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Amazon launches its newest private label, Wickedly Prime
Amazon’s push into the private-label business continued this month, with the launch of its latest brand, Wickedly Prime. Unlike Amazon’s more recent entries in the private label space, such as Happy Belly, Mama Bear and Presto!, Wickedly Prime is the first brand since the debut of Amazon Elements two years ago to make its affiliation with Amazon known. This represents a… Read More
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Alibaba is back on U.S. blacklist of “notorious marketplaces”
The USTR dropped its annual blacklist calling out marketplaces that are rife with counterfeit and pirated goods this week. Many of the shopping centers and sites listed in this “Special 301” report were absolutely predictable, like Beijing’s Silk Market, St. Petersburg-based social network VK.com, or The Pirate Bay, which was formed by an anti-copyright group in the… Read More
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Apps for holiday shopping
The holidays are almost here and there is still a little time left for last-minute shopping. Instead of sifting though all your discount emails, we found some apps that will help you save money and make both your online and in-store shopping experience easier. Slice
Online shoppers may want to check out Slice, which makes it easier to monitor shipments. There’s no need to input any… Read More -
Personalization company Dynamic Yield raises $22M and adds Baidu as an investor
Dynamic Yield, a company offering tools to help online businesses deliver personalized experiences, has raised $22 million in series C funding. CEO Liad Agmon told me that he started Dynamic Yield (in 2011) because even existing personalization tools tended to be “point solutions for solving tactical problems.” With Dynamic Yield, on the other hand, Agmon wanted to deliver a… Read More
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iPrice raises $4M for its e-commerce aggregator service in Southeast Asia
iPrice, an 18-month old e-commerce aggregation service that’s active in seven countries in Southeast Asia, has closed a $4 million Series A funding round. Read More
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79 percent of Americans now shop online, but it’s cost more than convenience that sways them
Eight in 10 Americans are now shopping online, according to a new study from Pew Research out this morning. That’s 79 percent of U.S. consumers who shop on the web or their phones, up from just 22 percent back in 2000. Over half (51 percent) have also bought something from their mobile phone, the study found, and 15 percent purchased after clicking through on a link shared on social… Read More
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Online Korean beauty retailer Memebox raises $60M more to sharpen its focus on the U.S.
Memebox, a Y Combinator startup that sells Korean beauty products in the U.S. and Asia, has raised $60 million. The cash is an extension of the firm’s Series C round which initially closed at $65.95 million in August. Read More
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Crunch Network
The last frontier of consumerizing travel lives in the workplace
According to a 2014 study by Google, 74 percent of leisure travelers relied on the internet for travel planning. That same study found that 77 percent of business travelers also started their journey online. Yet in many companies, booking travel still involves emailing or calling an actual travel agent, who then books with the airline or hotel. Read More
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Trivago closes up 8% in public debut
Hotel search site Trivago went public on Friday, after separating from Expedia. The company priced its shares at $11 and closed the day at $11.85, up 7.73 percent. But this was after pricing at $11 per share, below the $13 to $15 range that had been forecast. The company raised $287 million in the offering and plans to use the capital to focus on growth and potentially make strategic… Read More
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Kreditech adds Rakuten as new investor, raises another $10.4M
Kreditech — the online lender that builds credit histories based on big data analytics and is backed by the likes of Peter Thiel, Blumberg and the World Bank’s IFC — is today announcing a new strategic investor, and with it, a little more funding. The Hamburg startup has raised $10.4 million (10 million euros) from Rakuten, the e-commerce giant out of Japan. The… Read More
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Just Eat pays up to £240M for Delivery Hero’s UK ops, £66M for Canada’s SkipTheDishes
Yet more regional consolidation is underway among the giants of take-out and delivery startups in Europe as they gear up to compete more aggressively against newer entrants like Deliveroo and Uber Eats. Today, Berlin-based Delivery Hero announced that it is selling its UK business, which operates as hungryhouse, to rival Just Eat for £200 million ($251 million) in cash, plus another… Read More
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A tale of two Amazon deliveries
A jovial middle-aged man pokes the order button on a touchscreen from the comfort of his armchair. Minutes later he’s ambling through the bucolic Cambridgeshire countryside at the bottom of his garden to pluck a parcel from the ground. It’s his Amazon delivery materializing like manna from heaven… Read More
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Munchery tries to win over commuters with a pop-up shop in San Francisco
Food delivery startup Munchery is trying its hand at brick-and-mortar sales, opening a pop-up shop in San Francisco that we spotted this week. In the competitive and cluttered market for online food delivery, Munchery is distinct in that it sells chef-prepared meals that just need to be heated, or meal kits with recipes and pre-measured ingredients to its members and other… Read More
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The Honest Company’s not terrible but not very good 2016
The Honest Company has become a beloved brand in many homes in its five-year history. But the consumer products business has also taken its lumps in 2016. It’s currently fighting civil lawsuits brought against it by consumers who say they were misled by the company’s labeling of various products, including its laundry detergent and sunscreen. Relatedly, Honest was called out by… Read More
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Starbucks adds a virtual barrista, sous vide eggs and a Tencent partnership to its menu
At the Starbucks Biennial Investor Conference today, the coffee and retail giant revealed some plans for 2017, including new foods comings to its cafes, and features heading to its incredibly popular mobile app. Notably absent among its announcements were any media and entertainment-related plans. In terms of its tech, Starbucks announced artificial intelligence-enabled features will soon… Read More
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Flutterwave aims to unify Africa’s fragmented payment systems and empower small businesses
There’s no shortage of entrepreneurs in Africa, but their ambitions are often hampered by the lack in many countries of reliable and affordable digital payment systems. Moneywave wants to empower individuals and small merchants to take part in the thriving digital economy by letting them accept payment however it’s offered, and receive it instantly in whatever form they choose. Read More
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Find free stopover vacations with AirWander flight search
Flying to London? You could spend three days in Amsterdam on the way for free or cheap. That’s the promise of AirWander, a new flight search engine for the adventurous. AirWander finds you inexpensive stopovers — essentially multi-day layovers when you can explore a connecting city between other flights. It can also help you plan multi-city excursions, stringing several flights… Read More
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14 gifts that keep on giving
Hit songs of the season ask: why can’t we make everyday a holiday? The answer is that we can. By giving loved ones a subscription-based gift that has new parcels, experiences or digital content arriving every season, we can spread the cheer across the year. Read More
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