Extras: GiltCity, FanForce, CustomMade

Some interesting e-commerce news from the past days:

Gilt City
A while back already, Gilt had started to offer locally based deals. TechCrunch interviewed CEO Susan Lyne on their ambitions with local sales campaigns:

"“Assuming that we continue to see the kind of engagement and excitement from our NY members, we’ll roll it out pretty quickly across the country,” Lyne says. As I mentioned, the company is looking at roughly 15 to 20 markets for City’s national roll out."

Tippr takes over FanForce
Group purchasing startup Tippr has purchased FanForce. FanForce is a white-label solution for Groupon-like collective sales campaigns. A similar startup is ChompOn, who we’ve already profiled.

"FanForce offers a white-label Groupon of sorts, allowing small businesses to create their own deals. FanForce takes care of the promotion of deals and offers, sell the vouchers and collect payments. "

Jewelry Television
Mass customization of diamond rings, via HelloIngo (German link):

“On the new daughter site diamonddesigngallery.com you can design your own diamond ring. And even down to the smallest detail.

Around 60,000 diamonds are available to choose from. With a search, you can refine down to carat weight, clarity, color, cut and price and have the resulting selection of matching stones displayed.”

Markets for handmade
Mashable has a worthwhile summary on 10 online markets for handmade goods.

CustomMade
CustomMade, a marketplace for handmade furniture and similar products has received a financing round of $1.15 million.

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