SheFinds Helps Women Shop More Efficiently Online. SheFinds Media is a blog network and buying guide that helps busy women shop online. SheFinds, which includes MomFinds and recently launched BrideFinds, publishes editorial content featuring click-to-buy items applicable to its specific vertical audience. Editors curate shopping guides for products within each vertical. For example, MomFinds will publish editorial guides for the best toys for kids under 3 years old. Founded in 2004 by Michelle Madhok, SheFinds aims to be a one-stop shop for women’s shopping needs. Madhok was part of the founding team of CBS.com, and headed AOL’s women’s channel, and found there was a need for a women’s-focused site that used human editors to curate the Web for interesting and useful products.
Flash forward seven years and Madhok’s network is generating over $1 million in annual revenues has been profitable almost every year since inception. Shopkick: Our users are checking into deals. Shopkick, a check-in application which lets retailers market offers to consumers, is showing some impressive growth numbers, according to Business Insider. Since its launch in August 2010, the company has attracted 750,000 users and is doing 1 million check ins a day in just 6 months. Shopkick has been described as the “Foursquare for shoppers.” The comparison to the most popular general-purpose check-in service, used by friends to announce their locations to each other, isn’t a surprise. Where Foursquare allows businesses to offer “specials” to its users, Shopkick users who download the iPhone or Android app can check in to millions of stores or restaurants and get “Kickbucks,” which are redeemable for gift cards at a number of retailers.
One differentiator: Shopkick doesn’t require users to actively check in to a location. Instead, they can passively “walk in” to a store when carrying their smartphone and collect a reward. Shopkick isn’t the only service trying automatic check-ins. EBay Bids on a New Path to Growth. Jim Wilson/The New York Times Lorin May, an employee, at eBay’s San Jose, Calif., offices.
John Donahoe, her successor, still has the company on the track, but ’s competitors are moving a whole lot faster. Three years into the job, Mr. Donahoe has made only modest progress in improving growth at the online retailer. He has given the Web site a cosmetic makeover and recast it as an outlet mall where retailers can unload last season’s merchandise, instead of being an all-encompassing auction house. “I think we’re turning a corner,” Mr. Donahoe said in an interview last week. But while eBay’s marketplace revenue grew just 8 percent to $5.7 billion last year, eBay is still losing market share to its rivals, as global e-commerce sales increased 18.9 percent in 2010. widened its lead last year, while , the daily deal service, and a number of specialty retailing sites like Etsy began nipping at eBay’s heels. Mr. EBay’s troubles were a long time coming. Mr. Mr. How E-Commerce Got its Groove Back. James Slavet is a partner at Greylock Partners, and just co-led the new $23 million financing of One Kings Lane.
E-commerce was an innovation wasteland for most of the past decade. While social media companies such as YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter were growing exponentially, breakthrough new commerce start-ups have been few and far between. As our friends at First Round Capital noted in this blog post, 7 out of the top 15 sites on the Web were started in the past decade but only 1 of the top 15 e-commerce sites was started during this same period. Who was that new, major e-commerce entrant? Umm, NewEgg. There haven’t been many exciting financial outcomes, either.
Classic e-commerce businesses were mostly saddled with high customer acquisition costs (loads of Google Adwords spend), low customer retention (one-off transactions), and operating models that consumed cash (due to warehouses full of inventory). But the e-commerce market is big and ripe for innovation.