Exciting Commerce // Unlimited

Etsy Reaches Record Revenues of $13.3 Million in May

Etsy, the marketplace for handicrafts, has seen its revenues in May double again - and with that setting a new revenue record. With $13.3 million, the turnover is $400,000 over the last record month in December (see the statistics in May):

The average transaction price also reached a record value in May at $16.30.

A relevant article in German is Jochen Krisch's current column in the Internet World Business: “Verschlafen Social Shopping Seiten die Revolution?” (Are social shopping sites sleeping through the revolution?)

Related posts:

• Sales Update: Etsy Doubles Monthly Revenues From Last Year
• Sales Update: Etsy Rushes from Record to Record
• Etsy Sales Update: Etsy Breaks $10 Million Mark

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

Brands4Friends Reaches 25 Million Euro in the First 4 Months

Brands4Friends seems not only to be diligently gathering up members, but is also very strongly gaining on revenue:

“The company turned over 25 million euro in the last year. A sum which in 2009 has already been reached by the beginning of May.”

“Constantin Bisanz does not want to share information on the bottom line. Just: ‘We are a “StartUp”, therefore we are investing heavily in good personnel, technology and in general in the growth.

We are therefore not yet profitable. But we are counting the days. Breakeven is in sight. We are planning to be profitable by the middle of the year. ’”

For 2009, Brands4Friends had set a revenue target of 85 million euro.

Related posts:

• Vente-Privée Calculates with 30% Margins
• First Spreadshirt, then BuyVIP, Kennet Partners On Shopping Spree

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

Live Shopping: On the Search For The Ultimate System

The German live shopping scene continues to wait for the ultimate shopping system. Although in principle all shopping software can run live shopping campaigns, in practice professional merchant sites would find generic software less than ideal. Processes for the rapid, community oriented sales are often time consuming and cumbersome.

Therefore, those who can afford it are going for customized software development which can optimally support their unique purchasing, planning and sales processes. After iBOOD significantly extended their solution at the beginning of the year in order to offer different products across different countries, Preisbock is since last week running their live shopping portal with a solution based on Magento.

Nowadays there are plenty of shop system developers who are positioning themselves with live shopping solutions - from Plenty Markets (deployed for example at enomio) to Tradoria (deployed for example at einfachnachhaltig).

Many smaller merchants rely on generally stable live shopping scripts, nowadays also supporting "preisschlacht" (price war) systems, whereby users pay to reveal the hidden price of an article (whose actual price then drops as a function of how often the price is revealed). Since recently Andreas Guder has been offering AGI-Live as a complete live shopping system, which in the meantime is being used by Eltronics and Xeibo.

The common systems offer live shopping modules primarily as an add-on to an existing sales model. Hardly anyone is supporting live shopping as the main business model. In principle, this is the same situation as with the private shopping clubs. Also here is the technology more of a hindrance than a benefit.

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

The Shop Exchange: Louis Vuitton Closes eLuxury End of June

As previously announced the luxury label LVMH Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessey will close their shopping portal eLuxury.com by the end of the month. In the press release:

"eLUXURY was a pioneer in luxury e-commerce and served as the "launching pad" for many of the world's most famous luxury brands.

It is now moving to the next step of its evolution, a process which will reposition it as a premier source of editorial content, information, and inspiration for luxury customers around the world."

As rationale, the Internetretailer wrote at the beginning of the year:

"Closing eLuxury.com’s retail operation was not based on the site’s financial performance, the company says, but because many of the brands it sells have developed their own online presence.

ELuxury.com had sales of $90 million in 2007, a 20% increase from the prior year, according to Internet Retailer estimates."

Apparently, over the years more than $150 million had been financed by the investors to build up eluxury.com. Still, Net-a-porter and the Gilt Groupe have in the long run managed to outpace eluxury.

Fitting is the current report (PDF) from Abrams Research on the market for luxury brands.

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

Swiss E-commerce Study: Leading Shops Prefer Custom Built Systems

Whether it’s Zooplus, Redcoon, Notebooksbilliger, Globetrotter or another successful online merchant - Exciting Commerce has long had the impression that the drivers of German e-commerce tend to avoid standard solutions and rather employ either self-made shopping systems or more or less highly customized Open Source solutions. Easy to claim, and although individual examples support the theory, not so easy in general to substantiate.

The Swiss E-Commerce Report from the Institute for Information Systems of the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland is a new empirical study commissioned this year by payment service Datatrans. The study has succeeded in collecting information from the top online shops in Switzerland and has largely confirmed our suspicions.

Translated from the report (available for download for free in German, with French summary also available):

"Seven [from 19] participants of the study identify specifically that differentiation of design and ongoing development of deployed IT systems in coordination with business processes are core competencies.

Five of the best growing six e-commerce companies of the last 3 years belong to this group (see figure below). The two others are market leaders in their respective industries in the Swiss market.

Six of these seven merchants have developed systems for the complete value creation chain on their own and continue to independently maintain these systems. Specifically in scope is the online storefront, the transaction handling, the inventory management system, the customer management system and in some cases industry specific components. At maximum, 22 employees work on the software development.

One of the seven companies work on the foundation of two off-the-shelf software products, whereby in one case due to a personal involvement as well as access to the source code, it is possible for two persons to individually develop functionality. Another company has even developed individual hardware which is used for industry specific functions."

Why do online merchants lean towards self-made solutions? The E-Commerce Report quotes several CEOs on that question:

• Marcel Dobler from digitec said: “With our self made IT systems we have a moderate advantage over other firms with respect to efficiency and know-how. Every individual process is customized for our needs. Via the automated workflow we need less manpower and that results in price advantages for the customers.”

(see also: Digitec: The Swiss E-commerce High-Flyer 2009)

• Sven Betzold from ifolor said: “The functional customization and extensions to our IT systems are a permanent activity due to the dynamic market developments. IT is one of our core competencies.”

• Christian Wanner from LeShop said: “Our trials with off-the-shelf software have failed. Customizing packaged software with consultants is too expensive.”

(see also: Online Supermarket LeShop.ch Targets Revenues of $118 Million)

As a whole, the E-Commerce Report paints an excellent picture of the various issues which modern professional online merchants need to address.

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

The Shop Exchange: Shopflick Joins PopSugar and ShopStyle

Sugar Inc., who own Popsugar and ShopStyle amongst others, has taken over the video shopping platform Shopflick as of June 1:

"Blog network Sugar Inc. is trying to transform itself into a diversified media company, with the purchase of another e-commerce startup and a foray into offline entertainment.

Sugar said Monday it had purchased video shopping site Shopflick.com and had also raised $16 million in a third round of funding from Sequoia Capital.
 


Financial terms of the Shopflick acquisition were not disclosed. The startup, which lets merchants use videos to show off goods they want to sell, raised $7 million in a first round from Panorama Capital and Venrock last year.

Sugar said it would use Shopflick to boost another one of its properties—ShopStyle. It purchased ShopStyle in September 2007."

Shopflick counts as one of Exciting Commerce’s favorites in the video shopping area, with a cornucopia of exciting sales activities.

Related posts:

• ShopExchange: Shopflick Raises $7 Million Venture Capital
• Amazon Invests In Video Shopping Platform The Talk Market
• Talk Market and the Online Video Shopping Experience

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

Stylefeeder Expounds On Their Business Model

Stylefeeder (“The Personal Shopping Engine”) raised an additional $500,000 “cushion money” from its existing investors. Depending on sources, they’ve raised $3.5 - 4 million since the start of 2005.

In a lengthy interview with Xconomy ("Stylefeeder's Execs on How to Do A Lot With A Little"), the founders expound on topics such as their experiences with using Facebook as a channel and the “savannah hypothesis of shopping”.

The interview is long but extremely informative. Part 1 here and part 2 here.

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

Welike: Personalized Recommendations For Every Taste

Things have been pretty quiet lately when it comes to social shopping, unlike the recent activity with visual shopping sites. All the more enjoyable now to see a flurry of new concepts at the start.

Welike.com (“...inspired by people”) is something like the German answer to Stylefeeder. Just like Stylefeeder, Welike builds taste profiles and automatically generates recommendations from the extended social environment.

Boris Rogosch, one of the founders, introduced the concept to Exciting Commerce during the latest “Echtzeit Berlin” networking event a couple of weeks ago.

The decentralized approach is very promising. Welike builds upon interrelated category recommendations from which other website can also profit. At the start Welike will focus on the media and entertainment industries, with fashion and lifestyle to follow.

One of the drivers behind Welike is media entrepreneur Frank Otto, son of Otto corporation founder Werner Otto.

Could be wrong, but from the Echtzeit event it seemed like e-commerce startups are on the move again. In any case, we are eagerly awaiting one or two interesting concepts to spring up this year.

On June 17 we are covering current developments in social shopping at the German language Social Commerce Forum. Amongst other participants are a row of (new) startups from the fashion industry.

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

3D Printing: Desktop Factory Still Urgently Looking For Capital

After another investor jumped ship at the last minute, the team from Desktop Factory is looking again for $1 million capital to continue development of its low cost 3D printer and to then bring it to market.

As CEO Cathy Lewis describes in the latest newsletter (“The Cash Crunch Continues”):

"So in the last week of April we felt like royalty — for at least a few minutes — as we had secured our C Round funding partners and were ready to get back to our passion, developing low cost 3D printing. Yes, along with Idealab, that pioneering incubator, we had a French firm and an Irish firm with US representation who had committed to finance Desktop Factory.

So to update you on our current situation, we have NOT been able to close our C Round of fundraising. We still have committed investors in the US with Idealab, and in Ireland and the US with SOSventures.

Our objective is to determine the best funding alternative for the company within the next 30 to 60 days. We will continue to guard our remaining cash carefully and delay customer beta activities until we know our financial path forward."

It will be exciting to see if a new investor can be found at the last minute. Unfortunately the newsletter doesn’t comment on the current project status.

(via Replicator)

Related posts:

• 3D Printing: Desktop Factory CEO Cathy Lewis in Interview

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

The Shop Exchange: Fabidoo Goes To RT Reprotechnik

The Leipzig based RT Reprotechnik has taken over the Munich based 3D printing company Fabidoo. Fabidoo then joins the ranks of Rapidobject and Druckgarten (currently out of commission) as the third 3D service in their portfolio:

The founders had shut down the production of Fabidoos last October due to cost concerns (German link). They’ve restarted production this week.

Fabidoo counts as one of our innovation drivers of 2007 and had last year attracted attention with its USB sticks and regular product design competitions.

Internationally, Shapeways counts as one of the pioneers in this industry. However, the most successful offering in the end consumer segment could still be Figureprints.

Related posts:

• Fluid Forms: QR-Code on Your Belt Buckle
• 3D Printing: Fabidoo Launches USB Sticks with Individualizable 3D-Covers

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