Exciting Commerce // Unlimited

The Most Original Video Applications this March

Stephan Randler has selected his top pick for “video application of the month”.

This month he’s happy to celebrate an original German concept which has some good potential for the future.

AdInteractive’s solutions cover the gambit of pre-requisites which are needed to give the market for video shopping widgets a fresh shot in the arm.

An example of well implemented live shopping with video can be be seen from shopping club BuyVIP, who are utilizing Catwalk-Clips in their campaigns.

For Stephan's international top ten list of video commerce efforts, refer to twive.com (German link), the Exciting Commerce focus blog for video applications in e-commerce.

Adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo from the German language blog twive!.

Video Live Shopping: Nur48h.at Launches First Sale Event

Nur48h.at (“only 48 hours”), Austria’s first live shopping site, announced it’s official start two weeks ago by video.

Bargain hunters were able to start shopping yesterday. For the grand opening, a camcorder from Aiptek was on offer.

This Austrian version of Woot presented the camera with a flash trailer, which is a tactic clearly borrowed from the typical sales campaigns of shopping clubs.

At the time of this posting, there weren’t any classical product videos as can be seen for example from PaulDirekt. The Flash teasers are however an ideal basis for video applications as demonstrated by other sites such as BuyVIP.

Originally posted in German by Stephan Randler, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.

Video Shopping Widgets: Overlay.tv in Facebook

Hardly any other sales channel in video commerce has as much potential as decentralized online shopping with video widgets.

While the German market is just now seeing first applications, US and Canadian firms are already a step ahead. Overlay.tv is moving clearly in the widget direction.

"You can now share your Overlays directly to your Facebook account. Well, technically you could always "share" any Overlay on Facebook, but it was just the URL that linked to our site. Now you can share the working player right in Facebook and do it from the player itself.

You'll be prompted to sign into Facebook and once you do so the Overlay player will appear on your profile page and in the feeds of any friends that follow you.

The Overlay player in Facebook works like it normally would with all its functionality including clickable hotspots."

Originally posted in German by Stephan Randler, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.

Good Business Models for the Digital Age

In terms of the electronic mail-order business, the last 15 years have seen the evolution of a good half a dozen new business models – each with a market potential of over a billion Euros or more. More than a dozen notable business concepts are currently in the test and experimentation stage:

Since Exciting Commerce primarily concerns itself with new markets and business models, we sometimes experience sobering workshops and management briefings. Sobering, because it is plainly obvious how difficult it is for established managers, even at the highest levels, to think in terms of business models.

According to our experiences it is not only difficult to work together to develop new business models, but also just as hard to familiarize managers with new business models altogether. Perhaps it’s due to traditional thinking in terms of revenue channels which makes it hard to "think out of the box" and stop interpreting everything in relation to existing business models.

The blindness to new business models isn’t only a problem in merchant trade. Far more dramatic is the current situation with the media and music industry: First the managers try to impose old thought-models onto the internet phenomenon, and then they wonder why their internet efforts don’t perform.
Experienced music manager and now entrepreneur Tim Renner has the spelled out the necessary changes very concisely (German link):

• The change from analog to digital medium always brings a change of business model.
• No branch of the media industry should make the mistake of overestimating the advantages of the analog medium.

What applies for CDs, newspapers and magazines is no less valid for catalogs.

The big challenge particularly for managers of mail-order businesses is to finally wipe the catalog and traditional store model from the mental slate. Only then would they be more open for new business models.

Update: Clay Shirky goes one step further and argues that over time even the laziest of excuses won’t help anymore ("Newspapers and Thinking of the Unthinkable"). Basic and crude trial and error is the method of the day when new business models develop more slowly than old models implode. (via)

Originally posted in German by Jochen Krisch, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.

Luupo and Successors: Cooni, McEuro, xgewinnt and Others

Amazon should be happy, because Luupo (on sale now, previously announced period has been extended), has generated a flood of similarly themed websites and almost all of them use Amazon as their merchant of choice.

Recently the inventor of Telebid/Swoopo Manfred Hasseler has joined the club and has fashioned his successor project Cooni around the hidden price concept:

Other German language examples are (amongst others): McEuro, x-gewinnt, Preis-zeigen.de and Rabattschlacht.

Maybe the fixation on the price model distracts away from the other downsides of the concept. In any case it is sobering to see how other sites are falling into the same conceptual traps:

• It’s apparently pretty difficult for a site such as Luupo and the like to build up the momentum of a standalone portal. Very deep marketing pockets could be required.
• The startup phase is a particular challenge, since the concept is not attractive when only a small number of users are available to drive the price downwards (according to research from Professor Skiera of the University of Frankfurt)
• From the point of view of Exciting Commerce, the sinking price game would be best implemented with 2.0 applications. But apparently there doesn’t seem to be any web gurus here in Germany who are willing to take on the idea.

If anyone happens to be working on a shopping tool which works on hidden prices or other sort of dynamic price mechanism - be it a widget, web service or social app – Exciting Commerce would be happy to get a tip about it.

For now, our favourite remains Rabattschlacht which seems to be on the right track as a user driven portal.

The Luupo model is one of the few live shopping models which does not eat away at the margins of the merchant partners. For that reason we are fascinated with the ongoing developments and remain excited to see who will be the first to find the magic formula (including the requisite marketing ideas), which will lead to serious chance at succeeding with both the merchant and user groups.

Originally posted in German by Jochen Krisch, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.

Product Videos: Good Video Clips Don’t Have To Be Expensive

Many merchants still shy away from video shopping applications because they fear high production costs:

"If you’ve been in the video commerce space long enough, you probably know that production is one of the biggest problems for many small to medium sized businesses."

But good video clips don’t always have to be pricey. Silverdock provides exactly what a budget conscious online merchant needs:

"We deliever low-cost videos for product merchandising. Using simple templates, we can produce these quickly and inexpensively, typically between $100 and $1,000, depending on quantity and features."

Exciting is that Silverdock produces their videos without sound. Such silent movie clips are already found in several online shops.

In Germany, 22colors offers economical product video production for online merchants.

Originally posted in German by Stephan Randler, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.

Investment Opportunity: TeamStars Up For Sale

Our current highlight from the Exciting Commerce Shop Exchange: Munich based sport jersey supplier TeamStars is up for grabs.

Founded in mid 2004, the site has grown to hit a revenue level of 684,000 Euros for 2008, according to company statements. According to Exciting Commerce estimates, this places TeamStars amongst the Top 500 of e-commerce shops in terms of revenue.

Translated from the self-written description:

“TeamStars is active in Gemany with the online merchandising of sport products. The core competence of TeamStars is refining sporting attire according to customer requirements.

Sports jerseys and training suits can be completely configured online. In this area TeamStars has built up an excellent market position. About 80% of all customers use the online configuration tool.

TeamStars Ltd has been active in the German online merchandising market since June 2004. Via their websites, TeamStars offers a broad palette of products from the team sporting area, in particular from soccer (soccer jerseys, soccer shoes, training suits, etc.) in a variety of price and quality categories.

TeamStars became profitable in 2005 and has grown approximately 30% per year since then. TeamStars is supplied by manufacturers and wholesalers.

About 85% of revenues are generated from the soccer division.”

Interested parties are asked to provide some personal details to kauefer@shopboerse.net.  We will then gladly setup direct contact.

The Exciting Commerce Shop Exchange (Shopboerse) is available for:

• Top 500 shops (with annual revenues larger than 500,000 Euros)
• Profitable enterprises (at any revenue level)
• Innovative e-commerce start-ups

To be updated on new offers, please sign up on our mailing list (German language).

Related posts:

• Investment Opportunity: Bookbutler Looking for Interested Buyers
• Investment Opportunity: Luupo Bargain Site For Sale

Originally posted in German by Jochen Krisch, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.

ReCommerce: Pay Amazon With Your Old Games

Amazon raised some eyebrows last week in the US with its announcement that it will take games in exchange for in-store credit.

Hard core gamers may be skeptical, but it is a clear move to extend Amazon’s current business model. The Amazon credit can be used towards any other product Amazon-wide, and the trade-in system can be transferred in the future to other product groups.

Sellers needn’t pay for shipping costs, and the trade-in program is being handled by NorAm International.

Gazelle.com received last November growth financing in the order of $6 million. Trade-a-Game in Germany received financing last summer from DuMont Ventures.

Originally posted in German by Jochen Krisch, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.

Investment Opportunity: Bookbutler Looking for Interested Buyers

The Bookbutler book search site is listed by SitePoint Marketplace as For Sale. The current offer for the site, which also owns Cinebutler, lies at $333,000 (+ one month’s profits). The site has been in the black for 5 years already and profit estimates for 2008 are at $105,000 (to be later validated against the finalized accounting figures). According to the description, 80% of revenues are generated with partners from Germany and Great Britain. Knowledge of the German language is not necessary for site operation.

More financial details to be found on the SitePoint Marketplace.

Potential buyers may express their interest until March 15.

Related posts:

• Investment Opportunity: Luupo Bargain Site For Sale

Originally posted in German by Jochen Krisch, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.

The Shop Exchange: Toys ‘R’ Us Scoops Up eToys and Toys.com

The online market for toys and games is still in its infancy. It’s no wonder then, that Toys ‘R’ Us is taking advantage of cheap prices to invest heavily:

• Toys ‘R’ Us recently picked up the remaining pieces of eToys, BabyUniverse and ePregnancy from the insolvent The Parent Co.
• In the last weeks, they secured the rights for the domain Toys.com for a cool $5.1 million.

Toys ‘R’ Us runs both the ToysRUs and BabiesRUs websites and is according to Internetretailer at Number 43 amongst American online merchants.

The Parent Co. originated from the fusion between eToys and BabyUniverse and was Internetretailer’s Number 117 on the list.

According to the Top 500 Guide from 2007, Toys ‘R’ Us generated online revenues of $407 million, in comparison to $107 million by The Parent Co. (source: Internetretailer). Nevertheless, according to Exciting Commerce’s observations from last year February (German link), the values should be more like $152,5 million.

Two developments are interesting to follow here: Brick ‘n’ mortar merchants are getting stronger in the online market and there is increasing consolidation under the US Top 500 companies.

A look at the German market: The Otto Group’s daughter company MyToys had a jump in revenue and most recently reported 100 million Euros (2007). Current estimates on the German market are provided by the ECC-Center in the German language, in sync with the International Toy Fair held in Nürnberg last month.

(via)

Originally posted in German by Jochen Krisch, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.