The startup launched today with the mission of “streamlining and simplifying” e-commerce. On the site, you find a range of products and categories. If you see something you like, such as an LED light pillow, a soft-service ice cream maker, or J. Crew silk blouse, you hit the “tiks” button to save the item for later. You can also create alerts for future deals, share items with friends, or go directly to the original sale site. In addition to products, it also deals on experiences and services like yoga classes or house cleaning.

“Most online shoppers spend too much time browsing different online shops in search of a product they are looking for,” said founder Raffi Keuhnelian in an email. “By combining flash sales, product search, and daily deals, users can actually find what they are looking for.” 

Rather than the daily deals email model, which many consumers have grown tired of, TikTatkTo’s approach is to put all the deals on one page that updates in real-time based on the users’ location. The technology also learns from the users behavior to recommend products, and the “popular,” “new arrivals,” and “best sellers” sections help with product discovery.

E-commerce is an increasingly crowded space as companies big and small attempt to create the ultimate online shopping experience. Some sites like Amazon offer vast inventories and low prices, while companies like Polyvore and Wanelo take more curated, social approaches. Groupon and Living Social inspired a dozens of fellow daily deal startups, and then there are web extensions like Honey that crawl the web for coupon codes and tries them for you automatically.

TikTakTo is the latest startup to join the fray by taking bits and pieces of all these approaches to provide aggregation, curation, social feeds, and discounts all in one.

The company is based in Montreal, Canada and currently has 10 employees.

Photo credit: eilowny/Flickr

Online wunderstore Fab.com says it racked up million-dollar daily sales during the Black Friday/Cyber Monday rush that kicked off holiday shopping.

Between November 23 and yesterday, November 29, Fab.com moved a total of $6.5 million in design-forward products. On Monday, November 26 — Cyber Monday, if you will — the site hit an all-time record with $1.3 million in sales, and the daily average for sales was $933,500 during that entire week-long period.

And as for every retail outlet, late November is just the beginning — the beginning of a four-week period that yields some of the highest volumes they’ll see all year.

“This coming Monday December 3, 2012 is the official Cyber Monday in the United Kingdom,” said Fab CEO Jason Goldberg in a post on the flash sales site’s flashy stats. Fab recently launched via acquisition in the UK, so Goldberg et al. are expecting big numbers from Europe, as well.

In preparation for a blockbuster holiday, the startup launched a new lineup of mobile apps back in October. One offshoot of that effort, Goldberg noted, was that a full third of the company’s sales came from mobile devices.

The company also launched holiday shops to eliminate analysis paralysis and increase sales, and it also introduced free shipping for all orders — a sweet bennie that won’t go away when the holidays end.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Here’s a sneak peek at the new iOS app lineup for Fab.com. The startup’s previous lineup was so last year.

No, for real, Fab first launched its mobile applications exactly 364 days ago, and if there’s anything we know about this social shopping powerhouse, it’s that Fab will change anything and everything over and over again, and the changes will be awesome.

Also, the Fab mobile experience will now be available in 24 countries around the world, a first for the young startup that’s quite in line with co-founder Jason Goldberg’s Amazonian ambitions.

Take a look:

The above pics are the result of yet another back-to-the-woodshed moment for the Fab team. As we learned in an email from our Fab contacts, “Six months ago, we took a from-scratch approach to mobile, challenging ourselves to rethink and re-imagine the Fab experience from the ground up as if it was designed entirely with the mobile shopper in mind.”

And here’s a clip of the app in action:

What’s even more eyebrow-raising than the Extreme Makeover: Mobile Edition is the user growth the service has seen in the same amount of time. At the first mobile launch, Fab counted a tidy 750,000 users. Now, Fab.com has more than 7.5 million members.

Right now, about one third of Fab’s traffic and sales each day come from mobile. Over the next few months, the company will be pushing that number even higher, with a half-and-half goal for desktop-mobile ratios.

Fab.com’s desktop version just got a major makeover itself back in May. The new design puts a large emphasis on social interactions.

“Up to 40 percent of our traffic comes from social feeds,” Goldberg told us at that time.

“You can’t force that. Social isn’t just a way to get something from the user; it’s a way to give value to the user. The traffic will come when you deliver a great experience.”

Sounds like the company is taking the same philosophy with mobile. And those great experiences Goldberg et al. keep creating is one of the reasons we’re so excited to see what Fab will do next.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Members-only Flash sales site PLNDR is going mobile.

The website is launching its first iPhone app today as it aims to take advantage of its increasingly mobile-focused user base. 30 percent of its traffic already comes from mobile, so creating an app has become a necessity, the company said.

PLNDR, which has 1.7 million users, offers users time sensitive deals on clothes, shoes and a variety of other apparel – often at highly discounted rates. PLNDR is also inherently viral: Users can earning $10 by signing up friends who end up buying something from the site.

The iOS app offers largely the same set of features as its website, with the addition of mobile-only sales and a variety of other “surprises.”

Greg Selkoe, CEO of PLNDR parent company Karmaloop, says that PLNDR wants to do more than replicate the web in an app. “Our strategy is much more involved than just PLNDR on mobile – stay tuned to see what we have cookin’!” he said in an email to VentureBeat.

The app was designed by Xtreme Labs. Inc, which has also created apps for Fandango, Reuters, Vevo, Groupon, and many others.K

The Boston-based Karmaloop is backed by a $35 million investment from Insight Venture Partners.  Launched in 2010, PLNDR earned $16 million last year.

Photo via Andrew Archy/Flickr

What do you get for the site that sells everything? A UK expansion via acquisition, of course!

Yes, design flash-sale phenom Fab.com is celebrating the end of its first full year in business, and part of that celebration is the purchase of Llustre.com, a bold-faced Fab clone in the UK. You’ll now find the Llustre team doing business as UK.Fab.com.

If you’re feeling a bit of deja vu, you may recall that Fab recently expanded into Europe in much the same way when it acquired German Fab clone Cassandra.de just a few months ago.

We’ve long known that international expansion was a big part of Fab’s plans for 2012. So, when we saw on Facebook that Fab.com founder Jason Goldberg was gallivanting around Europe, we guessed the Royal Jubilee wasn’t the (only) reason. And whaddaya know, our acquisition suspicions turned out to be correct.

“We believe that everyone everywhere benefits from great design. We have a big big vision to bring Fab to every part of the world,” Goldberg wrote on the company blog this morning.

In the recent past, Goldberg has told us that his ambitions for the startup run large — one could even say Amazonian. And global expansion is a strong sign that Goldberg’s goals might not be unrealistic.

As always, the company is reporting rapid and robust growth. Membership sits at 5 million, up from 3 million in March of this year. (Goldberg told us a few months ago that he’d hoped to reach the 5-million mark by the end of the year; we’re wondering what the new goal will be.)

And those members have bought nearly 2 million individual products over the past year, leading to the kind of jaw-dropping revenue that has made Fab so popular with its investors.

“Fab.com is one of the fastest growing companies we’ve ever seen, not just compared to other Menlo Ventures portfolio companies, but e-commerce companies in general,” said investor Pravin Vazirani from Menlo Ventures, who is also a Fab.com board member. “They’ve obviously struck a chord with consumers and are capitalizing on that in a major way.”

Fab.com announced a big, shiny relaunch just last month. Go check it out and buy yourself something nice — to celebrate Fab’s birthday, of course.

SessionM raises $20M

Advertising and customer engagement company SessionM has raised $20 million in second-round funding to help turn any mobile application into a customer retention game. SessionM provides tools to advertisers and app publishers that let them add gamification to their apps. Charles River Ventures led the funding round, with participation from Highland Capital Partners and Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers.

Mojo Motors fuels up with funding

Used-car shopping site Mojo Motors has raised $3 million. The site helps you find discounts on used cars and sends you alerts for new used-car listings. Atlas Venture led the round, with participation from existing investors RPM Ventures and NextView Ventures.

Ziften grabs $5.5M

Ziften has raised $5.5 million in its second round. The company manages application processes running on remote and local enterprise desktops to keep processing performance high. With its funding, it has released its first product, Behavioral Lightweight Intelligence for Stressed Systems (BLISS). Fayez Sarofim & Co. led the round.

CopperEgg gets funding

Cloud monitoring and analytics company CopperEgg has raised $2.1 million in funding. The company manages server performance whether on-site or in the cloud. Silverton Partners was the lead investor, joined by Webb Investment Network and others.

SportPursuit scores $2.3M

UK flash site for high-end sports brands SportPursuit has raised $2.3 million in funding. The site sells designer outdoor and camping products at a discount so they don’t end up in bargain shops. DFJ Esprit led the round.

Dysonics receives seed funding

Rawah Partners led a $750,000 seed funding round for Dysonics, a mobile audio company. The stealthy company is developing 3-D audio sound technology for headphones, aiming to create a more immersive listening experience.

Lujure announces $500K round

Custom Facebook page builder Lujure has raised $500,000 in funding. The site lets anyone quickly build a flashy Facebook fan page without code. Undisclosed angel investors from Modea, Rackspace, and TechStars participated in the round.

Equals6 gets $250K

Career-development social networking platform for students Equals6 has raised $250,000. Innovacorp led the round.

Used car sign via Flickr user GmanViz

Q: Where did you get the idea for your business?

Jason Ross: Growing up, I had always been into clothing inspired by the street, skate, and surf worlds, especially during my college years. I realized that there was this huge hole in the market for guys like myself who were looking to buy the brands that we loved — but at affordable prices. I began to research the private shopping club model that was taking off in Europe, and I set out to bring it to the U.S. and address the lack of online retail options for guys.

Q: How did you fund your startup?

Ross: With no initial investors, I worked endless odd jobs at night trying to make ends meet, took out credit cards and personal loans, and I relied on the support of my family and friends. In total, there was $85,000 in personal debt — however, the money I earned from night and weekend jobs, as well as bootstrapping the business, ensured I was always chipping away at the debt I had accumulated.

As a young entrepreneur, it’s easy to feel stuck when there is little to no funding in a project. One of the best things I did was to constantly seek help and advice from mentors, retail professionals, and e-commerce experts. I had a great relationship with a professor at Ohio State who assigned the production of my website to his class. This helped cut costs on web development.

Q: Which startup hires were crucial for your company’s success?

Ross: For the first two and a half years, I was the only JackThreads team member. I met my first employee a few days after launch the site — a young guy who had just graduated from Ohio State. He fixed every bug on the website in only two weeks! Then it was just the two of us until we hired someone to ship packages full-time. As different tasks in the company became too much for either one of us to handle, we have hired new team members and watched our company continue to grow.

However, I learned pretty quickly that hiring someone to fit a job function — rather than a role in the bigger picture — is a huge mistake. Hiring slow and waiting for the person who was the best match proved to be a much better strategy.

Q: What has been the lowest point/biggest struggle for your startup?

Ross: As the company grew, I approached more and more brands and develop relationships with vendors at trade shows and conferences. Showing up at every event helped to cement these relationships, and they have proved invaluable to the business. But further down the line, I realized that I had focused so much on growth that I didn’t pay attention to the technologies we used to support customer demand. This nearly destroyed my business; we got to a point where we outgrew our technology platform and had to rebuild a brand new one in order to operate the business most efficiently. Even this has come with challenges.

Q: What has been the proudest moment of your company career…so far?

Ross: One proud moment arrived when five suitors simultaneously sought to either invest in or acquire JackThreads. It was difficult to choose who to work with and who to pass up, but I trusted my gut instinct to make one of the best business decisions I’ve ever made. We were acquired by Thrillist.com in 2010, and have been working closely together ever since. I’ve learned important lessons from Thrillist’s management and business model. Even more so, there is so much value in our collaboration, since our brands and products are featured in Thrillist’s daily e-newsletters that are sent to over 3 million subscribers. Today, we’re a $50 million dollar business with offices in SoHo, NY and separately in Columbus, OH.  Our 80,000-square-f00t warehouse is located in Brooklyn. We’re constantly expanding the network of brands we’re working with, acquiring new customers, and growing our team.

Q: What unique piece of advice can you pass onto other entrepreneurs?

Ross: One of the toughest careers out there is being an entrepreneur, and the only way to get through it is to be genuinely passionate about what you’re doing. I’d heard this advice a million times before, but ignored it early in my career. You have to love what you do every day, and you have to be extremely passionate about it. I created a company that was truly an extension of who I am and something I honestly cared about. That alone got me through all the hurdles that inevitably go with starting a company.

Q: What common misconception about entrepreneurship have you think is untrue?

Ross: I think it’s a misconception that you need a substantial amount of financial backing when initially launching a business. You definitely need to raise some sort of capital, but my experience creating JackThreads is proof that there are definitely ways to limit costs and do it on a bootstrapped budget. For example, instead of hiring a company to build the website, I worked with a professor in the computer science department at Ohio State University to have his students build the site as part of a class project. I also had no marketing budget in the first year, and so I cold-called blogs and other online publications with hopes that they would promote JackThreads by offering their readers special membership codes or links. In that first year alone, we reached 35,000 members without spending anything on marketing.

Q: How do you see the experience of online retail/shopping clubs changing in the future?

Ross: The men’s online shopping space is currently thriving, but it’s definitely close to reaching a saturation point. I think that the trend of retailers trying to be all things to all people will eventually burn out, and the sites that really focus on a niche demographic will gain loyalty from their audience and continue to do well. JackThreads focuses on a very specific group of guys — ages 18-35. I think there will be longevity in specificity, personalization and consistently delivering consumers products that are directly relevant to their needs.

Scott Gerber is the founder of the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only nonprofit organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. The YEC leads  #FixYoungAmerica, a solutions-based movement that aims to end youth unemployment and put young Americans back to work.

“Actually, it was kind of like keeping it in the family,” he told VentureBeat during a recent interview. Makes sense, given that Thrillist founder Ben Lerer counts Bob Pittman, founder of MTV, as one of his closest advisors.

Thrillist has been growing like a weed and recently announced that it was henceforth going to be a “media” company. Rahmani, who is the company’s first ever business development hire tried to explain the subtle importance of the shift in title.

“We’ve always had a focus on building a really strong voice and connecting commerce and editorial content. The guys we speak to are an elusive, affluent demographic, and their BS detector is finely tuned. As a media company, we’re able to offer big brands a way to target that group in a way that reaches them.”

Case in point is MTV which partnered with JackThreads, the flash sales site that Thrillist purchased back in May of 2010. The acquisition prompted a round of “media meets commerce” headlines. Rahmani helped to set up a partnership for the release of MTV’s iconic Beavis and ButtHead on DVD and Blue-Ray. JackThreads brought in a design team who pulled inspiration from Thrasher Magazine and lent the merchandise some much-needed street cred.

Thrillist is essentially offering itself up as a turn-key e-commerce platform. You’ve got a venerable product you want to sell, but don’t have the chops to start something from scratch in the fast paced world of online commerce. Thrillist will help with the creative and move merchandise through to the millions of followers on their e-mail list and Facebook page.

“We’ve built up a lot of trust with these guys over the years,” says Rahmani (not to mention a lot of data). “Now we’re committed to finding high value partnerships that fit with what Thrillist has always been about, and keep expanding the scope of what our company can do.”

The company’s news is fourfold:

First, the site is nearing the 2 million member mark and should hit that target “any day now,” according to the company blog.

For an invite-only retail site, that’s huge. It’s also huge when you consider the site’s growth trajectory over the past few months; they’re totally hockeystickin’.

Observe:

Second, the team has rolled out Shops, a beautiful and handy new way to browse the site’s ever-changing roster of products.

Fab Shops will help to organize Fab’s flash sales by category rather than just by designer, so you can see all the home decor items at once, all the apparel items, etc. Moreover, you can sort those shops by price and popularity.

Observe:

Third, Fab is now no longer an invite-only site; anyone can trot on over and sign up to shop to their anatomically correct heart’s content.

And finally, Fab.com is taking its business into international waters. The service will go live for Canadians within a few days, and the team is making similar arrangements in Europe “very soon.”

All things considered, it looks like CEO Jason Goldberg & Co. are getting ready to take over the world.

“We’re planning to grow from 2 million members to 5 million this year worldwide,” Goldberg said in an email to VentureBeat. “We’re prepared to handle it.”

The company used some strategic funding to accomplish this growth; it took an $8 million round in late July 2011 and a relatively huge, relatively quick $40 million just a few months later in December.

Sulky James Dean model needs a new gig

After denying early reports that big layoffs were coming to Gilt Groupe, CEO Kevin Ryan confirmed today that the Gilt Groupe had let go between 80-90 staffers, about 10 percent of its overall workforce. Gilt announced the depature of two executives, John Auerbach of Park and Bond and Nate Richardson, president of Gilt City. And it said it will close down six offices regional offices in Seattle, Dallas and Atlanta San Diego, Houston and Philadelphia.

My former site Betabeat was the first publication to report on the layoffs. Ryan responded via All Things D, where he called the reports overblown and dsiputed certain specifics which turned out to be accurate, like the fact that John Auerbach was on his way out. In total, Ryan said Gilt expected to cut about 50 staffers.  That turned out be downplaying the cutbacks.

New York magazine reported that the lean times at Gilt extended beyond staffing changes. “A refrigerator in one office is said to bear a sign that reads, ‘Gilt has made a New Year’s Resolution to cut the following items from our purchasing diet across all locations: all fruits, all yogurt, all cheeses, Thomas’ English muffins, granola and health bars, Rice Krispie treats, Poptarts, and Pellegrino.’”

Gilt Groupe raised $138 million in May of 2010, and Ryan has been adamant that these cuts will get the company to cash flow positive and eventually profit in time for an IPO in late 2012 or 2013. He has said that Gilt Groupe could now run with a leaner staff, having set up a number of new businesses in the last year outside its founding flash sales market.

There have been a lot of cuts around the daily deal industry lately. BuyWithMe, which was eventually acquired by Gilt, axed hundreds of staffers. Rue La La laid off around 65 workers in its Boston and Lot18, trimmed its staff after poaching an executive from Gilt. All and all a game of musical chairs as the fast growing sector falls back to earth a bit in the wake of Groupon’s underwhelming IPO.

The company, which initially started out as Fabulis, a social network for gay men, announced yesterday that it has raised $40 million in a second round of funding led by Andreessen Horowitz.

Additionally, Fab says it has grown by a 300,000 new members in the past two months, with a subscriber base of 1.2 million today. In its social network days, Fab struggled to reach more than 150,000 members.

The funding comes just six months after Fab.com launched, and the company says it will be used to “rapidly grow the business” throughout the next year. No big surprise there, but it’ll be interesting to see what else Fab can do to differentiate itself from its flash sales rivals like Ideeli. The company currently offers design-focused deals across categories like jewelry, artwork, and clothes for up to 70 percent off retail prices.

New York City-based Fab.com previously raised $8 million in its first round of funding after becoming profitable at just six weeks old. Existing investors include Menlo Ventures, First Round Capital, SoftTech VC, Baroda Ventures, and Ashton Kutcher. Andreessen general partner Jeff Jordan will be joining Fab.com’s board.

If I told you that the flash sales sites of today would give birth to the offline retail experience of tomorrow, you’d probably laugh in my face. Who would want to take the “e” out of e-commerce in uncertain economic times such as these? Bright-eyed recent Wharton MBA graduates looking to reinvent retail, that’s who.

Aymeric de Hemptinne, Cherif Habib and Stephan Jacob, co-founders of Kembrel, a one year-old flash sales site geared toward college kids with expensive tastes and limited budgets, are expanding their vision to give customers a more tangible experience with a brick-and-mortar retail location in Philadelphia.

The trio hope to open boutiques on college campuses and marry offline and online commerce in a way that hasn’t been done before, Jacob told VentureBeat in an exclusive interview.

They are, befittingly, doing it in a scrappy, college-like manner on dime-store budgets. Kembrel’s co-founders have pooled together a meager $1 million round of funding from MentorTech Ventures, Blazer Ventures and their own couch-cushion piggybanks to finance the endeavor.

The Philadelphia store, which opened on November 18, is a small, one-employee shop outfitted with furniture on consignment. The team has plans to target distressed, low-rent retail properties for future locations.

“What we’re trying is a minimal investment retail concept,” Jacob said when asked about the risk involved in taking an online business to the streets. “The key is in the linking of the two [offline with online], and using a physical presence as a branding tool. We’re giving customers the option to shop, try and engage with brand offline, but we still offer … the convenience of online shopping.”

Just 11 days after opening, Jacob said the store is already proving that the model can work. “We’re already seeing conversions … people coming from the website into the store, and customers visiting the store and later returning to the website,” he said.

Kembrel’s online-only approach to selling to college students has worked marginally well. The startup has accrued 32,000 online subscribers and 400 VIP members who pay for the privilege of extra benefits with site partners. It has even been touted in CosmoGirl and TeenVogue as the perfect site for young, penny-pinching trendsetters.

“College students are at the very beginning of the consumption and branding lifecycle … and they’re building preferences now,” Jacob said. “But brands are struggling to reach this demographic in a genuine manner. We can be a vehicle for these brands to reach the demographic … by incorporating customers in the experience and the curation of the product, and providing them access to merchandise that they would not be able to afford.”

The formula heretofore has been centered around introducing fashion labels to consumers-in-the-making, with actual students serving as conduits between brands and entry-level fashion buyers. The Kembrel website features both discounted, college-lifestyle-themed collections for boys and girls, and an outlet store for limited-run flash sales events.

The newly added in-store experience is designed to help the company, and its brand partners, connect with customers on a more intimate level, as well as develop the association between the Kembrel name and cool college wares. The stores will provide customers offline access to Kembrel’s online collections, and feature crafted products from local designers, but the outlet element will remain web-only.

“We’re creating a holistic experience for anyone walking into the store, and replicating that experience on the web,” Jacob added.

Kembrel, founded in 2010, is based in Philadelphia and operates a satellite office in Montreal, Canada. The startup has six employees and already has plans to open a second store in Philadelphia.

Gilt Groupe announced today that its online flash sales site will soon be available in over 90 countries outside of the US.

The news is yet another sign of growth for Gilt, which helped to popularize the members only flash sales trend when it launched in 2007. The company also recently purchased the luxury daily deals site BuyWithMe, the third-place daily deals site behind Groupon and LivingSocial. With global ambitions, Gilt’s audience, as well as its list of participating designers (it’s already working with over 6,000 designer brands), will surely skyrocket.

Gilt will offer free shipping to international customers for a limited time. Users outside of the US will be able to make purchases thorough its mobile website and apps, including iPhone, iPad, and Android, starting next month. The company is working together with global commerce company FiftyOne to manage international currency conversion, transactions, and delivery.

Gilt Groupe’s recent $138 million funding round valued the company at $1 billion. The company had 3.5 million members as of May.

The company, which is based in New York and New Delhi, launched in June of 2010. When I talked to co-founder and chief executive Sunjay Guleria earlier this week, he told me he doesn’t see Exclusively.In as a niche site. It serves the Indian community in the US, of course, but he noted that there’s a growing interest outside that community as well. And the company is going international today, making its deals available to customers in the United Kingdom. Exclusively.In plans to add Canada and India in the next few months.

Exclusively.In follows the “flash sale” model popularized by companies like Gilt Groupe — the deals are only available to members, and only for a limited period of time. Guleria suggested that as the site grows, he’s open to adding other programs.

The new funding comes from Tiger Global Management, with participation from past investors Accel Partners India and Helion Venture Partners. (Accel’s US team has also invested in Groupon, the most famous company in the current social commerce wave.) Exclusively.In has now raised $18.8 million.

The site, which has over 4 million members, offers limited-time offers on apparel, accessories, shoes, and jewellery, intended to target men, women and children. Starting at 11am each day, sales last for 36 hours or until sold out, and have featured prominent brands such as Calvin Klein, D&G, French Connection.

Founder and CEO Paul Hurley told AllThingsD the funds will be used to “support growth and expansion plans, including new categories, partnerships, technology initiatives, marketing campaigns and hiring.”

With players such as Groupon and LivingSocial carrying multibillion dollar valuations, the deal shopping space has seen a lot of financial interest. Ideeli’s main and closest competitor, Gilt Groupe, has also raised up to $100 million and is supposedly in talks to raise another $80 – $100 million from private investors.

Ideeli was founded in 2007 and raised a $3.8 million round in December that year, following up with a $20 million round in 2008. The latest round brings its total funding to $64.8 million. Investors in this round include Next World Capital with Cue Ball Capital, StarVest Partners, Constellation Growth Capital and Kodiak Venture Partners.

The deal is funded in part by $123 million in fresh cash from General Atlantic, Highland Capital Partners, Index Ventures, and Insight Venture Partners, as well as debt and newly issued shares.

Those are big numbers, and they come on top of a $95 million round just last October from General Atlantic and Index.

Privalia is a private-sales site that offers members deep discounts on apparel and other items for a short period of time. Others in the flash-sales category include Rue La La, now owned by GSI Commerce; Gilt Groupe, which offers deals in apparel and travel; and One Kings Lane, a home-décor site. The limited time horizon for offers, combined with a curated array of merchandise and new social tools, serves to drive demand from consumers looking to buy something new.

That customer base — those who view shopping as entertainment and largely made up of women — is potentially much larger than the hardcore online shoppers who became loyal online shoppers a decade ago.

The first wave of e-commerce, transactional and efficient, did catalogs one better by offering a nearly limitless array of merchandise and selling it cheaply and quickly. It satisfied demand, rather than creating it.

Private-sales sites, daily deals purveyors like Groupon, and other new forms of e-commerce promise to do something much bigger and more difficult: create demand. Successful traditional retailers excel at this, turning their stores into showcases of consumer delight and convincing people to reach for their pocketbooks for something they had no intention of buying when they walked into the store.

Privalia seems to have an edge in fast-growing overseas markets. Gilt currently operates in the U.S. and Japan. GSI, which is publicly traded, spent $350 million acquiring Rue La La and could expand quickly. A lot of capital is flowing into the sector. But unlike earlier waves of e-commerce, which required building and stocking warehouses to guarantee the availability of those vast virtual shelves of merchandise, the new e-commerce tends to move products quickly, making it an appealing investment to venture capitalists who might shy away from plowing their capital into inventory.

Instead, the money in this second wave of e-commerce is going into customer acquisition, technology, and some financial maneuvers — like Privalia’s rollup of Dress-for-Less.

Silicon Alley Insider reported today that Gilt Groupe is raising $80 – $100 million from private market investors. The deal will value Gilt at around $1 billion. If it goes through, the deal will show that the social shopping market is still red hot and could represent a big challenge to traditional online retailers such as Amazon.

The investment talks come on the heels of last week’s big shopping exit, where Nordstrom bought HauteLook for $270 million.

To date, the New York-based Gilt Groupe has already raised more than $80 million in several rounds from Matrix, General Atlantic and others. Revenue is expected to be near $500 million in the current fiscal year, with valuation for the new financing hitting about two times revenue. That’s pretty similar to the price paid for HauteLook.

Gilt Groupe was founded by Kevin Ryan, Dwight Merriman, Alexis Maybank, Alexandra Wilkis Wilson, and others in 2007. Gilt Groupe competes with the market leader of the “private sale” market, Vente-Privee in France. In these markets, you have to apply to join in order to get access to the good deals. Other rivals include Rue La La, One Kings Lane, Zulily and Ideeli.

The overall social shopping category is seeing big growth thanks to players such as Groupon and Living Social. Amazon bought its own flash-sale site, BuyVIP, last fall.

From One Kings Lane to Plum District and Abe’s Market, from Stella & Dot to Bonobos, we’re seeing a generation of companies that are rethinking relationships with vendors and acting as middlemen and marketplaces as much as they are merchants.

Today, One Kings Lane, an online home-décor seller, announced a new $23 million round of funding from Kleiner Perkins, its earliest backer, and Greylock Partners, a firm masterminding the social Web from Facebook on down.

That follows right after Thursday’s announcement of $3.4 million raised for Abe’s Market, a marketplace for natural goods, in a round led by Accel Partners, an investor in Groupon. And just last month, we saw a purchase of a $37 million stake in Stella & Dot, a startup which sells jewelry through a network of independent sellers, by Sequoia Capital, and an $8.5 million investment by Kleiner Perkins in Plum District, a mom-focused, Amway-like Groupon competitor in the daily deals market. December saw Bonobos, an online menswear retailer, raise $18.5 million from Accel Partners and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

It’s clear that Accel and Kleiner are taking the lead in investing in the next wave of e-commerce, one that emphasizes social links and an engaging — even fun — user experience that matches the thrill of shopping offline.

But a common thread between these businesses is the extent to which they’re shedding the old image of e-commerce as a capital-intensive business laden with expensive warehouses and inventory and embracing a matchmaking role between suppliers and consumers.

Abe’s Market may be the purest example of this. Many manufacturers of natural goods are microbusinesses — lone entrepreneurs or mom-and-pop shops. They struggle to get their wares into stores, and when they sell through megasites like Amazon.com or eBay, they find themselves so low down in the search results that they fail to do much volume.

Cofounder Jon Polin told me that he views Abe’s Market as an online analog to the farmer’s markets where many of these vendors sell their products today. Abe’s is the merchant of record on purchases, meaning it shows up on customers’ credit-card bills, but it doesn’t stock any merchandise. Instead, it passes orders on to its 300 or so vendors. Its secret may lie in making the experience easy for vendors, who are usually stuck with awkward Web interfaces, arcane rules, and demanding fulfillment processes. In exchange for taking 30 percent of a transaction’s retail price, Abe’s handles shipping costs — and even provides a printable three-part order slip that a vendor can use to pick an order, pack it, and send it (on Abe’s dime).

Plum District, too, takes a different approach in dealing with the small businesses it solicits for deals. Unlike Groupon and LivingSocial, the two biggest players in the deep-discount daily deals market, Plum District doesn’t have its own sales force. Instead, it solicits independent salespeople, mostly moms, to both cajole local businesses into offering discounts and then signing up customers to take the deal. Since the moms get a cut of the action, they’re motivated to make the discount offer work for the local business. That’s an innovative take on a key part of the daily-deals model, which requires aggressive, one-on-one solicitation of offers from businesses.

Stella & Dot, like Plum District, uses a network of independent sellers. CEO and cofounder Jessica Herrin recently took some time out to demo her new mobile Web app. There are a ton of new shopping apps, from players like Amazon.com and eBay on down. But they’re all designed around making it easier for consumers to check prices and purchase goods on the go. Here’s the genius of Stella & Dot’s app: It’s designed for the independent style consultants who sell Stella & Dot jewelry from their homes at “trunk show” parties, letting them play videos and share ideas off a smartphone or tablet. Imagine handing your iPhone over to a friend to show them a gorgeous new bracelet: That’s far friendlier — and likelier to lead to a sale — than awkwardly turning a laptop around. By investing in technology for its sellers, Stella & Dot is making a smart bet on its business model.

One Kings Lane, the home-décor startup backed by Kleiner and Greylock today, may look much like Rue La La or Gilt Groupe, a flash-sales merchant which offers event-driven, short-term sales of limited quantities of merchandies at attractive prices. But unlike many flash-sales operators, One Kings Lane isn’t taking on much inventory, CEO Doug Mack told me.

Because of the startup’s low inventory levels, One Kings Lane’s inventory turns — an industry measure for how swiftly merchandise moves off the shelves — are “an order of magnitude above the industry average,” said Mack.

The metric isn’t even that meaningful, he adds, because about half of its orders are drop-shipped, or shipped directly from the manufacturer to the consumer; a third are bulk-shipped after a flash-sales event, which means they stay in a third-party fulfillment warehouse only as long as it takes to break them down and ship them out; and the remainder are kept in stock by One Kings Lane so that it can offer certain items, mostly ones suitable as gifts, year-round.

As a result, little of One Kings Lane’s latest round is going to working capital, Mack told me. Instead, he’s investing in technology, merchandising, marketing, and customer service — areas where there’s far more potential for long-term payoff than stocking more inventory.

Then there’s Bonobos. Like Mack, Bonobos CEO Andy Dunn is proud of his inventory turns. You might not be able to find a given size on Bonobos, but the site takes your email and notifies you when it’s back in stock — a way to quietly gauge demand before placing orders from manufacturers. Bonobos also “curates” some categories of menswear, like accessories, rather than designing its own, passing on orders to other menswear companies compatible with its brand. Both practices serve to keep inventory low.

These fundings total about $90 million — not a huge bet compared to, say, Groupon and LivingSocial’s megafinancings. But they show that e-commerce is heating up as a sector, and that venture capitalists are focused on businesses which are rethinking every aspect of selling.

In the 1990s, e-commerce took the catalog and the superstore online, but didn’t change anything on the back end: Amazon.com was just the reinvention of mail order, the Sear’s Catalog 2.0. eBay popularized the idea of inventory-free marketplaces matching supply and demand. And Groupon showed that everyone loves a deal — both consumers and businesses. Taking inspiration from the early players, these new e-commerce businesses are mixing and matching elements of all these models and creating something genuinely new. That’s why I suspect some of these investments may prove to be the real bargain.

[Photo via TA Lucas]

The members-only sales phenomenon, popularized by Showroomprive rivals like Gilt Groupe and HauteLook, is part of what I’m calling E-commerce 2.0, a wide-ranging rethinking of retailing that’s being enabled by mass adoption of broadband, the buildings of social graph, and the incorporation of the Internet into everyday life. The categories that this includes range from private sales (Gilt) to social deals (Groupon) to location-based shopping (Shopkick) to flash sales (One Kings Lane) and beyond. And public-market investors may soon start taking notice.

I talked about this phenomenon with One Kings Lane CEO Doug Mack yesterday. He’s a dotcom survivor who saw firsthand so much of the first wave of e-commerce crash and burn. The few successful companies in the first wave, like Amazon.com, mostly took the conventional retailing model and moved it online. Now, he says, e-commerce is poised for a rebirth.

“We’re at a renaissance,” said Mack. “What’s happening right now with Shopkick and Groupon and One Kings Lane is that we’re throwing out all the rules.” (Shopkick, like One Kings Lane, is backed by Kleiner Perkins.)

Accel has assembled an impressive portfolio of bets, from Showroomprive and KupiVIP, a similar Russian site, to Groupon, the über-hot social deals site, to Modcloth, a curated, vintage-inspired fashion retailer, as well as Etsy, the handicrafts marketplace, and Quidsi, the parent of Diapers.com and Soap.com.

It can’t hurt that Accel is riding high right now, boosted by its prescient backing of Facebook. But the organized strategy emerging here reminds me of another venture-capital firm: Benchmark Capital in the ’90s.

Benchmark made an early bet on eBay, where partner Bob Kagle correctly saw that the auction format promised something genuinely new. Auctions were exciting in a way that conventional retailing — in the real world or online — wasn’t.

Along the way, eBay stumbled, developing a case of Amazon envy. eBay’s Buy It Now auctions worked like a conventional store, offering the simplicity and efficiency of fixed prices. The tradeoff, however, was that much of the urgency and fun of auctions got lost.

Flash-sales operators like Mack’s One Kings Lane, which started as a home-furnishings site, are bringing that fun back. With limited stock, shoppers need to act fast if they see something they like. Sometimes One Kings Lane only has a single piece for sale, Mack says, to add “texture” to the site. It recently added gourmet food sales, suggesting the model has room to run across more categories.

Groupon has a similar fun element in its social aspect: You have to sign up friends to make a deal effective, whether it’s a discount on brunch or unlimited yoga.

ModCloth and One Kings Lane share another common element: The idea of a curated selection of merchandise. One Kings Lane relies on old-school professional buyers, while ModCloth involves its community more. But the result is similar: an eclectic, surprising collection of goods that offers a reason to return to a site.

eBay was a huge success for its investors, of course. But there’s the inevitable sense that Benchmark might be resting on its laurels. If I were to pick the venture-capital firms leading the charge into E-Commerce 2.0, I’d say Accel and Kleiner have it in the bag.

[Photo: bchai]

The account will offer special limited-time-only offers from advertisers. Advertisers will set the terms of the deals, while Twitter will pick deals it thinks will interest its followers, all while earning a revenue share. The company will start with nationwide offers in the U.S. and then potentially narrow them down by location or type of offer. Twitter hinted that if the project is successful, it might go for fashion or music-focused EarlyBird accounts.

“Every couple days, our Earlybird at Twitter HQ lays a golden egg,” the company said on a wiki explaining the service. “Inside this wondrous egg is a piece of parchment with the day’s magical deal.”

The EarlyBird account makes up yet another potential revenue stream for the company, beyond Promoted Tweets, Trends, and selling real-time data access to Microsoft and Google.

Twitter is taking a page from some heavily venture-backed startups in flash sales and social buying like Gilt Groupe and Groupon that offer limited-time-only deals sometimes paired with built-in viral mechanics that deepen the discount if friends are recruited. It’s not clear if viral mechanics will come to play as central a role to EarlyBird as they have for other social buying startups. Right now, it looks like a very simple first come, first served model.