Shopping site Sneakpeeq raises $2.67M

Social daily deals and shopping website Sneakpeeq announced Friday is has raised $2.67 million in funding.

Sneakpeeq is attempting to replicate the shopping experience you’d have in a physical store. What type of experience? Well, think about walking into a fancy shop, picking an item off the shelf, turning it over, and checking the price tag. Sneakpeeq recreates that by, for example, making you click a “peeq” button to see a price rather than blatantly … Continue Reading

Amazon acquires the talented team at shopping startup Quorus

Amazon has bought Quorus, a shopping startup focusing on bringing social interactions and conversations into e-commerce. The deal seems to have been completed in November 2011.

The acquisition, which may be a talent grab, brings Quorus co-founders Michael Dougherty (pictured) and Sameer Rayachoti into the Amazon fold.

Currently, all Quorus employees are now working at Amazon, we’ve learned from an anonymous source with close ties to the deal.

While the team can’t comment on what … Continue Reading

Demo: Compare store inventories in a flash with Wantlet

Wantlet is a new social shopping site that lets consumers compare product listings across several retail stores.

The service, which launched today at the Demo Fall 2011 conference, helps consumers who are looking to purchase something compare prices and find the exact model they want. That can range from finding the right color laptop to a specific kind of camera. Users compare prices and model types at nearby retail stores without having to drive to … Continue Reading

Demo: Get quick shopping feedback with Gumhoo

Gumhoo, which gathers opinions about shopping lists from social connections, launched today at VentureBeat’s Demo Fall 2011 conference.

The company runs a web application which adds a “Gumhoo” button to shopping sites. Users can “Gumhoo” a product and request feedback from social connections through sites like Facebook and get feedback on whether they should buy the product or not. If the users isn’t shopping online, they can take a photo of the product through the … Continue Reading

Ideeli raises $41 million for members-only social shopping

New York-based Ideeli, a members-only shopping community — known commonly as a “Flash sales” site — has raised $41 million in its third round of funding.

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 … Continue Reading

TreatFeed pays shoppers for social recommendations

Los Angeles startup TreatFeed just launched a new spin on the crossover between social networking and e-commerce — it wants to reward users for their social recommendations with prizes and cash.

Scott Roback, the company’s senior vice president of strategy and business development, said that where companies like Facebook are trying to build a social graph, TreatFeed is trying to create “the commerce graph, or the monetization layer of the social graph.”

Here’s how it … Continue Reading

Russia's KupiVIP raises record $55M for online shopping club

KupiVIP, Russia’s first online shopping club with more than 7 million members, has raised $55 million in a record funding.

KupiVIP hosts up to 20 private online flash sales every day, much like the Western rival Gilt Groupe. It sells heavily discounted fashion and home goods from 1,200 luxury brands. The deal shows that social shopping is a trend that is remaking e-commerce around the globe.

The third round of funding is a record for … Continue Reading

Confirmed: Lockerz raises $30M for social shopping

Lockerz, a social shopping startup aimed at users in their teens and 20s, is raising a big new round of funding. The Seattle company has already closed $30 million, and the round could go as high as $45 million.

The news first leaked out through a regulatory filing spotted by GeekWire, and a Lockerz spokesperson confirmed the funding via email.

Even at its current level, the round is bigger than many of the recent fundings … Continue Reading

Not so pretty: Layoffs at e-commerce darling ModCloth

ModCloth, the hot e-commerce startup backed by Accel Partners, First Round Capital, and the Floodgate Fund, laid off just over a dozen of its 248 employees today, the company told VentureBeat.

The company, which sells vintage clothing and apparel from independent designers, raised $19.8 million last year in a round led by Accel. Founded in Pittsburgh in 2002 by Susan and Eric Koger, the company is now headquartered in San Francisco and has offices in … Continue Reading

Flash-sales site Privalia in $280 million global shopping spree

The second wave of e-commerce is coming, buoyed by a flood of fresh cash. European flash-sales site operator Privalia, which offers short-term, steeply discounted fashion deals in Spain, Italy, Brazil, and Mexico, is expanding to Germany with a $280 million acquisition of rival Dress-For-Less.

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 … Continue Reading

One Kings Lane: How social features make e-commerce hot again

One Kings Lane chief executive Doug Mack took to the DEMO stage to try to explain the social commerce boom.

Private-sale startups like One Kings Lane and group-buying companies like Groupon are hot right now. Mack’s company, which focuses on home decor, recently raised a $23 million round of funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (which has made a big push into social networking in the last few months) and Greylock Partners (the firm … Continue Reading

Deal of the day: Gilt Groupe raising $80M to $100M

Gilt Groupe has built a big business from flash sales, where consumers converge on a particular shopping deal for a limited time. And now the company is shopping for its own investment deal.

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 … Continue Reading

Social shopping site Lockerz goes mobile

Lockerz, a social shopping site aimed at users between 13 to 30, announced that it’s making its first move into the mobile world today with the launch of a new smartphone website.

The Seattle startup launched the first version of its product back in February 2010. Founder and chief executive Kathy Savitt said that adding mobile support has been the number one demand by members — which isn’t surprising, since the site targets a young, … Continue Reading

Groupon's non-IPO raises $500 million, with $450 million to go

Welcome to the age of the stealth IPO.

Groupon, the fast-growing purveyor of online discounts from local businesses, has confirmed through a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, that it has authorized a new $950 million financing round. (Groupon’s plans first came to light earlier this week through a related filing in the state of Delaware, where Groupon is incorporated, discovered and analyzed by VC Experts.)

Of the $950 million, $500 million has already … Continue Reading

Groupon set to raise nearly $1B

Some investors are about to get a deal.

Groupon, the fast-growing Chicago startup that dominates the daily-deal category, has filed revised articles of incorporation that give it the right to issue $950 million in shares, according to VC Experts, a site that analyzes corporate filings. And CEO Andrew Mason just posted a confirmation on Twitter that the company is in the midst of raising a new round of financing.

If it raises the entire amount, … Continue Reading

Oodle's upgraded marketplace is all about friends

The social shopping industry seems to be heating up, with hordes of somewhat-related startups launching this year. But a slightly older website called Oodle has been bringing social features to its classified listings for a while now, and today it’s unveiling new features that take this approach even further.

Besides running its own site, Oodle has been operating the Facebook Marketplace for the past 18 months. Both services are built around a similar concept — … Continue Reading

Investors buy into social shopping service myShopanion

Zappli, the San Francisco-based maker of iPhone shopping application myShopanion, has raised a $500,000 seed round to fund its plans to take the lead against a horde of social shopping competitors.

Chief executive Philippe Suchet said one of his main goals with the round was to bring in e-commerce experts, which is why the investors include Maynard Webb, the former chief operating officer of eBay and now the CEO of LiveOps, as well as 500 … Continue Reading

Svpply bags $500K for minimalist social shopping

Svpply (pronounced “supply”), a social shopping service that helps users discover new products, announced today that it has raised a $550,000 seed round.

The service takes an innovative new approach to shopping: Instead of working out of a pre-existing catalog, it relies on users’ use of its bookmarklet to tag neat and interesting products they see online. These are then seen by the users’ followers, and curated through the site’s pages for editor’s picks, gift … Continue Reading

Angel investors to Fashism: You look fabulous

Social shopping startup Fashism just announced that it has raised an angel round of funding led by A Grade Investments, the fund created by actor/entrepreneur/professional oversharer Ashton Kutcher.

The New York startup offers a way to get fashion feedback before making a purchase. For example, if you’re not sure whether a jacket is a good buy, you can try it on, take a photo, ask how it looks on how, then read comments from other … Continue Reading

Mertado brings shopping deals to games and websites

Mertado, a startup incubated by Y Combinator, has been working on bringing a fun, deal-based social shopping experience to Facebook. Today, it’s offering game developers and website publishers a way to make money from its deals too.

Basically, the Palo Alto, Calif. company offers a service where users can find deals and share them with friends. But it seems to have two advantages over other social shopping startups, like “Foursquare for Products” Snapdragon, or deal … Continue Reading