Exciting Commerce // Unlimited

Etsy 2009: Etsy Doubles Annual Revenues To $181 Million

The Etsy merchants made record revenues in December, a whopping $25.6 million. With that, the revenues of the year hit $181 million as compared to $88 million from 2008:

In total, 2009 saw over 11 million individual products being ordered. The price point rose from $14.60 to $16.30.

In 2010, Etsy will be 5 years old - and one can only be excited about where they go from here.

Related posts:

• Etsy 2010: How Social Can Commerce Get?
• Social Commerce: Etsy Returning To Its Roots
• Etsy Opens Office in Berlin, Founder Comes Back As CEO

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

New Study: The Market for Open Innovation

Frank Pillar, our leading expert on the topics of mass customization and open innovation, has released a new study on the market for open innovation.

The “2010 Open Innovation Accelerator Study” may not be affordable for everyone, but for interested parties a free 42 page extract (PDF) is available, which amongst other things lists the most important open innovation and crowdsourcing services currently available.

In the startup group, Crowdspring has developed into a popular logo and web design alternative. And sites such as Atizo are gaining relevance with open innovation projects.

From the Exciting Commerce point of view, open innovation and crowdsourcing will be playing an increasingly important role in future business models, as demonstrated in the e-commerce world by MyFab or Threadless.

Drivers of innovation such as Woot! and of course also Groupon and the like are applying these principles intensively with their services such as Shirt.Woot! and Deals.Woot!

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

LeShop Online Supermarket Grows Revenues to $129 Million (+18%)

The Swiss online supermarket LeShop.ch has grown its revenues by 20 million CHF (Swiss Francs) bringing its 2009 revenues +18% to 132 million CHF (about 129 million USD). With that they are just shy of their targeted 135 million CHF.

After 10 years, LeShop can rely on a loyal customer base of 43,000 households who contribute over 90% of the revenues. Per year they are ordering a volume of goods valued on average at 2,750 CHF. The 2009 results have been available online since a few days in the German, French and Italian languages.

LeShop shows very well that you can grow on the internet with quality instead of quantity, an approach which still is often not taken seriously enough online.

Related posts:

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

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

How the Samwers are Spinning Their Pan-European Investor Network

Markus Goebel has again summarized for Techcrunch Europe how the Samwers are strategically building a pan-European investor network for their European Founders Fund. Participating at the moment are  investors from Germany (United Internet), France (Crédit Agricole Private Equity) and Scandinavia (Investment AB Kinnevik).

It is interesting to see in this context how enduring the Samwer’s sometimes controversial past still sticks, especially in light of the several widely praised and well respected American investors and entrepreneurs (MySpace, Zappos, etc.) who also made their first big breaks with business models with hints of dubiousness. A good source for following the American pioneer’s sins of youth is ‘Viral Loop’ from Adam L. Penenberg.

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

More Funding for Groupon-like Clones

Seems like the German Groupon fever is also catching on in the USA. LivingSocial secured an additional $5 million at the beginning of the week for its Groupon clone. VentureBeat reported:

 "Social discovery network LivingSocial, which lets people review and share books, movies, restaurants and other types of entertainment, just raised another $5 million in an extended first round.


And there’s a bit of deja vu involved. Back in 2008 the company also raised $5 million from Grotech and the Cases. Total funding now comes in at $10 million."

LivingSocial is already the third Web 2.0 startup in the US which takes off from the Groupon business model. Groupon was itself a spinoff from ThePoint (“Make something happen”). Townhog has been reincarnated several times already. And also LivingSocial had an incubation period on sites such as Facebook.

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

Etsy 2010: How Social Can Commerce Get?

The entire social commerce segment of 2008 and 2009 has shown more regress than progress. In contrast, the social web has enjoyed one innovation after the other thanks to strong players such as Facebook and Twitter.

Social commerce has a lot of catching up to do. In particular, Etsy wants to take the stage again and show what social commerce can be. Not just e-commerce spiced with bit of “social” mixed in, but specifically a social universe in which you can also happen to sell, bargain and trade.

Once upon a time, Fred Wilson (one of the early Etsy investors) decisively removed Etsy founder Rob Kalin from the CEO post due to his lack of experience.

Meanwhile however, he seems to have re-considered, perhaps due to his investments in sites such as Twitter. Now he blows the social commerce horn along with recently re-instated Rob Kalin (“Thinking About Etsy”):

"This decade we are now ending will be remembered as the time when the web became social.

It took us almost a decade once the web became commercial, but we figured out how to make people the atomic element of the web.

And now we get to build social gathering places on the web."

Although Etsy hasn’t fared too badly in the last two years from a pure commercial point of view (having enjoyed a growth rate of 100%), from a networking point of view the progress was moderate to disappointing. The expected networking effects are completely missing. Fred Wilson wrote:

"Etsy has done a good job of bringing people (real people) together to buy and sell. There are over 500,000 people who have opened a shop on Etsy and millions who have registered and bought something from a seller on Etsy. (...)

There is also a very lively community on Etsy. (...) But Etsy is not yet as vibrant and diverse an experience as San Telmo. Most people don't go to Etsy to 'stroll" or 'hang out'. Some do and (...) the people that do use Etsy in this way are starting to have a San Telmo like experience.

What Etsy needs to do next is make this kind of 'strolling' experience work for everyone. We need to bump into our friends on Etsy and we need to make new ones there."

The next big challenge in social commerce is how to strengthen social ties to create Facebook-like behavioural effects:

"And getting to that kind of scale, as Facebook has shown us, requires putting people front and center in the experience.

Rob Kalin, founder and now CEO of Etsy, prefers the words 'social commerce' over e-commerce for a reason. The emphasis is on social. Commerce is the result. An afternoon in San Telmo makes that point crystal clear."

Some realizations take a bit longer to mature and take form: "E-Commerce is about products, Social Commerce about people", has been the Exciting Commerce mantra since 2005.

We at Exciting Commerce are looking forward to many leaps of innovation in social commerce for 2010!

Related posts:

• Social Commerce: Etsy Returning To Its Roots
• Etsy Opens Office in Berlin, Founder Comes Back As CEO
• Etsy Investor Gives an Inside Peek

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

Catch of the Day on its Live Shopping Year in Australia

While the live shopping scene in Germany continues to languish instead of focussing on key success factors, international live shopping sites continue to enjoy increased popularity.

Europe’s #1 live shopping site iBOOD is now on its second profitable year, has stocked up its team to 40 employees and is making just within Holland (16 million population) more than 10 times the revenue of the most “successful” German sites.

The live shopping business is also flourishing in Australia (21 million residents) for those who know how to play the game. Catch of the Day reports in its 2009 review a doubling of membership and a tripling of revenue as compared to the previous year. They’re planning now an international expansion.

"Its been a momentous year at CatchOfTheDay, many milestones have been reached and records shattered.

We'd like to thank you for the success of this once humble site, now regularly Australia's most visited online shopping site. It is your word of mouth and loyalty that is driving all this forward.

In return you can expect even bigger things from us next year. Every year the Catches keep getting better, expect no less in 2010.

We know you all love numbers and stats, here are some interesting figures from 2009:

•    Membership has doubled, with now over 360,000 dedicated anglers logging in!
•    Over 300% sales growth as compared to 2008. What recession? Our members know value when they see it!
•    Best seller of 2009: The Cuddlee! The surprise performer with over 30,000 sold. Close second place was the "Tomato Planter".
•    2.4 items sold per minute, or on average every 25 seconds an item is purchased. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week!
•    Highest grossing product: Samsung LCD TV's. Over $1.4 million in one day.
•    Fastest rate of sale: Asus 7" EEE PC. 1998 units caught in a single hour!
•    11% of our members have bought more than 21 items from Catch. 80% of visitors visit us more than 4 times per week.

Next year will bring many new and exciting things, including:

•    The launch of two new international sites.
•    A brand new Catch website, with enough power to host the thousands of members joining the site every week."

You can tell already from the way the figures are presented that the company has experience with teleshopping methods. See also the summary review from the 3 Years of Catch of the Day and the birthday week, as well as a current company synopsis, a somewhat older background report and an interview from February 2009.

With good reason the focus of the Live Shopping Days conference this year lies with the learnings from the international community: Darold Rydl from Woot! and Joran Prinssen from iBOOD will report on their secrets of success and on the particular challenges of the business model and the associated growth. Malte Polzin from DayDeal.ch will describe his experiences in Switzerland.

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