
Similar to how the existing version of Offers lead to foot traffic and revenue for brick-and-mortar stores, big brands with web stores, ecommerce hubs, and celebrities with merch to sell could soon use Offers to drive sales. Coupons like “Take $5 Off A Purchase Of $50 Or More” can produce real return on investment. So while they’re free to run, businesses will pay Facebook to show their Offers to more people. → Read More
For over a decade, if you were to say “home shopping,” you were likely referring to the experience of viewing products on your TV set, and ordering over the phone. After launching in the ’80s, it wasn’t long before television networks like QVC and The Home Shopping Network (HSN) had become synonymous with “home shopping.” The Web and eCommerce changed that. Today, QVC and HSN both have active online shopping experiences, and HSN, for example, does 35 percent of its sales on the Web, which alone represents a multi-billion-dollar business.
As the CEO of HSN in the late ’90s and early ’00s, Mark Bozek oversaw the launch of HSN.com as well the network’s expansion overseas, which doubled the networks revenue. Having served as HSN’s CEO for four years, and having served as VP of Broadcasting at QVC, Bozek knows the business — and its target customer — well. That’s why he and team are today launching Evine, a commerce platform that aims to create an engaging and online-only version of the HSN and QVC model. → Read More
The next big thing in fashion e-commerce is a moving target — literally. Ditto, a site that lets users upload videos of themselves to use in trying on eyeglasses, has today announced that it has picked up a $3 million in funding from a group of investors led by August Capital.
Ditto’s co-founder and CEO Kate Endress says the funding will be used to further enhance the technology behind the service, and to grow the company’s own eyewear business, which resells frames from Persol, Chloe, Ray-Ban, Tag Heuer, Vera Wang and others. → Read More
Social Annex, a retail-focused social platform that’s been in stealth mode for the past two years, is today announcing having gained the attention (and the investment) of some big backers of e-commerce, just in time for its public debut. In addition to Kamran Pourzanjani, the former CEO and founder of PriceGrabber, and Brian S. Lee co-founder of ShoeDazzle, Legalzoom, and Honest.com, Social Annex is now seeing investment from Jody Mulkey, CIO and SVP of Technology at Shopzilla, and Lawrence Ng, the co-founder of Oversee.net.
Terms of the investments were not disclosed. → Read More
If you’ve ever had to transfer money from one currency to another, you know that it can be a frustratingly pricey business. Now a new company, TransferWise, has raised seed funding totaling $1.3 million to tackle that problem.
TransferWise describes itself as the “Skype of money transfer” because it allows consumers to send money between UK and European accounts for a fraction of the price that banks charge, using a peer-to-peer, “crowdsourced” model to get the best rate on the exchange.
(And, also like Skype, it is banking on scaling up the business quickly in order to make some money back on the margin that it loses in individual transactions. So far the service is only available in two currencies, euros and pounds, but there may be more added soon.) → Read More
In what I suspect will be an increasing trend, cartoonist Bill Amend has released three “packs” of his popular FoxTrot comics for the iPad. He built the books by himself using iBooks Author and proceeds go to the Help Bill Amend Eat Food Fund (I suspect).
He’s selling three titles including a special issue — number 3.14 — featuring geek strips. Each book contains 100 strips and is optimized for the new iPad. → Read More
On the heels of mobile payments service BilltoMobile’s launch of a one-click checkout solution for the mobile web, the company is today announcing a partnership with Discover. Through the agreement, Discover’s e-commerce merchants will now be able to offer carrier billing as a possible payment option at checkout.
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If you love old Vitamin W as much as I do, you’ll be pleased to note that folks who are disrupting the staid old wine industry are doing well. Case in point: Club W just announced they’re on track to sell $1 million worth of wine this year, based on current annualized revenue.
They also saw 11,000 unique visitors and 73,000 page views – acceptable numbers for a new business. The company has 10 full-time employees. Geoff McFarlane, Xander Oxman, and Mark Lynn founded the company three months ago and things are going strong. → Read More
Card.io, the mobile payments startup which recently partnered with PayPal on the company’s new Square rival PayPal Here, has some big news: it’s no longer a “mobile” payments startup. That’s right – Card.io is now available for the web, too. With the launch of Card.io Webscan, as it’s being called, web developers can access the company’s card-reading technology which “sees” your credit or debit card when held up to a computer’s webcam.
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DreamIt Ventures is after more eCommerce-focused startups, the company is announcing today, and is preparing to support them with the launch of a new advisory board featuring top execs from across the eCommerce industry. The board, which includes members from Walmart, Amazon/Quidsi, QVC, Bononos, Kate Spade and others, will be available to support the DreamIt NYC Summer 2012 program partipants, including the startups from DreamIt Israel, the newly launched Israel-U.S. accelerator. → Read More
Uber, the SMS/iPhone/Android friendly private car service, has been on a (ahem) roll, with the service expanding out to new cities and picking up ever more passengers. But this week at SXSW it is trying out a little something different while still playing on its strengths in on-demand service:
It is running an on-demand barbecue sandwich service in partnership with Iron Works BBQ, which can be ordered using Uber’s regular app. The BBQ service will be in addition to a revival of the pedicab service that Uber first introduced last year, when it quickly realized that offering lots of big cars during a traffic-choked mega-event (attracting upwards of 20,000 people) was not necessarily the best route to making new friends. Together the two point to ways you could imagine Uber expanding in the years to come. → Read More
Buck, the mobile payments company formerly known as Billing Revolution, is launching its new, single-click credit card checkout today, which allows shoppers to pay for goods or services without an account, username or password. Coinciding with the launch is news of where you can actually use the service: the company has lined up several new high-profile customers, including Glamour, SpyderLynk, Papaya Mobile and credit card processor Braintree.
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Reading Leena Rao’s recent article on Techcrunch about the personalization revolution, you get the sense that the tech world is waiting for a bus that isn’t coming. Rao quotes well-known industry experts and luminaries describing what needs to happen for e-commerce to finally realize the promise of personalized shopping, a future where online retailers predict what you’ll want to buy before you know yourself.
Ironically, Rao and her pundits are missing the zooming racecar that’s speeding by them as they wait for the personalization bus to arrive. That racecar is Pinterest and the new breed of startups marking the beginning of what I call the “Curated Web.” → Read More
Y Combinator alum Curebit, an online customer referral platform that leverages social media for “word-of-mouth” advertising, has just raised $1.2 million in funding. The investors include 500 Startups, Karl Jacob, Auren Hoffman, Dharmesh Shah, Gordon Tucker, Alex Lloyd of Accelerator Ventures, and others.
The funding will be used for continued product development and a slight expansion to the team involving three new hires (two developers, one designer) to the company’s now five-person outfit. → Read More
Social networks could one day revolutionize how we get shopping recommendations, but not yet. Instead, tablets are causing the biggest shakeup in ecommerce. 80.2% of 1000 holiday shoppers said no, personal connections on Facebook or another social networking site did not influence their shopping decisions. Other findings of Baynote‘s annual study include that 48.6% of tablet owners made a purchase through their big mobile device, and that email was the channel with the most useful promotions. → Read More
Maxymiser, a company that helps improve website effectiveness through the use of A/B and multivariate testing, personalization and optimizations, has raised $12 million from new investors Investor Growth Capital alongside investment from its Series A investors, Pentech Ventures.
The funding will be used to help Maxymiser expand its business, with a special emphasis on North American R&D. → Read More
Doing some online shopping but don’t want the package shipped to your house? Maybe you won’t be home, or worry about packages left on your doorstep. Or maybe the package is a gift for someone in your household? Here’s a cool idea: pick up your online orders at a local store instead. That’s the premise of the young startup called Kinek, which has partnered with a number of brick-and-mortar stores across the U.S. and Canada to serve as “KinekPoints” – secure locations where you can pick up your deliveries.
Now, the company is releasing its first iPhone application, allowing you to find nearby KinekPoints, check their hours, get directions, track packages and receive push notifications when the package has arrived. → Read More
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