Picture of Pinterest Raises $100 Million From Investment Group Led by Rakuten [source:excitingcommerce.com]

"Rakuten, one of the world's largest online marketplaces, today announced that it is leading a $100M investment in Pinterest, with participation from existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners, and FirstMark Capital, as well as a number of angel investors."

Pinterest had raised $37.5 million already in previous rounds.

Robin Wauters writes a good summary of the situation in the TNW blog:

"Rakuten continues to make a lot of noise with investments and acquisitions happening all over the world.

In the recent past, theyve snapped up companies like Buy.com, Play.com, Kobo, PriceMinister, Ikeda and Tradoria, and invested in sites like AHAlife.com and Russias OZON."

Rakuten has had less luck in China, where they experienced a setback in April. More information can be found in the latest quarterly report.

Exciting Commerce already reported early on about the Pinterest phenomenon before many others, and most recently with the post "Pinterest: What two years can account for".

A worthwhile Pinterest overview was recently published in Fortune Magazine ("Is Pinterest the next Facebook?")

Rakuten will be presenting at the coming K5 Conference being held on September 20 - 21 in Munich, Germany.

Originally posted in German by Jochen Krisch, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.[source:excitingcommerce.com]

Picture of Why Is The Shopping Party Model So Popular Now? [source:excitingcommerce.com]

Jeremy Liew from Lightspeed Venture Partners, already a supporter of subscription models such as Shoedazzle, has recently listed out three factors which speak for the new direct sales model ("Is Direct Selling The Next Driver Of Startup Commerce Companies?"):

"The first is the economy (.) The second is the birth of social media (.) The third reason is tablets and the internet."

The new input devices open up new opportunities especially for local shopping:

"These devices, combined with lightweight SaaS ERP, CRM and SFA software, dramatically improve the productivity of direct sales reps.

In the old days, a direct sales rep would call on the people that they remembered to call on, host a party when they got around to it, and had to have physical samples, or page through catalogues, to show what they had in stock.

Today, a sales rep can get prompted on their iPad with who they should be calling on.

They have an infinite catalogue, with video and color photos from multiple angles for each item, available on their tablets.

They can take orders on the spot, swiping a credit card through a dongle. And happy customers can self-serve and place new orders directly on a website, without the sales rep having to go back to see them in person.

This shopping experience is particularly enhanced for the up till now under served two-thirds of society (German link). Nevertheless one shouldnt fantasize too far. Neither the technology nor the customers have final say over the success of a direct sales model:

"The fundamental challenge in direct selling is getting people to sell your stuff, not so much getting people to buy your stuff."

"Effective direct-selling companies are 25% about the brand and 75% about the sales channel."

Nevertheless, Jeremy Liew is tremendously excited about the opportunity to build very big commerce companies in this space" and mentions in his post about the offerings from Thirty One Gifts, Stella and Dot, Chloe and Isabel, Gigi Hill, Miche Bags and J Hilburn

Originally posted in German by Jochen Krisch, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.[source:excitingcommerce.com]

Picture of Houra.fr Wants to Sell 100 Million Euros Worth of Groceries in 2013 [source:excitingcommerce.com]

Houra relies on 90,000 regular customers who make up 90% of revenues. In 2011, those customers spent an average of 220 euros per purchase (in French). Up to 70% of the revenues are generated from Paris alone.

In the French market, Houra is looking on par with Ooshop/Carrefour and Auchandirect and a good way ahead of Telemarket.

In Germany, the current edition of prominent local magazine Focus is claiming Rewe to be the biggest hope in Germany in the online supermarket sector.

Exciting Commerce has reported previously on the drive-in grocery shopping trend in France.

Originally posted in German by Jochen Krisch, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.[source:excitingcommerce.com]

Picture of What is your strategic ecommerce tactic? [source:excitingcommerce.com]

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Picture of Yuri Milner’s DST Raises Stake in Zalando to 10% [source:excitingcommerce.com]

The Zalando shareholders DST Global and Kinnevik have underwritten a further financing round with Zalando.

The two shareholders are thereby exercising an option agreed in the last financing round January which allows for a capital increase according to the same conditions.

Both investors are each acquiring a further share of about 5% of Europes leading online retailer for shoes and fashion products. (ExcitingCommerce translation)

Zalando achieved 200 million Euro in net revenues in the first half year of 2011 (German link). In 2010 it was 159 million Euro.

Grnderszene recently published an interesting article (in German) with their take on an internal investment presentation from DST Global. Contents of the leaked document and analysis in English are presented by VentureVillage.

Originally posted in German by Jochen Krisch, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.[source:excitingcommerce.com]

Picture of Gender Innovation: How do women shop online? [source:excitingcommerce.com]

In order to also provide an adequate shopping experience in the online world, one would have to approach the subject from completely different angles. This is the reason why the panels and interview at Exceed 2012 could at best provide ideas and suggestions. Those who listened carefully, however, could get a taste of what really matters:

Julia Derndinger, CEO of Imedo (left) said: "We already have everything new need, so you'd better work hard!" Delia Fischer (right), founder of Westwing described how she uses her imagination while shopping and how she would "like to picture herself in the shoes" she would like to buy. At Westwing she made sure that women get an impression of how the product appeared. And Bellegs founder Daria Saharova spontaneously invented the concept of the "digital prosecco" that should sweeten the shopping spree.

Roman Zenner has asked the three of them for a joint interview:

At the end of the day it's not really the functional elements or the technical solutions which make for an enjoyable shopping experience. Instead, a lot of "soft" and implicit factors matter and decide if and how an offering is working.

This is the reason why the term Gender Innovation fits so well, because eCommere for women is not simply an optimisation task. Rather, it's all about completely reinventing eCommerce for women. Until now, the figures only show that currently we are barking up the wrong tree. At best, there are little hints as to what the development could look like. Accordingly, everybody who tries to seriously work in this area faces an exciting and challenging task.

We know that for women the social factor plays a far more important role. It's even probable that after iPhone, iPad, Kindle & Co. we need yet another new type of device before this area can really take off and women develop a passion for online shopping which matches the more traditional variants.

Until now, eCommerce for women works in those cases where women shop in "male mode" and know exactly what they want. Those, who are really successful with women, however, use completely different mechanisms.

Our thanks also go to Beate Rank from Rakuten, Annemarie Grund from Baby Basket und Sabrina Schnborn from SugarShape for their input regarding the "Women in eCommerce" during this year's Exceed Conference.[source:excitingcommerce.com]

Picture of Best Buy Transformation: 50 Big Box Locations To Close [source:excitingcommerce.com]

"Best Buy on Thursday announced a fourth-quarter loss of 1.7 billion, or a loss of $4.89 per share. Best Buy also said it will close 50 of its big box retail locations in the U.S. in the next fiscal year."

Reacting to the current market circumstances, the motto is now thinking small. $300 million should be saved by closing the big box stores, but in parallel one hundred new small format mobile stores are in the plans. The remaining big box stores are to be remodelled as so-called Connected Stores. Goal: more store presence using less square footage.

CNET has laid the biggest blame for Best Buys weakened retail performance on Amazon:

"Best Buy's problem: Amazon. Best Buy has been trying to grow its e-commerce business to compete better, but the big-box approach to selling consumer electronics isn't what it used to be.

"The company is gradually becoming a physical showroom for online retailers, and the prevalence of smartphones makes comparison shopping increasingly easy," said Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter."

Best Buys transformation strategy speaks of a dramatic shift over the past 3 years.

More on the new normal as quoted by Best Buy can be found in their year-end report.

Originally posted in German by Matthias Hell, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.[source:excitingcommerce.com]

Picture of Exceed 2012: Highlights from the first seed conference [source:excitingcommerce.com]

This is the reason why each of the 500+ attendees has taken home different insights, for sure. Thomas Lang has summarised his personal highlights:

"Seeding of new business models, hungry founders with great ideas belonged to the varied programme as well as success stories such as the sale of Tradoria to Rakuten last autumn.

Crowdfunding, Mass Customizing and the ominipresent gender innovation issue (women in E-Commerce and E-Commerce for women) were additional subjects, which were loosened up by numerous pitches.

No only the content provided variety, but also the form with presentations, interviews, panels and pitches has again proved to be successful." [our translation]

His personal top 5 can be found in his blog. Additional impressions were captured by Roman Zenner and Kai-Thomas Krause from ecomPunk. They have published recaps of day 1 and day 2 as well as images from Exceed 2012.

Highly anticipated was the kick-off with Project A Ventures, who don't regard themselves as being "the good guys", but who want to practise a kind of company building different from that of the Samwers at Rocket Internet. Also, they would like to support founders regarding data and process know-how.

Also this year, we were enthusiastic about the Kalkscheune's atmosphere, with its various possibilities for networking on two levels. In the hall, in the courtyard, in the smaller rooms and the manifold lounge corners one could exchange openly or privately and talk to like-minded people and/or investors. Regarding the guest list (thanks again to Stylight for the visualisation!) one could make contact on many levels.

We thank all participants and supporters for their openness and their extraordinary engagement![source:excitingcommerce.com]

Picture of Demandware: Stephan Schambach Succeeds With Second IPO [source:excitingcommerce.com]

Prior to the IPO there was already talk of this being a personal victory for the former Intershop founder:

That would be a big day for Demandware founder and chairman Stephan Schambach. Previously the founder of e-commerce software provider Intershop Communications, which went public in 2000, Schambach currently owns 19.6 percent of Demandware. He would own 15.7 percent after an IPO a relatively high figure for a company founder.

According to the prospectus, Demandware turned over $56.5 million last year, an increase of 54% from 2010. Nevertheless, net figures showed a loss of $1.4 million.

In the year before, the company managed profits of $309,000. Originally, Demandware wanted to go public in July 2011 and at that point in time were aiming to raise $100 million. The largest Demandware customer is Neckermann.

Demandware is profiting from the prolonged e-commerce euphoria which has helped many other shop system providers successfully go public (ATG, GSI, Magento, Hybris, etc.).

Originally posted in German by Matthias Hell, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.[source:excitingcommerce.com]

Picture of Tablet sales stronger than ever [source:excitingcommerce.com]

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