Top 500 Shops: Swoopo Nabs 10 Million in Financing

The Germany based Entertainment Shopping AG raised $10 million from US sources for its Swoopo (formerly Telebid) website (press release). This makes it now the third German startup (after Spreadshirt and BuyVIP) which has an alternative e-commerce model and has in the past few weeks announced a big finance round.

Swoopo counts amongst the top 500 German online shops and has surpassed its 2008 revenue target by hitting close to 22 million Euros (2007: 11 million, 2006: 5 million).

Under the control of former Ciao CEO Gunnar Piening, Swoopo is in the process of branching out its business model to other markets. Now with the support of American VCs August Capital Partners, its sights are firmly set on the US market:

Swoopo founder and inventor Manfred Hasseler is in the meanwhile going his own way. At the moment he is putting focus on his new project Cooni (German site), which like Luupo revolves around a reverse auction model where the product prices are hidden.

Live and entertainment shopping formats such as these are an eyebrow raising trend in e-commerce (GE/EN). They revolve around dynamic pricing and leverage the flexibility of the internet medium much more than other shopping sites. They are especially serving the needs of online users who crave for more variety and pure excitement during the shopping process.

Related posts:

• First Spreadshirt, then BuyVIP, Kennet Partners On Shopping Spree

• Luupo and Successors: Cooni, McEuro, xgewinnt and Others

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

Comments

[ortlieb]

I tried Swoopo a while and I didn't like it . It takes a reeeal long time to end the action. But it is something new. Lets see how successful it will be

[Dilan]

I found an auction website which is better than this all thing is brand new and the price is unbelievable for more visit it the http://www.cooolbid.com !