Las Vegas-based apparel retailer Zappos rolled out an update to its iOS app today that saw the company fold some neat new features into the mix. Strictly speaking though , it’s no drastic overhaul — the Zappos mobile team instead focused largely on improving the fit and finish of their iOS-centric mobile experience.
There are a few new graphical flourishes here and there (users can now change… → Read More
Quidsi, the Amazon-owned parent company to a collection of single-word, e-commerce domains, including Diapers.com, Soap.com, Wag.com, Yoyo.com, and more, is today launching a new membership program called Familyhood Plus. The program offers consumers free two-day shipping with no minimum purchases and other exclusive deals.
Prior to today, Quidsi sites would only promise free two-day shipping… → Read More
Elena Fesenko grew up in the fashion industry. Her mother worked as a buyer for Bloomingdale’s, and she herself spent time both as a fashion design student and model. Now Fesenko has translated her experience and passion for fashion into MIKA, a new startup which showcases complete outfits featuring a mix of high-end and contemporary apparel and accessories. Shoppers can buy these looks in… → Read More
An online retailer platform called simply “42” is debuting today at TechCrunch Disrupt NY with new ideas about how to bring the intelligence of online e-commerce tools to brick-and-mortar merchants. The B2B platform provides businesses and brands a way to better connect and personalize their interactions with customers, as well as to gain broader insight into consumer buying patterns… → Read More
ThredUP, the online children’s clothes consignment shop, is today launching into a new vertical with the debut of a store for women’s secondhand clothing. The move, which puts the service up against competitors like Poshmark and Threadflip, follows its expansion into junior clothing announced at the beginning of the year. The women’s site had previously launched into beta in… → Read More
Chicago-based social gifting service Boomerang, which has been inching away from its consumer-facing product over the course of 2013, is now expanding its B2B platform with today’s launch of Boomerang Rewards. An extension of its previously launched gifts platform for business, the new Rewards service now brings similar gift-card sharing options to publishers, including those on web and mobile. → Read More
The Hunt, a site that helps you find items to buy from photos posted on Pinterest, Instagram, Tumblr, and elsewhere, is today announcing $700,000 in additional funding, on top of the $2 million it had previously raised from Javelin Venture Partners and others. The new round involves several high-profile investors including Ashton Kutcher, Guy Oseary’s (Madonna’s manager) A-Grade Investments, … → Read More
The growth in smartphone usage — supported by ever-faster mobile network speeds — is also giving rise to a much more competitive landscape among carriers, handset makers and other phone retailers targeting consumers on the hunt for new devices. Google today is releasing a report it compiled in partnership with Compete to show how that is playing out in one market in particular, the U.S. It shows… → Read More
Forrester recently predicted that the online retail market will grow to $370 billion over the next four years, up from $231 billion this year — a 10 percent compound annual growth rate. In other words, the message is clear: The eCommerce juggernaut ain’t slowing down any time soon. In 2013, every business needs some kind of online presence; the problem, of course, is that many small business… → Read More
Lightbank has invested $650,000 in its own Founder-in-Residence Josh Hernandez’s new startup, Walk.by, a platform for bringing local merchants into the e-commerce world by way of smartphones. The company is today announcing the release of its consumer-facing iPhone app which lets shoppers browse and follow offline retailers, the brands they carry, as well as very specific items, like “brown… → Read More
Recent TechStars Boston grad Fashion Project has a different take on the second-hand apparel market. It operates an online store where women can donate their high-end designer items, and others can re-purchase them for less than retail, knowing that the majority of sales are donated directly to charity. The company has now attracted the interest of investors, too, and days ago closed on $1.8… → Read More
Bespoke Post, a subscription-based e-commerce startup offering a hilariously titled “Box of Awesome” (no, not that one - Bespoke Post is for grown-ups), is today announcing having closed on $850,000 in seed funding, led by Warby Parker and Bonobos investor, Great Oaks VC. Also participating in the round, which actually closed last fall, were 500 Startups, Brad Harrison Ventures, 1-800 Flowers’… → Read More
Shopping and comparison engine Decide.com, which offers suggestions as to not just what to buy but also when, is announcing today that it has raised $8 million in Series C funding, in a round led by Vulcan Capital. Also participating were existing investors, Maveron and Madrona Venture Group. → Read More
Posse, a local discovery platform for web and mobile, is today arriving in the U.S. and making its iPhone app debut. The company has also just raised another $500,000 in additional funding from existing investors including Lars Rasmussen, Google Maps creator and currently Facebook’s Director of Engineering, as well as Silicon Valley angel investor Bill Tai. Rasmussen also sits on the… → Read More
Arro, a new mobile shopping companion app for iPhone, is publicly launching this week with a different idea about how to help shoppers in store aisles make a quick decision on whether or not to buy. Instead of focusing on price matching or personalized product recommendations, the app gives users a shortlist of the top five choices, based on its analysis of millions of online reviews. → Read More
eBay-owned Svpply is debuting an Android version of its Svpply mobile application today, which brings its catalog of over 2.4 million hand-picked items from 110,000 stores to the Android operating system for the first time. The company, which was acquired by eBay just this September, had first launched on mobile in May 2012, offering both iPhone and iPad optimized versions of its service. → Read More
Euclid, the analytics solution for brick-and-mortar retailers which first emerged from stealth back in late 2011, is today announcing $17.3 million in Series B funding, in a round led by Benchmark Capital. Also participating were previous investors NEA and Harrison Metal, as well as Novel TMT Ventures. In addition, the funding sees Benchmark’s Bruce Dunlevie, joining the company’s board. → Read More
Shopspot, a startup out of Thailand with a mobile shopping app, has won $628,000 (S$779,000) after switching its shopper matchmaking app to a more traditional shopping interface. Its earlier app focused on connecting individuals keen to sell their wares. The app would pair sellers and their goods with buyers based on geolocation. Released today, the new version bills itself as a “mobile… → Read More
Diapers.com, the Amazon-owned e-commerce site targeting parents with new babies, is today launching a native app on the iPad, after seeing its mobile traffic increase more than 100 percent year-over-year. In December 2012, the company found that 40 percent of the website’s visitors came to shop via a smartphone or tablet. → Read More
The Calgary, Canada-based fashion network BeauCoo, which aims to connect women with other women who share a similar body type to make online and offline shopping more social, fun and practical, launched as a mobile-only service late last year, but the team has now decided to also embrace the web. BeauCoo, which raised a $1.1 million seed round led by Zinc Ventures last September, is launching its… → Read More
Belly, the Chicago-based loyalty platform which has now grown to over 4,000 merchants across the U.S., is today announcing its first product outside of loyalty, with the official debut of Belly Bites, a sampling program designed to attract new customers to a local business. Thanks to Belly’s traction with its merchant customers, it’s able to tap into its growing collection of consumer data in… → Read More
As hinted at following the raise of its $14.5 million in Series C financing this fall, online kids’ clothing consignment thredUP is now expanding into new verticals, starting with clothing for teens. While previously, the company was focused on clothes for younger children – boys and girls, ages 12 months and up – the new “juniors” category is starting out with a focus on teen girl clothing… → Read More
According to new figures released today from mobile commerce startup Branding Brand, mobile commerce over the 2012 holiday season saw major gains, with visits to m-commerce websites up 109 percent year-over-year, page views up by 116 percent, conversions up 30 percent, and sales up by a whopping 171 percent. → Read More
As we all gear up for the holidays, everyone is scrambling to buy those last-minute gifts for friends and family. Even The Crunchies monkey. Where do monkeys shop, you ask? Well, we left that up to our own Josh Constine, and I think you’ll agree that it was a good idea on paper, but at the end of the day, maybe just a good old hug will do. Last month, we broke the huge fun story that… → Read More
Pretty Penny is a newly launched couponing startup, targeting a young, female audience – specifically the fashionistas and professionals who do a lot of their shopping online. The company, currently operating in bootstrap mode, offers its users a browser add-on that identifies the retail website a user is visiting, searches for relevant coupons and offers, and then presents those in a clean and… → Read More
Shopular, a mobile shopping startup coming out of Y Combinator’s Winter 2012 batch, is today formally launching its smart couponing application on both iOS and Android. Founded by two former Shopkick engineers, Shopular soft-launched its app a few weeks ago, but with today’s update, it now offers national coverage at retailers and malls across the U.S. → Read More
TechCrunch Disrupt alumni Maluuba is launching the latest version of its Siri-like Android app in the Google Play store today. The major new feature in this latest release is the addition of shopping-related queries and results to the 18 other categories Maluuba currently understands. → Read More
Amazon today announced a new feature called Friends and Family Gifting, aimed at helping customers better organize their gift lists and gift ideas for others, generate Facebook-enabled gift suggestions, receive reminders, and share their gift lists out via email or to social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. → Read More
Eliyah Finkelstein and his team of Bagggers have a dream: to make it simple for users to shop. Their new product, baggg.it (I told them to maybe try for bagg.it or something a bit easier, so hopefully that extra g will go away soon) is a way for you to shop online by collecting items from disparate sites into separate bags. → Read More
The numbers keep rolling in: mobile commerce startup Branding Brand released new reports detailing holiday shopping sales on mobile, but unlike the other e-commerce reports which came out over the holidays, this one only includes data on commerce sites where the experience has been specifically tailored for smartphones. It also only looks at smartphones, to be clear, and doesn’t lump tablets… → Read More
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