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.

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.

Despite the difficult times, Blyk and Xtract are promoting advertising (at least in a sense) as a revenue model. Blyk’s business model is built around advertising as a source of revenue. Blyk confirmed they are going full steam ahead with internationalisation in a recent blog post about entering the Dutch markets in the first quarter of 2009.

In the blog post Blyk refers to an IAB research which states that consumers are sceptical about receiving ads on their mobile but become strongly willing to accept ads on their mobiles when they are incentified. Furthermore the willingness is increased by relevant ads. Something that shouldn’t really be all too shocking when you use common sense.

This thinking is confirmed by Xtract in their most recent white paper titled Brands Need People and People Need Brands. Xtract argues that when ads are positioned correctly at the right touch points - they work, and people actually want to see them.

The problem with business models based on advertising usually is that the companies don’t understand the difficulties the advertisers face. In SIME Helsinki, organised in September, I had multiple talks with advertisers that all these new innovative startups don’t really understand the needs of the advertiser and thus only bringing about banner advertising - is not very appealing. What do you think, are the advertisers up tight or is their discontent acceptable?

Photo by trialsanderrors (CC:BY).

Fruugo, the mysterious Finnish startup, has approached us with 5 SIME HKI tickets that will be given out to Finnish startups (1 per startup). We have written about SIME previously as well.

However, this time - there’s no big catch to these tickets. All you have to do is be a Finnish entrepreneur and explain in a few sentences in the comments why you’d deserve these tickets - you’ll have time until 6PM EET today Monday 15th September 6pm EET Friday 12th September 10 EET. We’ll draw out 5 companies with the best explanations and send your details to Fruugo (so make sure your contact details are correct in the comments).

The simple message from Fruugo is that they want to support the start-up scene in Finland by providing access to 5 start-ups to the most interesting event in Helsinki.

Good luck!

Update: Major apologies with the mix-up in dates - last deadline ever, tomorrow morning. :)

Update 2: Since we only got 4 participants, we’ll direct those contact details to Fruugo - congrats to the winners :)

Just over one week to go to SIME Helsinki event held in Teatteri. The reason we are mentioning this is of course the fact that you will receive a discount of 20% with the code arcticstartup when registering for your ticket. SIME Helsinki is held on the 17th of September.

There’s an interesting line up present, a few interesting keynotes from statups’ perspective could be the one of Stefan Glaenzer, founder of Last.fm as well as Mohamed El-Fatatry, founder of Muxlim.

I’ll be present there and will be doing some interviews as well as blogging about the event at ArcticStartup of course. Do let us know if you are coming, would be nice to meet up!