How’s Your News began 15 years ago when a set of developmentally disabled adults hopped on a bus and travelled around the country interviewing folks on the street. The mixture of charm, astuteness, and fascination with the little things that these reporters exhibited has always been great fun and their work is a real tonic in this age of blowhards blowing hard at each other. → Read More
E-commerce startup One Kings Lane is one of the first flash sales sites to partner up with a digital catalog company – in its case, the startup is joining forces with Catalog Spree, which lets shoppers browse on both the iPad and web. This is also Catalog Spree’s first deal with a non-traditional retailer, the company says. Typically, the startup works with brands and retailers like Nordstrom… → Read More
Apple has poached an Amazon exec to take over its Siri department, according to a new report from AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher. The move brings William Stasor, a former AltaVista executive who was in charge of Amazon’s independent A9 retail search subsidiary to Cupertino, and indicates we’ll see Siri get some stronger search chops as a result, especially with regards to online retail. → Read More
Pricepanda, the Rocket Internet-fuelled South East Asian online price comparison venture founded in May this year and rumoured to be backed by less than €10 million ($12.8 million), has added Indonesia to its nascent family of sites — having kicked off with Pricepanda launches in Malaysia and Singapore earlier this autumn. → Read More
The world’s largest brick-and-mortar retailer, Walmart, is today announcing its plans to test a “same-day” delivery service in select markets called “Walmart To Go.” The program, beginning now, will run through the holiday season and will be available in Northern Virginia (outside D.C.), Philadelphia, Minneapolis, and San Jose/San Francisco. During the test period, shoppers will be able to go… → Read More
Thanks to the rise of in-classroom technology, the focus in education tends to be on student engagement and how to improve learning. It becomes easy to forget the importance of great teachers. Startups, entrepreneurs, businesses (and the rest) need to remember that technology doesn’t have to put teachers in jeopardy; it can help them lead the education evolution, even if their traditional role in… → Read More
Editor’s note: Boris Wertz is the founder of version one ventures, and has invested in more than 35 early-stage consumer Internet and mobile companies, including Chloe & Isabel, Julep, and Indochino. Follow him on his blog and Twitter.
There has been more e-commerce innovation during the past year than there has been during the last decade. First, flash-sale and daily-deal sites brought a… → Read More
Bureau of Trade, a new online marketplace for men’s shopping, is today launching into public beta and announcing a $1.2 million round of seed funding led by Foundation Capital, with contributions from Founder Collective, FFAngel, Courtney Holt on behalf of the Techfellows Fund, and other angels. Offering a catalog filled with thousands of unique, primarily pre-owned items sourced from… → Read More
The service has a slightly different focus than some of the crowdfunding platforms that have sprung up as of late, like CrowdTilt for example (which the TechCrunch team used this summer). Unlike those services, PayByGroup isn’t about raising money for a cause with everybody throwing in what they can. Instead, it’s meant to streamline the still somewhat cumbersome process of getting a group of… → Read More
ShopInterest.co, an e-commerce platform that lets anyone turn their Pinterest boards into online stores, is today announcing a small, undisclosed investment from 500 Startups, via its newly acquired fund Mexican.VC. It’s the first investment 500 Startups has made into the Pinterest ecosystem, says ShopInterest CEO Francisco Guerrero, also the creator of Pinterest analytics platform Pintics… → Read More
Oh look, maybe Facebook commerce can work. Soldsie, a San Francisco-based startup which was previously operating under the name Central.ly, is today officially launching a social media point-of-sale platform that lets business sell on Facebook using Facebook comments. The company soft launched its service in May of this year, and has now reached over $1 million in transactions across its network… → Read More
Gyft, a new mobile application launching at TechCrunch Disrupt SF, allows you to buy, save and redeem gift cards using your mobile phone. Unlike the numerous mobile gifting applications currently available, Gyft isn’t attempting to carve out a spot for itself in the new “social gifting” market; it’s taking the existing $100 billion market for physical gift cards and moving it to the phone. As… → Read More
Walmart is today unveiling a new search engine named “Polaris” which now powers Walmart.com, as well as the company’s mobile web and mobile apps, and offers a 10%-15% increased likelihood that a customer will complete their purchase, the company claims. The engine was built by a small team of fifteen engineers within Walmart’s @WalmartLabs division, an internal group of technologists which has… → Read More
Kaleidoscope, the mobile and desktop app which is the e-commerce equivalent to Pinterest’s fashion-focused boards, helps users – primarily women – not just find outfits they like, but actually purchase them. The company recently rolled out an updated version of its app which represents the first step towards an important, forthcoming feature: Kaleidoscope is moving into personalized… → Read More
Y Combinator-backed RegistryLove is officially debuting its universal bridal registry service today, and it already has 3,000 brides-to-be signed up to use it. And 750 of those signups occurred before the website itself was even finished. That speaks to the demand – and also the potential – in the newly hot “weddings” vertical which has recently been under attack from all sides, from wedding… → Read More
Playing in the same general space as 500 Startups-backed Love With Food, but going the traditional e-commerce route instead of the “box of the month” club, new San Francisco-based startup Delicious Karma is officially launching its own artisanal and gourmet food shopping site today. The site currently features over 500 different products from nearly 100 different artisanal food companies and has… → Read More
You know what’s not fun? Ordering takeout from your favorite restaurant over the phone — actually planning ahead instead of just showing up — only to wait in line like a schlub once you get there to pick up your order and pay. If you’re anything like me, this has happened enough times that you’ve thought about starting a Facebook support group, or at least made a strongly-worded mental note of… → Read More
Indulge yourself with a beard wig, toy Lamborghini, or $5 sunglasses on Lish, a new impulse shopping site from Payvment with two-click purchasing powered by PayPal. Today’s launch sees Payvment expanding beyond Facebook ecommerce storefront tools by redirecting all traffic from its old Shopping Mall app to this Pinteresty discovery portal for its merchants.
Lish surfaces fun, affordable… → Read More
Consumers who use their mobile apps to check prices on items sold in brick-and-mortar retail stores, a practice often dubbed “showrooming,” is an increasingly common trend. But according to new data published by IDC in conjunction with mobile data usage stats from Onavo, it’s a trend that surges on weekends. Monday through Friday shoppers tend to use retail apps like those from Target, Walgreens… → Read More
It’s interesting to watch the impact that the mobile device explosion has on various industry verticals, and especially so in e-commerce – a market that has yet to take full advantage of the platform by offering mobile-friendly websites and apps. But that’s not stopping people from shopping on mobile by any means. According to new data from e-commerce technology company Monetate, top e-commerce… → Read More
Guitar-making is a noble and beautiful art and it’s high time luthiers started thinking about the web. MacKenzie & Marr is a tiny company in Quebec that designs and hand makes relatively inexpensive but amazingly handsome guitars. While they do outsource much of the manufacturing to China, there is not a single robot involved in the building of their cedar-top git-fiddles and guitarists can… → Read More
Hey, how you doing? You’re really pretty in that dress and those shoes. Are those shoes new? No? Could have fooled me. Sit down a minute. I just want to look at you. Did you see that fight outside? Totally two guys hitting each other over some girl. Would you ever let guys fight over you? I would.
Do you know I paint? You should sit for me.
So there’s this new thing, MySecretLuxury.com. It’s… → Read More
The startup world can’t seem to get enough new fashion-focused companies these days (or rather, lots of startup founders have discovered women are a great target audience in the wake of Pinterest’s soaring growth). So here’s another entry to whet your collective social shopping whistles: Boutine.com. Similar in some respects to Polyvore, as it also enables women to browse and create new looks by… → Read More
One Jackson, the latest e-commerce startup to target the popular kids’ clothing market, is preparing to make a big splash with its public debut next week. The company plays in the same space as other online clothing startups experimenting with Silicon Valley-inspired business models, including the subscription-based offerings from Wittlebee and FabKids, for example, as well as the web-based… → Read More
San Francisco-based FabKids is the latest startup to try its hand at subscription-based e-commerce, taking on competitors like Wittlebee in the kids’ apparel space, but with a slightly different twist. Instead of offering a box of separates shipped monthly, FabKids will send out one complete outfit it has designed in-house and personalized to the child, based on a custom profile filled out at… → Read More
When it comes to being the Mall of the Internet, no one really does it better than Amazon. Yet, to truly best its offline competitors and put the icing on the cake in terms of user experience, Amazon has been pushing hard to offer same-day delivery for all items purchased within its virtual walls. However, Amazon CFO Tom Szkutak said last week during the company’s second quarter earnings call that… → Read More
Pranav Dharma, a former IBM engineer, self-described “fashionable” geek, and founder of new women’s apparel startup Modington, thinks that today’s online e-commerce sites don’t reflect how women really shop for clothes and accessories. So he decided to create one. Enter, Modington.
“I was inspired by observing how my wife shops,” says Dharma, “she would get a dress, then started hunting for… → Read More
If you’re anything like me, your mood is directly proportional to the amount of food in your stomach. And when that food is terrific (and maybe even healthy, too), well life is grand. Yet, for a food-centric culture, we don’t give ourselves a lot of options. If you happen to work long hours, often by the time you get around to eating, restaurants are closed — or you’re exhausted and not… → Read More
Olapic, a NYC-based startup which allows publishers and brands a way to collect photos from their fans for use on their own websites, has closed a $1 million seed round. Investors include Bonobos, Warby Parker, and Geeklist backer Great Oaks Venture Capital, as well as Brad Harrison Ventures, Columbia University’s Lang Fund, and several other angel investors.
The company has already worked with… → Read More
Commerce Sciences, the stealthy Israeli and Palo Alto-based e-commerce startup, is launching into open beta today, and is finally revealing what it has built. It’s a Meebo Bar for e-commerce! The company made waves earlier this month when it announced $1.8 million in seed funding from Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, Israeli VC firm Genesis Partners, T5 Capital, and a number of angel… → Read More
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