Trustpilot Secures €3.3 Million In Funding
Trustpilot, a rating service for online shopping, announced it has received €3.3 million in funding from two Nordic venture funds – SEED Capital and Northzone. The company allows a user to look at a single metric to see if they will probably have a pleasurable shopping experience. Aside from the value it provides between customers, the service is also helpful for online businesses to communicate their strong customer service by adding independent reviews to their site.
Design/story Opens Their Collections To General Public
After 9 months of operating a members-only shopping platform, Design/story opened their doors to the general public. Anyone can now choose and buy inventory from the website's Collections, which include hundreds of lifestyle and design products. Collections are centered around various themes, the first one - 'I Need A Drink' - offerring hand-picked interior decoration goods that help unwind at home after work. Desgin/story's main distinction from competitors in design-oriented e-commerce websites is the story-telling part of a shopping experience they offer.
Foodie.fm Gets Updated, Eyes UK For Expansion
From an iPhone app to a Facebook application to other platforms, Foodie.fm has made it even easier to start using their service. Now users can try the application directly on Foodie's website without registration. If they decide to create an account, though, it would still take less than 2 min. Today Foodie is coming out with an improved version of their social capabilities. The most important enhancements are a revamped recommendations engine (now better tailored to users' dietary needs and restrictions), more detailed information about products and discovery of new content from friends through a newsfeed.
Kiosked Is Your Instant Point Of Purchase, Anywhere
Anything you see can be yours, that’s what Kiosked believes in. The startup revolves around the concept of Web Wide Shop and has developed a secure sales and marketing platform, transforming all content online into a marketplace.
Shooples Your Real Estate Agent For Online Webshops!
Online shopping is not exactly a very new idea but it is definitely one of those areas that has seen quite a lot of innovation and implementation of newer ideas over time. It started with services like Amazon, eBay, Craigslists, etc and has continued to expand with newer services. Leveraging the same idea Shooples has made it out as the latest startup from Denmark as an online webstore provider.
Swedish Dimest Powers ABBA's Viral Music Store
Dimest, a Stockholm-based startup, has provided a music store solution using which ABBA has released their entire song library online for people to buy directly from ABBA's official web site. Soon the purchases can also be made on blogs and social media sites like Facebook, as Dimest's solution is based on a music store widget which everybody can copy and place on the website of their choice. This way Dimest allows artists to sell their music without middlemen directly to their fans. Through the widget it is possible for example to browse albums, listen to samples of tracks, and watch music videos. What about the most important question? Yes, DRM-free 320kbs MP3. Try it out yourself, I grabbed the ABBA one and placed it here (purchases only enabled in Sweden so far, though):
The record company Universal states that ABBA is only the beginning, and they will try Dimest's solution with many other artists as well, in quest to "give our artists the opportunity to get closer to the fans". As ABBA's version does not allow buying outside Sweden as of now, below is also a widget selling music from Måns Zelmerlöw, the Swedish representative in Eurovision Song Contest. The song's are priced at 10 SEK (around 0.86 EUR or 1.09 USD; there seems to be also a service fee of 3 SEK added, though).
Dimest was founded by a musician and songwriter Jonas Saeed, other co-founders being Hans Desmond, previous Managing Director Warner Chappell Music Scandinavia, and Sanji Tandan, former Managing Director Warner Music Sweden. Due to these connections the firm has established partnerships with all major labels in Sweden, and is currently negotiating with other Scandinavian countries. Dimest is also working with Aftonbladet, the biggest media group in Sweden, and a number of Swedish blogs. The firm has funding from a few private investors, but is looking to raise more funding to support the growth plans.
Interestingly, the solution of Dimest scales beyond music as well - it could be used for any digital content, like books, games, movies, ring tones, documents, lyrics, and software. The founder Jonas Saeed in fact commented to ArcticStartup that their big goal for this year is to launch a global web service available to anyone to upload their digital content, create customized storefront widget, set their prices of choice, and start selling. Dimest offers 90 % revenue share to artists and content providers.
There have been music store widgets before as well, but Dimest has a good advantage in their close relationships with the record labels, high revenue share, and the fact that they support all types of content by default. Widget solution in general is really good for viral word-of-mouth effect including the commercial side along. It brings the content all over the web, without having to pull users to some specific web site or storefront. It will not be easy to scale the service, though, as all sellable content will reside on Dimest's servers.
The official press release (in Swedish; try Google Translate version).
Fruugo's Ownership Structure Revealed
Adding to the yesterday's news on Fruugo's service launch plans, just this morning the Finnish business media Talouselämä has published the ownership structure of Fruugo.
Risto Siilasmaa, founder and chairman F-Secure, is the biggest owner with 30,9 % share. Fruugo's founder and Evangelist, Nils ”Nippe” Forsblom is the second biggest owner with almost 30 %. Risto Siilasmaa came aboard in the very beginning and brougth in Nokia chairman Jorma Ollila and the ex-CEO Reijo Syrjäläinen. Jorma Ollila owns 9,4 % of the company. A year ago, Seppo Sairanen (the previous main owner of FIM financial group) invested in the company, and last summer the Finnish media group Sanoma, who's Kim Ignatius recently entered the board. Sixth biggest owner is Kalle Vuoristo, the CTO of Fruugo.
The full ownership structure of Fruugo, as published by Talouselämä:
Ownership %
First Fellow (Risto Siilasmaa)
30,9
Queensway Dev. (Nils Forsblom)
29,2
Kestrel (Jorma Ollila)
9,4
Optiopaja (Seppo Sairanen)
6,8
Sanoma
5,9
Kalle Vuoristo
5,0
According to the article, Fruugo has burned around 10-15M euros so far, maybe even more. They have slightly above 60 own employees at the moment, plus tens of consults.
Fruugo is an aggregator bringing the online web stores under one service. Pan-European web commerce is still difficult, but through Fruugo the European web stores can sell their products to the whole Europe, and all consumers can buy the products of all merchant integrated with the service, using their native language and local payment methods. The business model, as we reported yesterday, is based on transaction commissions. The cut Fruugo takes is around 10 percent, more or less depending on the product category. The company believes the rate is justifiable to merchants, as using the service Fruugo will take care of payment systems, fraud management, customer service, and currency exchange.
Fruugo's public launch is coming up in Q2, but the exact countries are not disclosed. Next Fruugo faces the challenge to make itself known to the millions of European online shoppers.
(See our previous coverage on Fruugo.)
Fruugo Goes After EUR 60 Billion Market with One-Stop Online Mall
Fruugo, the ambitious Finnish e-commerce startup (see our previous coverage) has announced (see Reuters' press release Tarmo Virki's interview news below) the company is on track to launch closed beta still in January, as stated previously. The service will next open in Sweden by early February. The public opening is planned for April, while the news does not specify in which countries it will be available.
Siilasmaa states in the press release interview they "are working to create a European marketplace, so that all those merchants would find all those consumers and all consumers would find all those merchants." Fruugo has said before the company wants to be the trusted 3rd party of e-commerce. Based on the latest press release news, this means Fruugo aims to unite the online shopping market by opening a "one-stop mall" for Europeans (Europe is the firm's main target market for now, as it has declared before as well). Fruugo will have hundreds of links to different online stores available in its mall. This explains why the company has been using user experience and website optimization and monetization consults. The initiative could certainly become something big if the company is able to execute the vision.
The addressable market is around EUR 60 billion ($79.50 billion), the company states, half of the total online shopping market in Europe last year. As Fruugo stated in the autumn, it targets all consumer durables and content sold in physical boxes. According to the news, there are some 30 merchants currently integrated with Fruugo, while further 100 in the process. The merchants carry brands like Lego, L'Oreal, IBM, Nokia, Adidas, Lacoste and Nike.
The big question speculated a long time has been, what is the business model? Fruugo now states it does not collect any sign-up or monthly fees from the merchants, it only charges transaction commissions. Fruugo's business model is said to mix "online retail with search and price comparison capabilities", and in addition, social networking, which allows consumers utilize their online networks when seeking the best shopping deals. There isn't more information given on the last point, but it certainly sounds interesting if Fruugo has created some way of utilizing social search (cf. Google speculations) while shopping for products, which might lead to much more relevant search results and recommendations.
Just recently, to add to Fruugo's well-known board members Nokia chairman Jorma Ollila and founder and chairman of F-Secure Risto Siilasmaa, Kim Ignatius has joined the company's board (the news in Finnish). Ignatius is Director of Finance and Administration in the Finnish international Sanoma media group, while he served before as Finance Director of TeliaSonera, the biggest mobile carrier in the Nordics. In the same General meeting the board also allowed usage of stock options. Sanoma has been very active in the past years buying internet and media startups so we will see if the corporation plays any role with Fruugo.
Apparently Fruugo's cash position is healthy after all, as the owners are reportedly not after quick profits - Siilasmaa states confidently "The day will come when this firm is cash flow positive."
See full press release interview news below.
FairChance Lottery Encourages Charity
FairChance is a Norwegian startup introducing a micro-lottery system to be used at online point-of-sales. FairChance's idea is that a consumer in the checkout process of webshops could add a FairChance lottery ticket into the purchase, and get a chance of winning e.g. their shopping basket for free.
This would offer new income to retailers, and, offer new type of fund raising and promotion to charity and humanitarian organizations. That is, FairChance states charity is their leading idea, and the company promises to direct half of the net revenues directly to the different charities they support, currently Red Cross, Right To Play, Diambars, and Save the Children. According to FairChance's web pages they have also signed a few known ambassardors: for example biker Lance Armstrong and football (soccer) player Zinedine Zidane.
FairChance aims to integrate into different webshops and stores, so that when you shop at a supporting store, you will see the FairChance lottery logo next to the checkout. Buying a ticket (or more; each maybe 50 cents or so) gives you a chance to win a top prize (like one year's groceries for the whole family), all the groceries in your shopping cart at the time of purchase, or a smaller prize. The lottery results are shown immediately after the purchase. If you bought a ticket and didn't win, you still know you've supported a number of charity organizations.
For retailers, the value proposition of FairChance is adding high volume items with substantial profit margins into the product catalogue with limited or no cost. The service also allows the brand owners and retail and web shops to participate in charity fund raising. With the system it's also possible to target quickly some specific humanitarian projects, such as a major earthquake disaster.
The concept of FairChance is patented and it has been approved by the Norwegian Gaming and Foundation Authority. According to FairChance their service is not gambling, as has been stated by "international leading experts in this field" (PDF report), based on the relative low prizes and discontinuous nature. It is possible to integrate the company's fund raising service with almost any electronic payment location with a very low cost. FairChance will use the scalability of the concept to address the global market, starting with a roll-out in major European markets this year.
Fruugo to ArcticStartup on Tomorrow's PR Launch
Fruugo is preparing to come out tomorrow afternoon in a keynote (titled maybe a bit exaggeratedly "Meet the most ambitious start up on the planet") at SIME in Stockholm. Fruugo will explain where the company is coming from, what markets and product categories they will go after, and what are they're next steps.
Prior to the keynote, Fruugo's VP Marketing Janne Waltonen today disclosed a few things to ArcticStartup regarding Fruugo's positioning and go to market strategy.
First of all, the company will focus on physical products in the beginning, concentrating on the favorite products of online shopping like books, records, games, clothing, electronics, etc. Fruugo is running a closed Beta at the moment with a few tens of retailers and consumers, and they are starting an invitation beta in January targeted to consumers.
The first three online shopping segments they're targeting will be a) early adapters of social media and online shopping, b) pregnant women and mothers with babies, and c) outdoor sports enthusiasts (say diving, hunting, fishing etc.). The first is pretty self evident, the second two have been selected because of the unique characteristics in their online shopping behavior, based on extensive amount of research and focus groups. Waltonen explained pregnant women and recent mothers value, and are very active with, social relationships, product recommendations, comparisons, and have a huge need for detailed product information on the web. In the outdoor segment there are likewise very active communities formed around certain sports, with the habit of using web extensively for information and purchases.
Fruugo will start from the Finnish and Swedish markets, then expanding to key markets elsewhere in the Central and Western Europe. Waltonen commented Fruugo doesn't t have direct competitors as such, and most of the players concerned with Fruugo entering their space could actually rather be quite interesting partners (like Kelkoo and other product comparison sites for example).
Regarding the recent rumors, Janne Waltonen set straight they've indeed done some adjusting on the cost structure, somewhat due to the economical environment, but much due they being done with heaviest R&D and are moving more into more operational structure now, which has eliminated a few roles. Anyway, Waltonen told Fruugo's own workforce has been reduced less than 10%, in addition to terminating some consulting and outsourcing contracts. Some of the rumors out there are quite off the scale from their point of view (like their rumored private jet), but they haven't wanted to spend time commenting all of that before their phase of more active PR starting from tomorrow.
Apparently Fruugo's got something working already, as Waltonen told he's actually already bought and received all his Christmas presents using the company's service. We (and Santa) look forward to hearing more tomorrow.
