Exciting Commerce // Unlimited

bvh Figures 2009: E-commerce is More Than Mail-Order (2)

It is a good three years after the bvh (German E-Commerce and Distance Selling Trade Association) discovered that beyond the traditional mail-order catalogue business, there were also online and television based revenues. Besides physical goods and products, the bvh is now for the first time reporting on revenues from digital "intangible" goods.

In a current press report (GE/EN), the bvh stated that in a representative consumer study conducted by TNS Infratest, German nationals are anticipated to spend 13% more on the Internet in 2009, totaling 21.8 billion euro (previous year: 19.3 billion).  From that approximately 15.4 billion euro stem from online revenues from goods and 6.4 billion from internet spending on digital services such as downloads of music, online tickets, private accommodation reservations, etc.

Here the very schematized Exciting Commerce view on the future of online mail-order commerce:

The market will continue its polarization trend in the next years. Due to changing customer make-up, besides the known segments (multi-channel retail, online pure play, TV, eBay, etc.), new and strong growth business models (yellow area in chart) will develop and lend strength to the market.
It will be interesting to see when the bvh statistics will finally include revenues from digital and virtual goods (eg. from social networks and MMOPG games).

With 290 member companies, the bvh represents just a fraction of Germany’s e-commerce businesses. Amazon, eBay, Notebooksbilliger, Redcoon, Vente-Privée and other growth drivers aren’t represented in the bvh. As a comparison, TrustedShops has over 6,000 merchants and is a much more representative sampling of old and new distance selling businesses.

Related posts:

• bvh Figures 2009: Catalogues Remain Biggest Hindrance to Growth For German Mail-Order Market
• ACTA 2009: Frequent Order Customers Jump From 11% To 13%
• The Rebirth of German Mail-Order?

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

QooQ: A Tablet Device for the Kitchen

A good example of the “Fourth Screen” (see interview with Nick Lansley from Tesco.com) is this specialized end user device from France.

As TechCrunch Europe reports, the French firm Unowhy is offering a tablet device called QooQ which is optimized for use in the kitchen. Users can use the device to call up recipes, learn to cook or shop for groceries.

"The tablet Qooq has a 10.2-inch touchscreen display and onscreen keyboard, with a glass screen to protect the device from food and other mess (it is designed to be at the heart of the kitchen), and has an internet connection over Ethernet or WiFi (to receive recipe updates).

The operating system is perfectly adapted for the device and for the content, bringing some interesting applications such as a cooking planner, a shopping list maker etc. It can act as a radio, offers other Internet widgets and can be used as a digital photo frame."

The operating system Chrome OS, announced last week by Google, is perfectly matched to this sort of device as it only needs an internet connection to function.

Such tablets are still fairly price intensive. QooQ starts at 349 euro. For 12.95 euro per month, you can get online access to videos and recipes. At the moment, the content for QooQ is only available in French.

Related posts:

• Nick Lansley of Tesco.com Speaks on “APIs and the 4th Screen”
• Tesco API: Playing Safe with OAuth
• Online Supermarket LeShop.ch Targets Revenues of $118 Million

Originally posted in German by Marcel Weiss, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.

Nick Lansley of Tesco.com Speaks on “APIs and the 4th Screen”

“Tesco in the fast moving world of eCommerce” - Nick Lansley as Head of R&D Tesco.com (the online branch of the British supermarket giant) is one of the most visionary players in European e-commerce.

While so many others are still entertaining dreams of media convergence, Nick Lansley is already steadily preparing Tesco.com for media divergence.

After his keynote on the topic of "Tesco.com and the Fourth Screen" at the 1st Annual European E-commerce Congress last week in Berlin, Exciting Commerce’s Jochen Krisch was able to catch him to ask in more detail about his strategic plans:

Nick Lansley, Head of R&D at Tesco's, about APIs and the 4th Screen from Exciting Commerce on Vimeo.

In the first part he illustrated Tesco.com’s API strategy: What does the development interface have to offer? What type of third party applications does he imagine? From where will he find designers and developers? And how can it be that Tesco allows such as open interface at a time when similar initiatives at other companies would experience substantial resistance?

The second part concerns the intelligent picture frame and the “4th Screen”, a topic which will catch up to e-commerce latest with the new tablet devices.

Back in London, Nick Lansley summarized his impressions from Berlin ("Europeans lead the way with Delivery"):

"In Berlin I learned two things:

1. Britain (and USA) is quite some way ahead of central Europe when it comes to e-commerce service on the web, and
2. We are way behind on the actual mechanisms of delivery. That is, of getting the products to the customer at the time most convenient to them."

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

Spreadshirt CEO Jana Eggers On Layoffs and Growth

Spreadshirt hasn’t achieved its growth targets for the second year in a row and therefore had to recently lay off another round of employees (GE/EN).

In the context of the 1st Annual European E-commerce Congress in Berlin, Exciting Commerce’s Jochen Krisch interviewed Spreadshirt CEO Jana Eggers on the recent job cuts and the current development of Spreadshirt and LaFraise:



Spreadshirt continues to grow and is concentrating on partnerships and cooperative measures with the likes of CNN, Kellogs or The Sun in the UK. The key accounts from this business segment currently represents the strongest growth market for Spreadshirt and counts for half of Spreadshirt’s current revenue figures.

In the interview, Jana Eggers mentioned as well that with the LaFraise designer competitions, Spreadshirt raised 1.3 million euro which contributed to the estimated 21 million euro revenue of Spreadshirt.

Spreadshirt remains a good example of how a service oriented mindset is becoming increasingly important for e-commerce. Almost all mass customization companies have a strong service oriented component.

Related posts:

• Spreadshirt Swaps CFO; Makes 21 Million Euro Revenue
• First Spreadshirt, then BuyVIP, Kennet Partners On Shopping Spree
• Fashion Commerce: The Transformation of the Fashion Industry

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

BrandToGo: BuyVIP Targets 100 Million Euro for 2010

After Brands4Friends, BuyVIP has also announced their revenue goals for 2010. While Brands4Friends ambitiously wants to grow from this year’s 85 million euro to 250 million, BuyVIP (after 5 million euro from 2007 and 28 million from 2008) aims to spring from 70 million (2009) to over 100 million for 2010. BuyVIP continues to target half of their revenues from Spain.

LeGrandJournal had a good interview (FR/EN) with the Spanish BuyVIP founder Gustavo Garcia Brusilovsky, which also makes relatively clear why BuyVIP often makes a rather disoriented and chaotic impression. But BuyVIP indeed managed to raise 30 million in capital last year with a good 20 investors on board. With that comes an intensive manager swap, where the German market is particularly affected. Hope for growth in the German market is doubtless the BrandsToGo cooperation with United Internet (press release GE/EN).

Both BuyVIP as well as Brands4Friends would like to become Number 1 in Europe, and the rivalry is clear. Vente-Privée founder Jacques-Antoine Granjon can remain fairly composed and simply refers to his company’s 5 year lead (experience-wise) on the competition.

At the 1st Annual European E-commerce Congress in Berlin earlier this week, Jacques-Antoine Granjon ruled out expansion in further markets, because Vente-Privée expands purely based on brand potential as opposed to customer potential. From Vente-Privée’s point of view, all relevant markets are now already represented (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK). Apparently then, Eastern Europe and Turkey are not options.

At the same time in Berlin, Vente-Privée lifted for a second time its revenue target for 2009. Originally 630 million euro, it was raised once to 650 million and now to 680 million. Of that around 45 to 50 million euro can be attributed to the German market.

Thorsten Boersma interviewed Jacques-Antoine Granjon recently in Hamburg (GE/EN). And “Logistik heute” has an interesting interview (GE/EN) with Vente-Privée’s logistics director, detailing the exceptional logistics challenges of the business model.

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

Payvment Offers Open Shopping Cart Network for Facebook

The startup company Payvment offers online shopping cart technologies and makes use of PayPal’s new platform to implement the transaction. With Payvment’s Facebook app, anyone can directly open up an e-commerce storefront on Facebook.

What is interesting is that the Payvment solution makes the shopping cart universal across the Payvment network:

"Payvment’s shopping cart is also integrated with any other shop using its application. So if you put a shirt from store “x” in your cart and also placed a shirt from store “y” in the cart, both would show up on either retail site. Basically, Payvment creates a unified shopping cart across Facebook for buyers."

The bigger the Payvment network becomes, the more compelling it will be for e-retailers to use the network. Especially for smaller merchants, integrating Payvment’s e-commerce solution on Facebook might become attractive.
Payvment offers their shopping cart technology as a free web service. The only incurred costs are the PayPal fees. Currently the Payvment technology is only for use in the US.

Some first experiences with the Payvment Facebook storefront from a user are mentioned here.

Related posts:

• PayPal X: PayPal Launches Platform For Third Party Apps
• Paypal X: The Universal Shopping Cart Inches Nearer
• The Shopping System of the Future – Starring: Google, Paypal and Amazon

Originally posted in German by Marcel Weiss, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.

TheBakery: How Intershop Wants To Lead the Trade Revolution

In this current transitional phase (“The Rebirth of German Mail-Order?”), the e-commerce industry has an excellent chance to free itself from the former chains of the mail-order catalogue companies and now quickly establish modern trade and sales structures.

Surprisingly, Intershop might be the one to act as the critical catalyst and champion the modernisation of trade and commerce structures. Intershop has in February, largely unnoticed from the public, taken majority ownership (GE/EN) of TheBakery which is a startup out of Berlin with huge potential.

TheBakery seeks to break the rules of old sales structures and widely “virtualize” distribution - and in doing so enable a cornucopia of new cooperation and sales models:

“With our standard solutions it will in the future be possible to augment the product palette of an online shop with goods from suppliers or third party vendors in a virtual way. 
In this manner, an arbitrary number of vendors can be linked into an arbitrary number of platforms without restrictions.

Naturally the data exchange works in all directions automatically over standard interfaces”, described Intershop’s Managing Director Henry Goettler.

TheBakery is backed by part of the former Product + Concept GmbH team, who amongst other things developed and operated for Quelle the virtual sales platform “Quelle Market”. Quelle Market was shut down almost a year ago despite a promising future, due to the inability to agree on a purchase price when P+C was going through insolvency.

TheBakery comes now (with perfect market timing) with a supplier-independent solution which fulfills many of Exciting Commerce’s prerequisites for a contemporary trade and sales structure:

• Flexible linkage of different manufacturers and suppliers to the in-house product line of the retailer.
• A uniform shopping cart via the complete integration of the sales mix into the retailer’s own shopping system (shop or portal).
• Furthermore, although TheBakery is run by Intershop, in principle any shopping system can be attached.

In the last years, countless suppliers such as Ebay Express, Electronicscout24, Neckermann, Otto and Quelle have struggled with proprietary sales platforms.

If TheBakery’s concept takes off, soon a lot of “Quelle Markets” and other virtual sales systems will spring up. Even product search engines and social shopping websites can use TheBakery solution to make sales.

We are observing the developments with great interest. Leading the pack is a well-known electronic goods organisation who plan to go online this year with TheBakery.

TheBakery will be giving a talk on the opportunities in product sourcing at the next Live Shopping Days conference in Berlin on January 28, 2010 (German language).

Editor’s note: A long thread of insightful comments can be found on Jochen Krisch’s original German language post. A serviceable auto-translation linked here.

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

Swirl: DailyCandy Preparing Own Private Shopping Club

In the US, the popular newsletter service DailyCandy wants to launch Swirl, its own private shopping club.

"Like a lot of media companies that rely on advertising revenue these days, Daily Candy is eager to diversify its revenue streams. To that end, the Comcast-owned fashion and lifestyles site and e-newsletter has introduced Swirl, a sample sales site available to DailyCandy subscribers.

Swirl launches in beta next month and is planning a full release in January. Beyond more direct revenue from e-commerce, Swirl is also meant to attract more subs to DailyCandy. If it works out that way, DailyCandy’s ad sales could wind up with a nice boost as well."

Media houses are predestined for sales concepts of this type. In fact, although several media companies are indeeed investors in private shopping clubs, DailyCandy is one of the few who are taking matters into their own hands.

DailyCandy is one of the top info services for day-to-day shopping tips in the US. In that respect, stepping into this business is not a big leap. We’re excited to see how this close proximity to the target customers is going to influence sales developments.

Related posts:

• GSI Grabs RueLaLa/SmartBargains for $350 Million
• The Shop Exchange: $40 Million for US Shopping Club Gilt Groupe
• US Media Discovers European Shopping Club Phenomenon

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

Shopping Platform Alice.com Secures $6 Million

Alice.com, an open online shopping platform for household goods, has secured a further $6 million in a new financing round:

"Alice.com has closed a $6 million Series B round of funding from private investors, bringing the startup’s total funding up to over $10 million."

On the Alice.com site, manufacturers of consumer packaged goods can shortcut the retail chain by selling directly to the end customer.

Amongst other things, the platform offers users the possibility to be informed by email when certain articles threaten to be discontinued. Furthermore, shipping is free.

We recently reported on the product sample strategy of Alice.

At the moment, the start-up is operating only in the US.

Originally posted in German by Marcel Weiss, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.

eBay Wow! Campaign Breaks Revenue Record in October

The eBay Wow! campaign has reached a record new revenue level, just barely missing the 3 million euro mark:

Source: Wortfilter

Very clear as well, that eBay continues to want too much too fast and are using the same old tricks to boost the figures:

• From the 2.9 million euro revenue in October, 721,000 euro (or 25%) stems from the sale of Wiis. The Wii best seller came no less than 4 times in October (on the 4th, 8th, 15th and 22nd of October). The 15th brought in record revenues of 389,000 euro.
• The price point fell down to the record new low of 36 euro (last low point was 55 euro in June), mostly triggered by a big Fruit of the Loom sale:
• On October 23, six Fruit of the Loom shirts for 9.99 euro sold a record breaking 23,160 times.

eBay raised the frequency of deals from one to two per day just last August - although without the expected revenue boost.

And although the team was apparently already struggling to find attractive best sellers to fill just 30 product slots per month, now just in time for Christmas the rate has jumped to 4 Wow! deals per day (press release in German).

To keep up this pace, now only 9 months from the start, 120 top deals will need to be found every single month. The effects might very well be noticeable on the quality of the selected individual products.

Interested live shoppers can follow the Wow! campaign developments live from Wortfilter (in German).

Related posts:

• LSD 010: eBay Germany’s Managing Director on the Wow! Campaigns
• LSD 010: How The Secondary Market is Changing E-commerce
• eBay Germany’s Wow! Campaign Makes 10 Million Euro in First 6 Months

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