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 shopping startup Decide.com has raised $8 million in its third round of funding so it can continue to help consumers find the best site and time to buy products using “big data.”

Seattle-based Decide.com claims to sift through more than 230 terabytes of data to find the best-rated products from every major retailer in the United Sates. Maybe more importantly, it also uses that data to predict future prices on 1.6 million products so you can choose the best time to buy. The company started assigning a “Decide Score” to products last July to make the experience better.

“Our goal is to make complex shopping decisions simple for consumers,” Decide.com CEO Mike Fridgen told VentureBeat via email. “When shopping with Decide, consumers see the highest rated products applied to millions of expert and user reviews and know when is the best time to buy based on price predictions derived from billions of historical price observations.”

Decide.com will use the funding to expand products its provides data for. The company’s focus has mostly been on technology and devices, but it will add products from “all e-commerce categories” in the next few weeks. It also plans to hire more engineers to bolster its team.

The new funding round was led by Vulcan Capital, with participation by current investors Maveron and Madrona Venture Group. Including the new cash, Decide.com has raised $17 million to date.

Decide.com also adds two new board members with the cash infusion: Dawn Lepore, formerly the CEO of Drugstore.com, and Vulcan Capital manager director Steve Hall.

“We believe Decide.com’s Big Data approach to monitoring and analyzing product price volatility is poised to disrupt the e-commerce market and deliver huge value to consumers,” Hall said in statement.

Businessman deciding photo via Sergey Nivens/Shutterstock

If you find yourself constantly checking your favorite retailer’s website for new arrivals, Wantr wants to be your middle man. The company raised $600,000 in seed money today to give you alerts as soon as new products appear at your favorite brands.

The funding was led by Seed Capital with participation from the founders of Trendsales and other angel investors.

Customers can save their favorite stores to Wantr and sign up for emails when a new product is available for purchase. The service really captures that “first world problems” vibe but could be good for artisans who have a favorite supply shop and want to see what new materials they can use.

Alongside the alerts system, Wantr also has a Pinterest-like feature that allows customers to share, or “want,” their favorite products that come in. Really, this sounds like a great deal for retailers. They get a really targeted market (people who have signed up to get product announcements from them) and also the opportunity for those products to go “viral” if the Pinterest-like feature ever gains enough users.

What would really be useful is if Wantr let you pick specific items to follow and then alerted you when those items went on sale. That’s one of the main reasons I go back to my favorite stores’ websites, and having this automated actually fills a consumer need.

The company was founded in 2012 and officially launched to the public in 2013. It is headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Child shopping image via Shutterstock

These are two of the biggest stats in Alibaba’s newest visual overview of the Chinese e-commerce market. Alibaba is China’s online shopping giant — the company sold over $175 billion worth of products in 2012, and it owns TMall, which manages online sales for thousands of Chinese companies, as well as Taobao, which is, roughly, the Chinese version of eBay.

Alibaba, which Yahoo partially owns, made history in 2012 by racking up $3 billion in sales in a single day.

Sixty percent of those 242 million Chinese have incomes of less than $320 a month, but the average Chinese user spends almost as much online as U.S consumers: $1,054 — mostly because online prices are cheaper than in a store.

Alibaba reports that 54 percent of Chinese shop online at TMall — its own online shopping mall — with only 3 percent shopping at Joyo Amazon, which is Amazon’s Chinese division. Interestingly, 68 percent of what they buy is clothing and accessories, with much lower rates for digital goods, consumer electronics, and media.

Alibaba predicts that 2013 will be the year that Chinese e-commerce surpasses U.S e-commerce, with $265 billion in sales compared to a projected $230 billion for America, and that total Chinese online sales will reach $445 billion in 2015.

All the details in visual form:

photo credit: Sprengben [why not get a friend] via photopin cc

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Chances are good that you’re guilty of showrooming, or scoping out a product in a physical retail store before buying it online (likely at a significant discount). Now a new study from the location analytics company Placed shows which retailers are most at risk for showrooming from Amazon customers — and the results might surprise you.

In “Aisle to Amazon: How Amazon is impacting brick-and-mortar retailers,” Placed found that showrooming affects Bed Bath & Beyond, Petsmart, and Toys “R” Us more than other retailers typically associated with the phenomenon, like Best Buy and Target.

The study is based on 14,925 survey responses in the U.S., coupled with nearly 1 billion location data points measured by Placed across the country in January. With the proliferation of smartphones, price-matching apps, and other tools, showrooming is one of the biggest concerns for traditional retailers.

“Amazon was the clear winner in e-commerce 1.0, and unless brick-and-mortar retailers shift from reactive to proactive, Amazon will win e-commerce 2.0 on the backs of offline retailers,” said David Shim, Placed’s founder and chief executive. “All the attention to date has been on Target and Best Buy as the early victims of showrooming, but significantly more retailers are at risk. Retailers need to know that it’s not a question of if or when showrooming will impact their business, as an aisle to Amazon is already in their store.”

As you can see from the chart, Bed Bath & Beyond faced a 27 percent higher risk of showrooming than the average, while Petsmart had a 25 percent risk. In comparison, showroomers were only 20 percent more likely to visit Best Buy and 15 percent more likely to visit Target.

Both Best Buy and Target recently announced that they would match prices from online stores, a clear sign that they’re ready to take on the issue of showroomers. Placed’s study shows that plenty of other retailers will need to follow in their footsteps.

Here are a few other intriguing details from the report:

• Users of Amazon’s Price Check app were 53 percent more likely to visit T.J. Maxx than the average consumer and 49 percent more likely to visit Costco.
• Wal-Mart was relatively safe from showroomers — they were 10 percent to 15 percent less likely to visit Wal-Mart, compared to Target and Best Buy.
• At the same time, Wal-Mart is the most popular destination for Amazon customers (not just showroomers); 25.2 percent of Amazon customers surveyed visited a Wal-Mart store in January. Target was a distant second at just 10.7 percent of Amazon customers.

Photo via Shutterstock

In it’s never-ending quest to take on Amazon, Google has snapped up Channel Intelligence, a company that offers a variety of products to drive online shopping sales, for $125 million.

Channel Intelligence announced the news on its website this morning. The company was a launch partner with Google Shopping, and it claims that  it tracks nearly 15 percent of U.S. online transactions and drives $2 billion in annual sales online.

Channel Intelligence’s products include “Where-to-Buy,” which brands can use to link any digital asset to retail locations, potentially increasing sales by letting consumers know when their favorite retailers offer a product. It has also developed technology for Google shopping to “maximize sales and Return on ad spend.”

Ultimately, buying Channel Intelligence would be a simple way for Google to make Google Shopping more useful to both customers and retailers. I’ve used the service occasionally, but most of the time I would rather deal with a retailer I like (Amazon or Newegg) rather than find the best deal in a sea of options. If Channel Intelligence can make Google Shopping more worthwhile, it’d be a big step up for Google.

The company’s customers include Target, Philips, HP, and Best Buy. Google has been strangely quiet about the deal, so we’ve dropped a line for more information. The deal is expected to close in the first quarter. Channel Intelligence is one of ICG Group’s consolidated companies, and ICG says it will receive around $60.5 million from the deal.

Via Business Insider; Photo via Shutterstock

A simple Swingline stapler from the office supply chain Staples could cost you either $15.79 or $14.29, depending on where you live.  And the same is true for other products from Staples, as well as at Home Depot’s online store and other retailers, according to a new report by the Wall Street Journal.

Such pricing differences are common in brick and mortar retail stores, but it’s a new development on the web, where physical location has traditionally mattered less (except when calculating taxes, and in some cases shipment costs). Inspired by academic research in online price discrimination from Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya and Telefonica Research, the WSJ built a custom solution to test out precisely what influenced prices at online retailers.

In addition to a customer’s general location, Staples offered discounted prices to customers within 20 miles of rival stores like OfficeMax and Office Depot, the WSJ found — which ended up being the single biggest factor in price differences. As a consequence of that, Staples ended up offering higher prices to less wealthy customers in rural and urban areas, where there aren’t many stores.

Rosetta Stone, which offers language learning software, also offered significant discounts to customers based on their location. The company admitted to the WSJ that it tests different bundles and prices in different areas, and it also personalizes deals based on how people reach the site.

As we move towards a more personalized web experience for ads and shopping recommendations, it’s inevitable that we’ll see even more creative pricing from online stores. For the most part, they’ll come in the form of deals and discounts. But the WSJ’s research is a good reminder that, in certain cases, you may end up spending more than other online shoppers.

For intrepid deal hunters, there’s nothing better than finding the perfect coupon code right before you click “Buy.” But finding valid coupon codes for online retailers usually requires a bit of click-work, and plenty of trial and error.

Enter Coupons at Checkout, a free browser extension from the folks at the deal site CouponFollow, that makes finding and testing coupon codes dead simple.

Once installed, the extension uses a patented process to find coupon codes when you reach the checkout page at more than 100,000 online retailers. Simply click the appropriate coupon code section of the checkout page and choose from a dropdown of known codes. The extension gives you an idea of how valid a coupon may be, and if it fails you can give feedback to warn other users.

Coupons at Checkout supports Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer. And unlike those dreaded shopping toolbars, the extension is invisible until you reach an online checkout page. The company says it may occasionally launch a browser tab when you click a coupon to track usage, and it will occasionally ask for feedback.

According to its privacy policy, Coupons at Checkout analyzes and collects your browser behavior around e-commerce pages, but no identifiable information is collected. Unlike many other companies, CouponFollow is at least clear what it’s doing with your data.

Marc Mezzacca, the New York City-based creator of CouponFollow, tells me that the extension’s users saved $22.45 on average (10 percent more than just manually fishing for coupon codes),  and it takes only around 21.1 seconds to find a working code, versus 80.7 seconds manually. So far Coupons at Checkout has been downloaded more than 12,000 times.

I’ve been testing out the extension while Christmas shopping, and so far it’s saved me a decent chunk of change. While there aren’t always working coupon codes at every retailer, at least with this extension you’ll know before wasting time searching the web.

Mezzacca notes that it’s not only helpful for consumers, the extension also benefits retailers: 87 percent of surveyed users said they would be more likely to complete a purchase if they saw a coupon when they were checking out. Currently, 27 percent of customers abandon their carts to seek out coupons, and only a third of those actually return, according to a recent PayPal study. Discounts also lead consumers to become an online fan of specific brands, and they also lead consumers to reconsider purchasing unbought items.

Next up for the extension: Mezzacca wants to improve the algorithms behind validating coupons, as well as track working coupons and their expiration dates better.

Photo via sdc2027/Flickr

Online shopping is up 13 percent to $33.8 billion in the first 44 days of the holiday shopping season, according to market researcher comScore.

The fast growth of online shopping has been consistent for years now, as electronic commerce steals market share from physical retail stores, which typically grow sales at single-digit rates, if at all, during the holidays. The most recent work week saw four individual days eclipse $1 billion in U.S. online spending.

December 8, known as Green Monday, saw a 13 percent sales increase to $1.275 billion, up from $1.133 billion a year ago. The biggest sales day so far was Cyber Monday ($1.465 billion), or Nov. 26, the first weekday following Black Friday (Nov. 23) sales. Cyber Monday is when online retailers give big discounts to spur sales.

“This past workweek saw four days surpass the billion dollar spending threshold during the heaviest five-day online shopping period on record,” said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni, in a statement. “With this most recent week in the books, the peak spending period may now be in our rear-view-mirror – but the online holiday shopping season is not over yet. We should have one more headline day on Free Shipping Day this Monday the 17th as the procrastinators among us scramble to order gifts in time for Christmas next week. For the season-to-date, the growth rate based on corresponding days last year is 13 percent. But, with two extra shopping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year, we still expect that the full season will realize a growth rate well north of 13 percent.”

So far this season, 11 individual days have surpassed $1 billion in online retail sales, compared to 10 days altogether in the season a year ago.

The technology market in Latin America, and particularly Brazil, is heating up. In the past six months alone, Redpoint e.ventures dedicated a $130 million fund to the region, Pepsi launched an incubator program for Brazilian entrepreneurs, Intel Capital made its third investment in a Brazilian fashion startup, and Realtime secured a whopping $100 million.

Dafiti is the largest online fashion retailer in Brazil. Similar to Zappos, it sells clothing, shoes, accessories, cosmetics, and and home wares, and offers perks like free shipping and returns. The platform has grown fast, responding to Latin America’s fierce appetite for e-commerce options. Available in Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Chile, and Argentina, Dafiti offers more than 80,000 products spanning 700 brands. Its workforce is 1,200 strong.

Dafiti was built with backing from Berlin incubator Rocket Internet. JP Morgan invested $45 million in August, shortly after putting its money into the European retail empire Zalando. This fourth round of funding for Dafiti was led by Quadrant Capital Advisors, which committed $32 million. AB Kennevik, Summit Partners, and other investors scooped up the remainder.

With this investment, Dafiti will continue its expansion around Latin America and enter new markets.

High-end online retailer Gilt Groupe has named Citigroup exec and GG director Michelle Peluso as its next chief executive officer, the company announced today.

Gilt Groupe’s board has been searching for a new CEO for several months to replace CEO and founder Kevin Ryan. Peluso will take over Ryan’s job in February.

Peluso is a storied executive and currently holds the title of Global Consumer Chief Marketing and Internet Officer at Citgroup. Before her stint at Citigroup, she was the CEO of Travelocity for six years.

“I’m tremendously excited to be leading a company with a brand I love and a team I’ve come to greatly admire,” Peluso said in a canned statement. “Gilt has done a terrific job establishing itself as one of the most innovative online shopping destinations, and I am looking forward to continuing to build on Gilt’s growth and success.”

Ideally, Peluso will bring some fresh perspective to Gilt’s operations. Founded in spring 2007, Gilt has raised $221 million to date. Gilt raised $138 million in May 2011 at a valuation of $1 billion. Ryan told AllThingsD that the company will be looking to go public “at some point in one to two years.”

Michelle Peluso photo via Crains New York

Online shopping is all about convenience. While developments in data analysis, marketing, and payment technology have improved the overall flow of e-commerce, delivery is still a frustrating obstacle at the end. If the recent shopping frenzy following Thanksgiving revealed anything, it’s the explosion of online commerce. There is a greater need for shipping options that don’t entail waiting at home or missing deliveries.

The BufferBox concept is refreshingly simple. BufferBox sets up green pick-up lockers that serve as shipping addresses. Consumers enter that address instead of their own, receive a PIN in the mail, and then can pick up the package at their convenience. It’s a bit like a privately owned, communal P.O. box.

“We want to remove as much friction as possible from the shopping experience, while helping consumers save time and money, and we think the BufferBox team has a lot of great ideas around how to do that,” a Google rep told VentureBeat via email today.

BufferBox is based in Waterloo, Ontario. The founding team came to the Bay Area over the summer to participate in Y Combinator where it was one of the more talked-about startups following the demo day. With this acquisition, employees will join Google’s Shopping team in Kitchener-Waterloo and continue business as usual.

Six months ago, Google changed its Shopping feature to “a purely commercial model” where top results are dictated by the highest bidder. Microsoft, in an attempt to undercut Google’s marketshare, launched a “Scroogled” campaign on Wednesday. While Google won’t comment on its Shopping roadmap (or the terms of the deal), BufferBox will obviously benefit from Google’s massive resources and use them to move faster and its scale.

That’s a new record, the NRF said, and 28 percent of those weekend shoppers were at stores by midnight on Black Friday.

The numbers are up from last year’s figures (226 million people spending $398 each last year), and includes 89 million shoppers on Black Friday alone. They also may blow earlier predictions of $32 billion in sales on Black Friday and Cyber Monday out of the water, although Monday sales, of course, are not yet included in these figures.

Close to half the amount spent — 40.7 percent, or $170.42 — was spent online. That’s also up from 37.8 percent last year. Half of all Black Friday shoppers did at least some shopping online.

“There’s no question that millions of people were drawn to retailers’ aggressive online promotions this weekend, making sure to research and compare prices days in advance to ensure they were getting the best deal they could,” said Pam Goodfellow, BigInsight’s consumer insights director. BigInsight conducted the poll of 4005 consumers, on which the numbers are based, for the NRF.

It may indeed be better to give than to receive, but not everyone was shopping for Christmas gifts.

In fact, 80 percent of shoppers bought non-gift items, with 60 percent buying clothes and accessories. Popular gifts included toys, media, electronics, and jewelry.

Unfortunately, when there are great deals and lots of people, some have trouble keeping it classy:

photo credit: Michael Holden via photopin cc

The National Retail Federation’s latest poll says 147 million shoppers is a slight decrease from the 152 million who shopped last year’s Black Friday, possibly due to this being the earliest Thanksgiving since 2007. But per-shopper spending looks to jump 25 percent, according to a Consumer Electronics Association poll, to $218.

“The 2012 Thanksgiving weekend has the potential to be the biggest shopping weekend on record [in the U.S.],” the CEA’s chief economist, Shawn DuBravac, said in a statement.

Sixty percent of U.S. adults — about 140 million Americans — plan to buy at least one Christmas gift this weekend, according to the Consumer Electronics Association. That one gift — plus whatever goodies we buy ourselves — will add up fast.

Multiply the 147 million American shoppers that NRF predicts may hit stores this weekend with the average per-shopper spend CEA is estimating, and you’ve got almost $32 billion in gifts and assorted goodies flying off both real and virtual shelves this weekend — $32,046,000,000, to be exact.

That would be a major increase from last year, which saw about $11.4 billion in Black Friday sales and $1.25 billion in Cyber Monday revenues. But it does cover the entire weekend: Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, and combines both offline and online sales.

According to new Nielsen poll, a lot of those gifts will be electronics, as kids are hoping for iPhones, iPads, and Nintendo Wii Us under the tree. The same is true of gifts Americans present to themselves, and adults’ wish lists are full of tablets, smartphones, and laptops.

According to the CEA a third of Americans will visit a bricks-and-mortar store, while another 20 percent will prefer to let their fingers do the walking, online.

But not all is sweetness and light.

As the U.S. government deals with an impending “fiscal cliff,” half of consumers surveyed by the CEA say they’re worried and that it will affect their spending — perhaps in anticipation of taxation increases in the new year. Eighteen percent said the fiscal cliff will have a “large impact” on their spending.

But perhaps not very large, if we’ll be spending $32 billion in four days this weekend.

photo credit: Michael Holden via photopin cc

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Last week Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba shocked the web with news that its subsidiaries Taobao (like a Chinese eBay) and T-mall (like Amazon) sold a massive $3.06 billion in product in a single 24-hour period.

Three billion dollars is almost triple the entire 2011 Black Friday sales of e-commerce sites in the United States, and this is a testament to both the growing maturity of the Chinese online market and the central position Alibaba holds in China.

So how do you do $3 billion in sales in a single day? I interviewed an Alibaba spokesperson, who preferred to remain unnamed, to find out.

Almost as many users as Twitter

First of all, it helps to have users — lots of them.

The two sites, Taobao.com and Tmall.com, share a combined user base of half a billion registered users. That’s only about 30 percent of the total Chinese population, which means that Alibaba has a long runway for continued growth as the Chinese middle class continues to grow — and suggesting that a $10 billion day is not out of the realm of possibility in years to come.

Some of the goods for sale on Taobao.

(It also means, by the way, that it might be crazy for Yahoo to sell its stake in Alibaba now. Yahoo still owns 23 percent of the Chinese e-commerce giant after pocketing $7.6 billion U.S from selling almost half its original stake. Down the road, however, it might be like owning a 23 percent of Google, or Facebook … times 10.)

Both Taobao.com and Tmall process payments via Alipay, Alibaba’s payments processor. Alipay has over 700 million user accounts, presumably all with credit card payment information, as of mid-2012.

A cultural sea change

When you’re looking to scale quickly, it helps to be a high-growth company in a high-growth industry in a high-growth country.

But while a huge number of users is necessary, it’s insufficient to generate such massive cash flow. Just as important is a change in Chinese consumer behavior toward e-commerce “increasingly becoming a primary shopping channel,” according to Alibaba. The entire industry has had double-digit growth year-over-year — since 2010 e-commerce in China has enjoyed an average 10 percent quarter to quarter growth rate — and Alibaba is outpacing the industry.

In addition to a general acceptance of e-commerce as perhaps the first option for shopping, Chinese consumers have been increasingly prone to spend big on “double sticks day,” 11/11. Also referred to as “singles’ day,” Nov. 11 has taken on a rough similarity to our Valentine’s Day. Singles try hard to not be single, couples celebrate that they are couples, and probably many more people are simply happy to dogpile any opportunity to shop big and save big, much like Black Friday in the U.S.

Stores galore

Users and demand are great, but you need supply. That is not a problem for Alibaba, as the representative said that Tmall hosts e-commerce operations for 50,000 companies, while Taobao manages online sales and payments and “several million,” most of whom are likely individuals buying and selling much as we see on eBay here.

Of those stores, 10,000 took part in the 11/11 festivities with special sales and promotions. That’s five times the number that participated just last year, which gave Chinese shoppers “access to an even wider range of products.”

Promotion helped too, Alibaba says:

“We also offered new functions, activities and games via the event landing page beginning mid-October and noticed that many online shoppers were visiting the site and browsing through participating stores and available products as well as adding products to their shopping carts.”

Let’s get technical

While I generally like to ask companies for technical details about their server setup, Alibaba was anxious not

to share too much information that might be construed as proprietary, saying only that Alibaba Cloud Computing manages all Taobao and Tmall’s infrastructure from three data centers in Beijing, Hangzhou and California.

It also preferred not to disclose what kind of servers it runs, including operating system and webserver details, but a quick search reveals that Alibaba uses Tengine for webserving, which is a 100 percent compatible fork from the increasingly popular Nginx server, and that Alibaba runs, as expected, on Linux.

Mobile buyers figured prominently in Alibaba’s monster day, with one in four Taobao users accessing the site from a smartphone or a tablet. That compares to one in six last year.

Summing up

A $3 billion day doesn’t happen all the time, even in the world’s most populous country. And it’s a huge proportion of Alibaba’s annual goal for Taobao and Tmall, which was one trillion RMB in 2012. That’s closing in on $15 billion U.S., which is serious money.

Given Alibaba’s trajectory and China’s growth, it would seem that a $4 billion or $5 billion day would not be out of the question in 2013.

photo credit: dcmaster via photopin cc, Autorun！ via photopin cc

The good news for online retailers is that a third of shoppers plan to spend more, according to FatWallet’s consumer survey of 600 consumers across the U.S, while 54 percent are planning to spend the same amount. And most shoppers — 62 percent —  believe they’re going to get the best deals of the holiday season at the beginning of next week.

(One caveat on those numbers: they’re based on a subset of consumers who plan to shop on Cyber Monday, so they likely de-emphasize those with skinnier wallets to begin with. On the other hand, of those who plan to shop online this Cyber Monday, only three-quarters said they did the same last year.)

50% of people are looking for toy deals on Cyber Monday

But it’s a bit surprising to see what people are looking to buy on Cyber Monday. It’s not technology, at least primarily. Here’s what people will be shopping for next week:

• 70%: clothing deals
• 50%: toy deals
• 34%: appliance deals
• 32%: tablet deals
• 32%: laptop deals
• 26%: HDTV deals
• 23%: smartphone deals
• 26%: other deals

Clothing, toys, and appliances. Ignoring the fact that the main point of Cyber Monday is online shopping, there’s not a lot of technology showing up … especially the traditional technology purchases such as computers, smartphones, TVs, and home stereo systems.

Which I guess is the good news for online retailers: online shopping is now truly widespread.

photo credit: Kevin Marks via photopin cc, spieri_sf via photopin cc

This story was contributed by Bob Bunge, cyber security expert and associate professor in the College of Engineering and Information Sciences at DeVry University.

Online purchases grew by approximately 10 percent from 2010 to 2011, with the average consumer spending $1,028. Convenience and variety make shopping online an attractive option for holiday shoppers who are trying to balance their personal and professional lives, while finding the perfect gifts for family and friends.

Drawn to the allure of e-commerce, many consumers do not realize that online retail and shopping websites are the fourth most infected kind. In fact, 61% of malicious sites are actually typically trusted web sites that have been compromised.  And 1.5 million people fall victim to cybercrime every day. Here are some tips on how to avoid becoming one of them.

Password Security – Strengthen and lengthen your passwords

Mix in numbers and special characters, and avoid proper names and sequential number strings (i.e. 12345). And don’t use “password” as your password – the most popular password in 2011 was “password.”

The username and password combination is the most typical way to prove your identity on the web, but weak and ineffective passwords open the door for identity theft. The first general rule of password construction is to make it long. A short password can be cracked easily by a high speed program.

Use different passwords on different web sites and change them every so often. Failure to do this means loss of a password by one merchant could expose your accounts on all the others. Passphrases are a good way to generate strong, yet memorable passwords. Here is one example: “Oh say can you see by the dawn’s early light” becomes “0Scucb+de1.”

Trusted Websites – Only shop on reputable sites

Look for the SSL certificate and ensure the site starts with https:// and has a padlock icon.

The risks of shopping online are similar to face-to-face transactions. About.com offers the following general tips to minimize your risk. First, debit cards are the worst non-cash option. Why? If the card is stolen or the goods are not shipped, you are on the hook for any fraud or loss. PayPal and credit cards offer more robust dispute resolution and fraud prevention. PayPal will appeal to those who do not like to give out a credit card number. However, if PayPal is tied directly to your bank account, you need to monitor for suspicious activity in that account.

One good technique when considering a new merchant is to check that company name in one or more search engines. If the words “scam,” “fraud,” or “rip-off” pop up, consider yourself duly warned! Also verify that the URL matches the merchant. Scammers often load the left-hand side of the URL with real company names to lure you in.

Payment – Use only one form of payment: a credit card

Putting your debit card information online opens up details to your checking account. Consider using sites with the PayPal and VeriSign icons. Having a dedicated credit card for online shopping is a good idea; it helps you spot problems and reduces your risk to other accounts.

Secured Networks – Never shop on an open Wi-Fi network

If the network is open, your information is open.

Which network is safest for online shopping? Network security comes in layers. The first layer is physical. Wired or cabled connections beat wireless connections for security every time. Likewise, if you physically manage the network (at home or in a private office), you’re generally safer than in a public network. Home WiFi, if set up properly, is generally acceptable. Be sure you are using WPA2 security with AES encryption.

Shopping over airport WiFi is one of the most risky. Professional thieves hang out in large public gatherings and sniff the airwaves for names, passwords and card numbers.

Your data — Don’t Store Information

Merchants you visit often can serve you better if they keep some information about you. Cookies are one technique for maintaining an online relationship. As long as the relationship is safe, this is not a problem.

But be cautious about giving information. Remember: if the deal sounds too good to be true, it probably is. A deal offering brand name merchandise for pennies is probably a scam. Similarly, “free” gifts that require you to pay shipping up front are scams.

If you have to give more than an email address, a shipping address and a fraud-secured credit card number, then you should consider taking your online business elsewhere.

Robert (Bob) Bunge is an associate professor in the College of Engineering and Information Sciences at DeVry University. He has nearly ten years of teaching experience in computer information systems, network security and simulation development. As a cyber security and cloud computing expert, Bunge has presented on various subjects at numerous events, including the NWSec Conference and the Washington Association for Skilled and Technical Sciences Conference.

photo credit: ultracase via photopin cc

November 11 may be Veteran’s Day in the U.S. and Remembrance Day in Canada, but in China it is “double sticks” day — 11/11, get it — and is the equivalent of our Valentine’s Day.

The numbers, frankly, are astounding:

• $3.06 billion USD in sales
• 109 stores with more than $1.6 million USD in sales within 12 hours
• One brand (Tmall) with more than $2.1 billion in sales
• 213 million active accounts
• 105 million orders
• 7 million mobile accounts active in the first hour
• $84 million in sales via mobile just by 2 p.m.

Taobao may not be well-known on our side of the Pacific Ocean, but it is the 13th-most-trafficked site in the world according to Alexa, and it is owned by one of the largest e-commerce companies in the world, Alibaba. But it’s not a single vendor, like Amazon (mostly) is.

Essentially, as one of our readers comments, Tmall and Taobao, both owned by Alibaba, are the Amazon and eBay of China, though both use Taobao’s payment systems.

Taobao.com

(And yes, that is the Alibaba that Yahoo owns a piece of, and which is trying to buy itself back.)

According to West, it is common for Chinese retailers to not set up their own e-commerce capability, but to set up a shop on Tmall, the busiest part of Taobao. According to the infographic below, Tmall’s sales were $2.1 billion U.S. and Taobao’s were almost $1 billion U.S. (thanks for the translation, Dan).

“Some people are doubting the numbers,” he told me this afternoon (Wednesday morning in China). “But it’s not like the U.S. where there are many, many e-commerce sites. Here there’s pretty much the one.”

If we can believe these numbers, this is simply a stunning example of what a billion-plus people in a single nation can do online, particularly as incomes rise across China. West contrasts it to Cyber Monday in the U.S.  – coming up soon — which saw 2011 sales of a comparatively small $1.25 billion across all online retailers, not just one.

That’s impressive.

Here’s the Taobao infographic for our Chinese-reading audience. The one part I can read: 191 hundred million RMB … which is the equivalent of $3 billion U.S.

photo credit: bfishadow via photopin cc

While there are certainly perks to online shopping, the dizzying array of options can complicate what should be a simple purchase. On top of a multitude of products, there are a multitude of vendors and review sites to “help” consumers make decisions.

A startup called LEAP Commerce is launching its Best Decision engine to make the experience of mobile shopping less fragmented and more personalized.

The first step in this simplification process is the “virtual mall.” LEAP has partnered with major retailers like Svpply, Amazon, and Walmart to make their merchandize searchable on LEAP’s platform, and there are between 78 and 110 million available products.

When downloading the app, users identify the type of shopper they are. An algorithm processes this information to suggest relevant products, based on personal style, price points, brand preferences, and location. There is a prominent social layer, so brands and products liked by people in your social network go to the top, and sharing is built into the app to make it easy to consult with your friends.

One of the biggest pain points in online shopping is having to maneuver between multiple sites. LEAP consolidates not only the browsing experience, but also the purchasing. Its Universal Cart lets you add and buy items in one transaction, even if they come from different sources. The individual merchants will still ship the order separately, but you don’t have to check out more than once.

LEAP was started by a group of successful entrepreneurs and early Facebook employees who wanted to capitalize on their industry expertise. CEO Amit Chatterjee said the founding team observed clear trends in the use of technology and wanted to put these observations towards good (lucrative) use.

“We believe social, mobile, and big data are going to intersect in a radically different way that will drive transformation across the spectrum of e-commerce,” he said. “These forces will allow us to rethink industries that have already been disrupted by the Internet, and disrupt them again.”

Chatterjee identified four stages in the shopping process: awareness, consideration, purchase, reflection. He said there are many companies that succeed in one or two of these phases but none that connect them all. Furthermore, there are few mobile platforms where payment processing is user-friendly, and many consumers remain skeptical about the security of mobile transactions.

As a result, “shopping cart abandonment” happens over 10% of the time.

“LEAP stands for Loyalty, Engagement, Analytics, and Payment,” Chatterjee said. “We are trying to grab that entire story. We believe we can create conversations with consumers that will allow people to procure what they want to procure in the most effective way and have relationships with the brands.”

By presenting an array of products from multiple vendors, incorporating a social element, and enabling dialogue, Chatterjee said LEAP will both take the shopping experience back to the days of the bazaar and modernize e-commerce. LEAP is currently available on iOS (iPhones and iPads), and Android and a fully-featured website are coming soon. The company also has a Software Development Kit for developers.

It was founded in 2011 and is based in San Francisco. Investors include venture firms and angel investors, as well as executives from the financial services industry.

Many social shopping sites are great at offering a slick buying experience — until you decide you want to comparison shop at another web site. The new Flit app on the iPad addresses this by turning online shopping into a more seamless and enjoyable experience.

The goal is to put the “whole world of shopping into a single app,” said Adrian Lall, Flit’s chief executive. Flit is available for free on the iPad today.

“You can flit from store to store,” he said.

With Flit, you don’t lose your search results across stores. By contrast, aggregator sites like ShopStyle and Google Products create a pool of items from product feeds or by scrapping results. What Flit does instead is take your original search term (like “purse”) and make it into a single click to move between results for relevant shops. The Flit platform provides the right range of stores for that item and then automates the process of searching in each one of those stores for you. You see the results come back to you directly, showing you the results for a “purse” search in multiple stores. If you tap on a result, it takes you into the store where the item is being sold.

The rival stores don’t mind because San Francisco-based Flit makes its money through affiliate partnerships. If you buy a purse and Flit led you to the site where you bought it, that retailer shares a cut of the revenue with Flit.

The app is aimed at women who want to save time by being able to shop across thousands of commerce sites from a tablet. The app fits more with the natural process of shopping to find the best bargain across a number of retailers who sell the same or similar items.

“Shopping for women’s clothing is very different from shopping for men’s,” said Keylee Sanders, a style expert and a paid style adviser for Flit. “What I love about the Flit app is that it uniquely meets women’s needs. Women’s purchasing is simply more complex due to the sheer range of women’s styles and trends, body types, lifestyles, and the need for a closely coordinated workable wardrobe. For that women must shop a wider range of stores and items.”

Flit makes it unnecessary to have multiple browsers open to view different options. The app’s Speed Search option lets shoppers quickly go from site to site without having to retype their product search.

If you mark an item as “cute,” then Flit will remember the item and allow you to return to a whole series of items marked “cute” when you are ready to compare them side by side. The comparison gives shoppers a chance to view the cute items side-by-side on price, details, and style. You can compare up to three items at the same time.

You can buy any item instantly within the app. And you can ask advice from friends via email, Facebook, or Pinterest.
When items go on sale, Flit can send you an alert.

Flit incorporates private sales, fashion blogs, and discovery sites like Gilt.

“We make it easy for shoppers to buy from and discover both large stores and smaller boutiques while fully retaining the retailer’s merchandising and branding,” Lall said. “We believe in the role and diversity of online shops that Flit encourages.”

Flit has raised seed money from Tandem and has five employees and two contractors.

Here’s a video where Sanders describes the app.

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Online shopping can be a logistical nightmare for consumers and companis alike, especially when it comes to order fulfillment. Four-year-old startup Gaxsys today released a consumer-facing application called GaxWallet that aims to simplify and expedite the e-commerce experience.

Germany-based Gaxsys makes a cloud-based system that solves the supply-and-demand challenges for companies that sell their wares through a number of disparate web and physical retailers. The startup organizes all of the retailers that sell a particular brand into one e-commerce experience. So companies, in essence, outsource their online distribution to Gaxsys, and shoppers can get the products they want in the most efficient manner possible.

GaxWallet makes its debut today at DEMO Fall 2012, It’s a consumer-facing implementation of the startup’s core technology. The web, iPhone, and Android application, in theory, puts a shopper’s favorite brands in one pocket-friendly place so that they get their orders faster, either shipped direct from a local store or via store pickup at a nearby retailer. The application also enables consumers to name their own price for orders and sell back or trade in products.

“We can plug into any e-commerce system, mobile or web-based, others can’t,” the company told VentureBeat. “Nobody has combined ship from store, pick up from store, name your own price, and re-commerce together in one neat package.”

The name-your-own-price feature was especially interesting to the onstage panel at DEMO. Founders’ Den managing partner Jason Johnson pointed out, “Many of us have the Amazon app; there’s no negotiation. Amazon will actually raise the price on you if you look at it a second or third time. So this is very attractive.”

“But they’re trying to solve a lot of problems,” countered Google+ exec Seth Sternberg. “Focus on one.”

At launch, however, the wallet application is limited in scope; it only works in conjunction with select products and adverts offered through partner video and mobile ad networks. A shopper can use the app to scan a product in a magazine, for instance, and buy it on the spot.

Gaxsys is self-funded and maintains offices in Germany and Chicago, with 11 employees split between them.

Gaxsys is one of more than 75 companies and 6 student “alpha” startups chosen by VentureBeat to launch at the DEMO Fall 2012 event taking place this week in Silicon Valley. After we make our selections, the chosen companies pay a fee to present. Our coverage of them remains objective.

No matter how good a piece of clothing looks online, the reality often falls short. The joy of ripping open a package is destroyed when you discover that a particular shade of teal makes you look seasick or that leopard print jeans are a far better idea in theory.

Sometimes, you need to try things on to know if they are right, and this is a frustration shared by web retailers and customers alike.

Zugara was granted a patent today for its augmented reality technology that creates virtual dressing rooms for online consumers. The Webcam Social Shopper seeks to alleviate the element of the unknown from online shopping by enabling consumers to virtually try on clothes.

The platform generates a simulated view of what a wearable item will actually look like on your body using information from a web cam. The result is a digital mirror that reacts to gestures, motion, and voice controls, so you can twirl in your potential new party dress, or check out your butt in those shorts (no, it doesn’t look big).

Social shopping is also an element of the technology. Users can take pictures of their virtual ensembles and share them on their social networks.  Even further, the platform recreates the experience of shopping with friends. Multiple users, from multiple smart devices, can simultaneously browse, chat, try-on, comment.

“When you are going online to shop, you either see an item by itself or see it on a model that may not have your body type,” said CEO Matt Szymczyk. “You need to know how the item will really look on you, but it is not just about size. Shoppers want to see what colors match, how their skin looks in different garments, how a blouse will look with a pair of jeans they already own, and what their friends think.”

Often, the reason an outfit falls short is a certain je ne sais quoi. One ill-advised ruffle or latent fears of looking like a little boy could surprisingly make a purchase unwearable, and by the time you have dealt with disappointment and repacked the items for return, the convenience of online shopping is gone.

The team started out in the augmented reality space and realized that this technology could be powerfully leveraged to increase conversion rates for e-commerce providers. They developed the product into a tool that businesses can use to enhance her experience and drive sales. In July, European e-commerce platform PrestaShop integrated the Webcam Social Shopper, which brought its capabilities to 127,000 retailers.

According to their data, people who use WSS buy at 2 to 3 times the rates of “regular” shoppers, and engage with the site for longer periods of time. The direct clients of Zugara’s software are retailers and online apparel portals. For example, on the Barbie Dream Closet, the little girls can don a sparkly array of ensembles to see which strikes their fancy.

There are other comparable products out there, like Swivel, and even Cisco is developing a “StyleMe” product to play dress up in cyber land. However, this patent keeps Zugara’s technology protected, meaning they can publicly go to market without [a strong fear] of poaching.

While the primary intention may be practical (a la the effect of horizontal stripes on my torso), I am more interested in the entertaining options. For example, what do I look like in a Barbie lame princess gown? Or a silk kimono? Or a floor length Oscar de la Renta?

I may never get to attend the Oscar’s in real life, but I may be able to simulate what I would wear if I did.

When I first typed this company’s name into my search engine, porn showed up. Then I qualified my phrasing with ‘$40 million’, and I found what I was looking for.

Online fashion company Nasty Gal announced this significant second round of funding today, following on the [platform studded high] heels of a $9 million Series A that closed just 6 months ago.

The site is billed as a “global online destination for fashion-forward, free-thinking girls.” According to the mission statement, a Nasty Gal is the coolest girl in the room, rocking outré and unique outfits that capture attention. I am hesitant to self-identify with any moniker that includes “nasty”, but will admit that while researching this article, I fell in love with every item I saw.

It is the retail offspring of fashionista Sophia Amoruso, whose edgy taste has spawned a devoted following and wild growth. The company has experienced almost 400% year-over-year growth rate. According to Inc. 500|5000, it is one of the fastest growing private retail companies in the US.

On Nasty Gal, shoppers find a selection of vintage and non-vintage apparel hand-picked by a legion of style mavens seeking out original and provocative pieces. They search everywhere from flea markets to designer show rooms to create a diverse inventory that makes fashionistas everywhere salivate with desire.

Recently, Amoruso launched an in-house collection called Weird Science that draws inspiration from unusual sources, like 1980′s BDSM wear and computer files. A lifestyle magazine is in the pipeline as well.

Nasty Gal’s valuation is now set at $240 million and is projected to bring in $128 million of revenue this year. It has grown tremendously since its inception in 2006, when Amoruso began selling clothing on her own website instead of through eBay. Now, she has sold to around 400,000 customers in 60 countries and her site gets 5 million visits a month. The typical customer is an 18-24 woman who lives in L.A. or New York, but a third of the sales come from abroad, despite no direct marketing.

The company is based in Los Angeles. Amoruso relocated there from the Bay Area to be closer to her vendors and the fashion scene. Both rounds were led by Index Ventures, which also invested in Etsy.

With $49 million in the bank, the only kind of bootstrapping she needs to do is on the studded ankle kind.

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

The score is generated from more than 200 terabytes of data, including 7,000 expert reviews and two million user reviews from sites like Amazon and Best Buy. The score is on a scale of 1 to 100 and gets grouped into one of four idiot-proof categories, ranging from “Love It” for high scores to “Don’t Buy It” for bad scores.

Currently, 22,000 electronic products are tagged with a beta version of the score. From this pool, 9% of products have scores 90% or above; 31% products are in the “We Like It” group; 48% of products fall under the “You Can Do Better” heading (ouch); and 12% sit at the bottom of the barrel.

If the stereo system you thought of purchasing is not recommended, Decide.com will present you with higher rated alternatives.

When it launched in 2011, the site offered price predictions for electronics and appliances by analyzing big data to determine whether it was best for a consumer to “buy” or “wait”. Using this algorithm, it has saved consumers an average of $101 per product.

The company is now expanding the price prediction “buy” or “wait” feature to three new categories: sports and outdoors equipment, tools and hardware, and lawn and garden products.

The service was co-founded by Oren Etzioni, a master of price comparison technology. His previous startup, Farecast, applies predictive analytics to airline fares, and another of his startups, Netbot. was the world’s first major comparison-shopping site. Decide.com has raised $8.5M from Madrona Venture Group, where Etzioni is a venture partner, Maveron, and angel investors. It is based in Seattle, Washington.

Now one company, Netotiate, is asking: Why should online retailers have all the variable pricing fun?

(Awful name, I agree. Until you realize it rhymes with negotiate.)

Netotiate is providing a way for online shoppers to revisit markets of a former day, when a price was not just a number on a sticker but the result of a negotiation between buyer and seller. Netotiate co-founder and chief executive Amir Farhi explains why that’s important, even today:

“If a visitor to your site wants to buy a product from you, if your listed price isn’t right for the visitor, many will simply leave and look for a better deal elsewhere.”

The value to the retailer, of course, is the opportunity to capture business that is walking out the virtual door. That TV a consumer doesn’t want at $1,500 might be the perfect purchase at $1,400 … and if your profit margins support the lower price, why not take the business now?

Retailers can add the functionality to their sites with a simple plugin and customize it to offer discounts, incentives, free shipping, and more. In addition, online store managers can set up conditions in which the Netotiate plugin will activate based on user activity such as number of visits and time on site.

Those conditions help ensure that discounts are not given to customers who were going to purchase already.

When potential customers do see the Netotiate option, they submit a bid anonymously. The software will give supply clues indicating whether or not their offer is likely to be accepted, so store owners are less likely to see a flood of bargain basement might-as-well-try offers. Then the store can accept, decline, or counter the offer.

The Netotiate plugin is getting some traction, according to Elliot Moskow, CEO of Pricefalls.com.

“Sometimes shoppers need some incentive to commit to a transaction.”

True enough. However, I’m not sure Amazon.com will be signing up anytime soon.

Netotiate is a venture capital backed company with a head office in Newton, Massachusetts and research and development offices in Tel-Aviv, Israel.

Image credit: Yuri Arcors/ShutterStock

Fab.com, the e-commerce website designed almost like a lifestyle magazine, received $105 million in its third round of funding today.

The round was led by Atomico with participation from Pinnacle Ventures, re-Net Technology Partners, Mayfield Fund, DoCoMo Capital, and existing investors Menlo Ventures, Andreessen-Horowitz, Baroda Ventures, and First Round Capital.

Fab launched in June 2011 and currently has over five million members and sells 3.4 products a minute. The company is using the money to build its technology, speed up shipping times, and increase the number of products available on the website. It will also continue to expand into international markets.

Fab.com launched it’s 3.0 version of the website in May, intended to mimic the experience of window shopping with friends. The homepage grabs items to feature based on an algorithm that watches what the Fab community is interested in. It also introduced a ticker, which lets you watch what people were buying in real time. Pinterest buttons were also included in the launch.

The Fab team chose Atomico, founded by the co-founder of Skype, to lead the round because of a shared love of design. Indeed, Fab’s chief executive Jason Goldberg compares Fab to Skype and Atomico’s other investment, Rovio, saying the three nurture brand relationships.

Fab is available in 20 difference countries and has 400 employees who work in the U.S., Germany, England, Belgium, and India. Fab received its second round of funding, which reached $40 million, in December. The company has raised $157 million in total thus far.

Image courtesy of Robbi, Shutterstock

That’s one of the conclusions of a new report commissioned by consulting and outsourcing company Capgemini. The company interviewed 16,000 people in both mature and developing nations to understand today’s digital shopper.

“Shoppers in developing regions place greater importance on all digital channels,” Brian Girouard told VentureBeat.

For example, 72 percent of shoppers in India and 69 percent in China say they’re more likely to buy more products online in a single shopping spree than in a physical store. That compares to just 31 percent in the U.S.

In addition, more than three quarters of respondents in China characterize themselves as either social digital shoppers or digital shopaholics. Only 14 percent say they’re techno-shy or only occasional online shoppers … but the corresponding number in the U.S. is 27 percent.

Part of the reason is infrastructure, says Girouard. Developing nations don’t necessarily have the entire shopping ecosystem that mature economies often have, with malls, superstores, and strip malls. But also, Capgemini found that developing nations tend to to skip our historical approaches in favor of the latest tools and formats … especially mobile.

Source: Capgemini

Digital shopper segments by country

Across all countries, half of respondents believed that physical stores are destined to become simply showrooms in the next eight years. But in mature economies the number was only one-third, meaning that more than half of those in developing countries expect traditional stores to die.

That’s problematic, of course, for those with a stake in traditional retail. But Girouard still sees a future for stores:

“Large amounts of in-store stock will not be as necessary as shoppers become more comfortable with having their purchased items delivered to their location of choice at a time convenient to their schedule … having a shopper — potential buyer — in your store is a tremendous advantage, and retailers must provide an inspiring experience or “inspirience” for the shopper.”

And social? How will Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and other social media channels affect retail?

“While only about half of shoppers expect the use of social media and mobile apps for shopping to increase significantly in the next three years, the number is considerably higher in developing markets and among young shoppers as well as digital savvy shoppers who are already using digital channels and devices, and those shopping for high-end products like electronics.”

Here’s the full infographic:

Image credit: Capgemini

Fashion startup The Cools publicly launched today and announced $2.5 million in funding led by media mogul and MTV founder Bob Pittman. Described as a mashup of a social network, blog, and e-commerce, the site is a curated marketplace that allows users to buy, sell, and share whatever defines cool for them.

For those who have dreamed of being an editor at Vogue or are trying to gain brand recognition, The Cools serves as an easy outlet. Users can do anything from showcasing their personal designs to creating a style blog to buying “cool” items on the spot.

Rather than waiting for recognition from mainstream fashion magazines, individuals, designers, brands, and boutiques of any size can use the platform to express their editorial vision and build an audience for their products. On the other end, The Cools presents consumers with suggested products, based on the idea that an individual’s style, taste, and personality should influence what they see while shopping.

The Cools is advised by major names from across the fashion industry, including LVMH’s Antoine Arnault, Fab.com’s Beth Ferreira, Italian icon Lapo Elkann, and designer Erin Fetherston. It was started in NYC in 2011 by Parisian entrepreneur Olivier van Themsche.

Perhaps misunderstanding what the D in All Things D stands for, online bra-shopping helper True&Co is demoing its product at the annual D10 conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif. today.

As seen at the opening of every infomercial ever, sometimes the simplest tasks are actually quite difficult. Getting fitted for a bra in person, says True&Co, is uncomfortable, and doing it yourself at home is also difficult as “women today may not own a measuring tape.” The co-founders are taking what seems like a very analog problem and attempting to solve it Silicon Valley style: with code.

When you go to the site, which is launching today, you fill out a two-minute quiz about your bust size and how your current bras fit (Is the band too tight? Does the underwire pinch?). The site takes your information, crunches the numbers, and uses its database of over 2000 potential body types to whip up a customized selection of bras for you to choose from. Or as the company puts it in classic Silicon Valley-ese: “Our back-end technology leverages a simple two-minute quiz that combines user input with our translation engine to dynamically generate a personal bra shop.” The customer orders five bras, tries them on, and ships back the ones that are not a perfect fit.

So why is an online intimates-shopping company taking the stage at D10? In addition to the geekier back-end operations, the company also has an interesting tech background. C0-founder Aarthi Ramamurthy is an expert on data modeling and algorithms and has worked at Microsoft on the Xbox platform and at Netflix. This is not her first startup — she was also the co-founder of photo-sharing app Bubblegum.

While Ramamurthy brings the math, her co-founder Michelle Lam has the money and fashion experience. Lam worked as an investor at Bain Capital Ventures where she worked on companies such as RentTheRunway and LinkedIn.

The company has raised $2 million dollars so far from First Round, SoftTechVC, and Softbank Capital, as well as Aileen Lee and Ellen Levy. Based in San Francisco, True&Co has 10 employees and stocks 20 major brands of brassiere.