Fruugo Moves On - Merges With UK Based DTL
One of the most debated startups, and companies in Finland, Fruugo, has reached a significant milestone. It has purchased Directory Technologies Limited (DTL) with its own shares and will also issue longterm financing through a share issue to fuel further growth in its ambitious quest. The new company will continue to operate under the name Fruugo and will also be registered to Finland. I sat down with Juha Usva (Fruugo CEO), Risto Siilasmaa (largest shareholder in Fruugo) and Dominic Allonby (CEO of DTL) to talk about the deal.
Risto Siilasmaa gave me a brief mention of the developments in the recent months, leading up to the merger. He said that they did not agree on the deal over night as talks had been continuing on an on and off basis for a period of months with DTL about various issues, including the merger. In the recent weeks, mutual interests finally met over the issue and they decided to go ahead with the deal.
Fruugo Posts Net Loss Of 11 Million Euros in 2009 - Aims For Growth
Fruugo, the much-debated ambitious Finnish e-commerce startup (see our previous coverage) that has raised tens of millions of euros of funding, filed its 2009 annual report last Friday. The report reveals the company made a loss of 11,040,071 euros (USD ~13.9M) in the financial year 2009. Despite the huge loss, the result was actually a slight improvement from 2008 when the company made a loss of 14.5 million euros. The report also tells that Fruugo produced a turnover of 8236 euros (yes, not a typo; i.e. USD ~10,350) from the sales commissions in 2009. The company launched its web storefront, available to consumers in Finland, Sweden, and the Netherlands (and including merchants from also the UK), in May 2009 several months late from the planned schedule.
Fruugo Secures More Financing From Current Shareholders
According to a Finnish business periodical, Talouselämä, Fruugo has secured more financing from its current shareholders, Jorma Ollila, Risto Siilasmaa and others. We previously wrote about Fruugo laying off 40% of its staff to cut its burn rate. At the moment, 25-30 people work at Fruugo.
Fruugo Lays Off 40% Of Its Employees
On Monday Fruugo, a Finnish startup that in 2008 burned through € 14.5 million, laid off roughly 20 of their 50 employees, which equals to 40% of their whole work force. Fruugo CEO, Juha Usva, confirmed the news to me yesterday evening.
When I asked how much money Fruugo still has in the bank and how long will it last, Usva emphasized that 'the situation is tight'. According to some this means that Fruugo won't have enough money to pay their employees' monthly salary due on the 15th. Whether that's true or not, the financial situation of the company is clearly critical.
Fruugo Burned Through 14,5M€ In 2008
Fruugo has burned through 14,5 million euros in 2008, according to an article in Kauppalehti. Last year's books show (in Finland these are public for all limited liability corporations) that Fruugo's net loss for the year is 14,5 million euros and with no income, this is the investment Fruugo used in 2008.
Fruugo is the much debated startup from Finland that has gathered a lot of media attention in the recent year. One of the reasons they have done so is their attractive and well known board members that include Risto Siilasmaa (Founder, F-Secure), Jorma Ollila (former CEO and Chairman of Nokia) and many others. Fruugo's main product is a webshop that would aggregate all the different webshops into one.
Fruugo Launches Closed Beta, First Screenshots
Fruugo invited a few bloggers to the company's premises this week and demonstrated their service, also handing out beta accounts. (We'll try to get a few shortly also for our readers - let's see.)
Fruugo's Janne Waltonen, VP Marketing & Communication, mentioned that they have not really figured out yet what to call Fruugo; it is not a webstore since they don't own any products, legally you cannot call the company a webstore aggregator either, and it is not a not a search engine. We could settle for virtual marketplace for now. What Fruugo wants to do is to make it simple and safe to sell and buy things online across the Europe regardless of the country borders. The transaction participants should be able to complete the transaction just if they were in the same country, using their local currency and language.
Fruugo is developing the live beta service constantly (with around 60 own employees and 40 consults), so the UI and layout will likely be totally different after a short while . But the first screenshots give some indication of how the service is turning out (more shots in Fruugo's Flickr stream). The priority order for UI is 1) products, 2) consumers, 3) merchants. Fruugo is trying to find the most interesting and successful consumer segments first with a broad, steady approach, and then go after the selected ones with bigger international marketing power. The company does not plan to provide mobile offering anytime soon, as the mobile market isn't yet mature enough, Waltonen commented.
The company depends on the logistics of the merchants, and hence requires all merchants to guarantee certain levels of shipping speed and reliability, with four shipping options at the moment. Non-confirming merchants will be removed from the service. Fruugo's including only 30k-40k products in the early phase of the beta in order to better evalute the usage patterns. Once they have figured out a working layout, gathered enough data, and fixed biggest bugs they will start adding multiple merchants offering the same products. Having none overlapping merchants is also why currently some of the products in the service are considerably pricier compared to some other stores.
Despite any rumors, Fruugo does not introduce any billing methods of its own, they will rather use existing ones. In the beginning they have just the most common credit cards and Finnish e-bank systems. PayPal will be coming only later, which is understandable, given that using credit cards and e-bank accounts is much more common in the Nordics. Fraud management is going to be a huge task to Fruugo, as Fruugo will take responsibility for all transactions, both merchant-consumer and consumer-merchant. The company has reserved the second floor of their office for most part to operational and fraud management activities. Waltonen commented due to fraud issues they have needed to also rule out some product categories due to the requirements by the credit card companies.
So far Fruugo will not introduce any deeper social shopping features, like group shopping. Rather, there are "social traces", meaning users can review products, seek assistance from other users, and see actions of others. Interestingly, the recent product views and searches of all users appear on the front page in real time (anonymously). Registration event of new members will be be shown with the users' real name. Fruugo isn't planning on introducing any sellable promotion slots, rather they expect merchants to rise in the ranks and get visibility due to reliable service, popular products and good prices, and complete product information, which will generate positive reviews.
One major problem in integrating with merchants is that really few Finnish online merchants are used to providing outbound feeds (e.g. RSS), Waltonen described. In Sweden, UK, and Netherlands the situation is much better, as apparently feeding the different comparison sites is more common there. Considering Fruugo takes care of billing fees, fraud management, first line customer support, and managing the customer returns, the 10 % revenue cut the company is taking does not sound bad at all. If they can get the support for the rest of Europe up and running as per their vision, it seems Fruugo might even be the only sales channel a small webshop could need. In that case there could be clear business opportunities open to 3rd parties for helping small e-tailers setting up Fruugo-compatible shops.
Fruugo's CEO Juha Usva did an interview with Finnish MTV3 this morning, you can watch it here (in Finnish).
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Update: Check out also Startupbin's and Ekana Innovation's posts.
Read also our previous coverage on Fruugo.
Fruugo's Presentation From SIME
Taneli Tikka posted a video of Fruugo "launch" last week in SIME (there wasn't any product launch as such, most things mentioned where the same as we reported before the event).
The video shows Fruugo's VP marketing Janne Waltonen giving a presentation and then answering a few interview questions.
Fruugo talk in SIME by Taneli for http://tane.li from Taneli Tikka on Vimeo.
Fruugo will be present today at digital marketing seminar DiVia in Helsinki, and might tell a bit more, although they'll still not show their actual product.
The Finnish business newspaper Kauppalehti released an article last Friday, stating that Fruugo has "forgotten" (as commented by Fruugo) to leave their financial statement to Trade Register at the end of August as required, but has just posted them a statement of losing the company's share capital. That doesn't necessarily mean the company wouldn't have cash or other liquid assets to run their operations, though, but looks like they're most likely looking for more money. Also, the previous CEO Reijo Syrjäläinen has left and Fruugo is now run by the company's operational director Juha Usva.
