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Forerunner: How Women Are Seeing the Future of E-Commerce

“Investing in the digital commerce revolution” is the motto of Forerunner Ventures, with $40 million one of the biggest early phase e-commerce funds which is run exclusively by women ("The Woman Behind Warby Parker, Birchbox, and Bonobos Now Has $40M More To Drop On E-Commerce Startups"):

"Yep, Forerunner Ventures is the rare tech investment firm run entirely by women. But that misses the point.

Kind of like the way most male venture capitalists missed the online-retailing revolution."

The portfolio is advanced and hardly contains any of the overhyped e-commerce models which are currently enamoring many of the male dominated venture firms.

Forerunner’s investment strategy should be illuminating for anyone interested in the future of e-commerce.

Particularly well presented is the spring from early e-commerce models to the new e-commerce landscape (PDF):

From Exciting Commerce’s perspective, the biggest potential nowadays is what Forerunner calls “Connected Brands”. In other words, online driven brands such as Bonobos and Modcloth, who have evolved differently than contemporary brands and still have what it takes to become the next GAP, Zara or H&M.

The female target market in particular harbors huge untapped potential.

The needs of the female market have been largely ignored in the current e-commerce landscape. Lost revenues in the German e-commerce sector alone is between 2 to 3 billion Euro annually, according to Exciting Commerce’s calculations (German link).

Related posts:

• Gender Innovation: How do women shop online?
• Women as Drivers of Innovation for E-commerce
• The Big Shift and The Future of the Feminine Archetype

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

LivingSocial Stages Events in Own Clubhouse

LivingSocial started an experiment four months ago. The daily deal social commerce company bought a house in Washington D.C. for $3 million and had it painstakingly refurbished. For four months, LivingSocial has been offering special deals based out of its own location. AllThingsD reported on the accoutrements of the clubhouse:

"The historic building was meticulously remodeled to blend old exposed brick walls and antique chandeliers with modern accents like bamboo floors and large flat-screen TVs."

LivingSocial co-founder and CEO Tim O’Shaughnessy spoke to AllThingsD about his vision for LivingSocial as an “integrated commerce platform for local commerce”. Clubhouses which give merchants more room to manoeuvre fits well into this model.

LivingSocial kept the doors wide open and experimented with all sorts of different events. AllThingsD:

"Packages have included zip-lining, wine tasting, beer festivals and small concert series. LivingSocial even once organized a summer camp for adults. Inside of 918 F Street, there’s a test kitchen for three dozen students, an art studio for painting classes and various empty rooms that can be set up for different events. A commercial kitchen allows chefs to host pop-up restaurants at the venue to try out new dishes or concepts — LivingSocial is there to fill the seats."

The daily deal analysts at Yipit have checked out the clubhouse deals and have concluded that the experiment is developing well for LivingSocial:

“Over the last four months, 918 F Street deals have consistently generated double the gross billings per deal of the average LivingSocial deal. And 918 F Street events have less availability, as they are concentrated over a few specific days and times, compared to the many months during which a typical LivingSocial deal can be redeemed.”

”Moreover, 918 F Street’s gross billings per deal have steadily grown from $18k in February to over $22k in May, for a 20% jump in just four months.

While the venue has generated roughly $1 million in gross billings in a few short months, the initiative is doing as well as the number of events LivingSocial is able to host.”

The clubhouse model offers several advantages in a market which is squeezed by low barriers to entry on one side, and on the other side, Groupon, a continually growing global competitive force. The biggest advantage of the clubhouse is its exclusivity. And in particular, regional merchants with their inherent limitations can use the extra capacity offered by the clubhouse to solidify their core positioning and expand outwards.

The biggest disadvantage of the clubhouse concept is of course the relatively high startup and running costs. Nevertheless, according to Yipit, 10% of LivingSocial’s Washingtion D.C. business is now coming from the clubhouse, after only four months and with ten deals per month.

LivingSocial, with backing from Amazon, is now the global number two daily deals site after Groupon. They are continually looking for new approaches to differentiate itself from Groupon and other competitors in the field. For example, "Takeout & Delivery", "LivingSocial Plus", Last-minute travel and a Room Service concept.

Related posts:

• LivingSocial buys daily deals sites in Thailand and the Philippines
• Extras: Groupon vs. LivingSocial, Wag.com, Rakuten, AmazonLocal
• LivingSocial gets closer to Groupon, works on expanding mobile app
• LivingSocial Buys LetsBonus, Coming Soon To Germany

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

Vaniti: Rakuten also pushes into big fashion business

Apparently, Rakuten does not only believe in Pinterest, but also in the big fashion business - and lets former people from Buy.com build Vaniti, a marketplace for design brands (via):

"VANITI is first and foremost, a technology company. Our priority is to provide as many tools and resources to the world’s best brands so they can directly reach their customers online."

The basic idea is neither especially new nor especially inventive, however, the plans are as ambitious as usual:

"Vaniti has roughly 14 employees now, and Wall projects it will have hundreds of employees within the next two years.

Rakuten is backing Vaniti. Wall said the company has invested “millions of dollars” in Vaniti, although he wouldn’t specify the exact amount.

“The assets that we have with Rakuten are enormous: over 100 million customers worldwide, and they own so many companies that we can really utilize the technology or the assets that they have,” said Wall.

Wall predicted Vaniti would be profitable within its first several months of operation. As for revenues, Wall said, “In the next few years, we’d like to do hundreds of millions of dollars.”

When fashion meets technology, then chances are that this ends in a desaster. Lastly, Google came a cropper with Boutiques ("Der programmierte Flop: Google stellt Boutiques.com ein"), eBay didn't become happy with their head fashion manager (or vice versa) - and Amazon sees MyHabit as their springboard into fashion retail ("Amazon Leaps Into High End of the Fashion Pool").

The big unknown are the brands, which apart from online competence are also looking for retail competence, as can be deduced from recent developments in the luxury goods category ("Wie sich die Luxuskonzerne mit dem neuen Handel verbünden").

Earlier posts:

• Rakuten: "Buy from people, not the internet"
• Shopping-IDs: Was sich Rakuten von Pinterest verspricht (de)
• Pinterest holt sich 100 Mio. Dollar von Rakuten & Co. (de)
• Ahalife holt sich $10 Mio. von Rakuten für tägliche Aktionen (de)
• Rakuten: Warum wir Alternativen zu Amazon und Ebay brauchen (de)
• Rakuten-Chef Hiroshi Mikitani im DLD-Video-Interview (de)

Wayra – Or: How to Start Up a Wave of Startups?

The seed phase remains the Achilles heel of the startup scene. This makes it even more notable when new initiatives are in the works which support cool ideas at their early stages. Exciting Commerce has already reported on Seedmatch (“Crowdfunding: Why Seedmatch makes us so euphoric”) and the HackFwd program (“HackFwd: Lars Hinrichs and the Financing Model of the Future”).

For a good year now, the Telefonica concern has been putting efforts into web/tech startups and has been systematically building Wayra Academies everywhere between South America and Europe.

Last week, Telefonica gathered a couple dozen influential personalities from the German-speaking entrepreneurial scene together in London. Goal: to impress upon them the virtues of Telefonica’s accelerator program which is launching now in Germany and plans to open up an office in Munich in September (German link):

“On approx. 1000 square meters on the Kaufinger Strasse in Munich, young entrepreneurs should soon be able to execute their ideas.

The entrepreneurs join the Wayra Academy for six months and receive between 25,000 and 50,000 Euro start capital from Telefonica O₂.” (Exciting Commerce translation)

“The rules are not written yet” is the aggressive motto. Wayra is intentionally focussing on world-shaping, spectacular new ideas. At the introduction in London, Director of Wayra Europe Simon Devonshire said that Wayra prefers startups who have already created their own markets. He used hiyalife as an example, who see themselves in the “market for memories”

Telefonica has been able to recruit Bernhard Kirchmair for the German Wayra program, who is known for his involvement in building the CDTM  ("Center for Digital and Technology Management") which supported such Munich based founders as Amiando and Stylight. CDTM has developed itself to be one of the anchors of the Munich technology and entrepreneurial scene.

Wayra follows a well-used process for their startups: after an application and selection period, the six month incubation period ends with a demo day for investors.

For the many entrepreneurs who are wanting to take the leap, Wayra is one of the most exciting programs available and also the one offering the most extensive support.

(The call for projects for Munich was closed on July 8)

Related posts:

• Crowdfunding: Why Seedmatch makes us so euphoric
• HackFwd: Lars Hinrichs and the Financing Model of the Future

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

Roman's Rants: Germany

I live in a very peculiar country: on the one hand, economically speaking, it’s one of the most powerful countries in the world. Yet when travelling across the country, mobile reception is as bad as in the frigging Sahara desert. (And ask those poor bastards in the countryside what their broadband connection looks like – despite all the broadbandisation plans that are regularly repeated by high-ranking politicians without being executed.) A country that prides itself for being so amazingly data security aware and regularly challenges things such as Facebook and Google Street View. Yet parliament has planned a law making it easier for companies collecting addresses to get this kind of info from from registry offices – without the respective people being informed about this. And, we are the ones who invented the PAYBACK bonus system as early as in 2000, for fuck’s sake!

Read the full feature on ecomPunk.com!