Breaking news: Rebelio closes in The Netherlands

The word is out that Rebelio has officially closed down its operations in The Netherlands. Currently I do not know what this means for the other countries, but it isn’t good news. Some time ago I already posted my concerns about Rebelio; it seems that my source was right…

Read more on ‘what’s up with Rebelio‘.

Currently I am not able to reach any website anymore of Rebelio… They all provide an error.

High activity in The Netherlands

It’s difficult to keep track of all merger and acquisition activity in The Netherlands. There is no common underlying trigger for the frenzy. For some it has to do with (re)focussing on their core activity, others just want to expand and others are acquired by even larger retailers. Below a short summary of all recent activity:

- The Phone House takes over Typhone, Femmefone en ICTango
- Venture Capitalist Ende & Deitmers buys 30% of Centralpoint
- Takeitnow has been bought by Aces Direct
- First Europa is up for sale
- Venture Capitalist Ende & Deitmers invests in Hyves

I will keep you all updated on any new acitivity!

Is ‘green’ a hype or there to stay?

In October last year I already wrote about CSE’s launching theme pages focused on the ‘green trend‘.

More and more comparison engines are leveraging their (costly) software to add new ‘niche’ or theme sites, like Shopgreen (from Pricegrabber) and TheFindGreen (from TheFind) [......] I expect many more of these theme sites to pop-up, but with Al Gore pushing for a better climate, for now the green trend will be the most prevailing one.

Well, it didn’t take long. The first real green and environmental conscious CSE is out, Greenzer. At the closing of Earth day Greenzer.com lauchned their public beta. Greenzer highlights some of the key green attributes for products to make the search easier and more informative. They also provide a score for a certain brand/product.

The Greenzer score is built up out of 4 elements:

• A Climate Counts score
• A Greenpeace score
• EPEAT score
• Energy Star certification

In the case of the Toshiba Tecra notebook this leads to a score of 8.6. See the image below!

Greenzer.com has a nice look-and-feel. I also believe that the ‘green’ element will attract quite a few visitors. However, they will also have to provide an excellent selection of shops. I am curious if they will also only admit ‘green’ shops. That is something that I did not see yet. Maybe something for the next release!

TakeitNow sold to Aces Direct

TakeitNow, one of the older webshops in The Netherlands, has been sold for several million euro to Aces Direct. The webshop has been up for sale for over a year as the current owner of TakeitNow (iMerge) did not see it as its core business anymore. Imerge can now fully focus their attention on internationalizing Icecat. Icecat offers an open catalogue for product information. The product data is used by shops and price comparison engines.

Pangora launches its own comparison engine

An interesting move from Pangora. They have decided to not only provide portals (and anyone willing to open a comparison engine) with a white-label solution, but also to enter the CSE market itself. Pangora is a subsidiary of Lycos. Some time ago Pangora (or actually Lycos) bought Mentasys, as Mentasys was the front-runner in mapping and matching of product content.

The fact that Pangora has decided to enter the CSE market is not really a surprise, as they had a business model that is not really sustainable in the long run. I will try to picture this below:

If you want to open a new comparison engine, you just go to Pangora. They basically can provide you with anything you need, so:
- deals with shops
- portal/comparison software (so, the website)
- mapping and matching of datafeeds to product data
- product data

The mayor drawback is that you will have to pay a 30% (or close to that number) commission to Pangora. This is probably ok if you’re just starting, but when you have gained in visitors and income you probably want your own solution. It’s just like doing match; when is it more profitable to do all this yourself? Besides, if your service is gaining in popularity, you want to stand out from the crowd, the Pangora solution is a me-too solution.

As things at Lycos and Pangora aren’t really flourishing this could be their last attempt. Moving from Munich to Karlsruhe also did not really help attaining the best people (this has been rumored, so it has not been checked by me).

Anyhow, their new site Decido is quite impressing. The usability is good and the services they provide are also quite well integrated. Now let’s see if they can also attract the visitors. They have some experience with that at Lycos, but for Pangora this must be new. As the SEO and SEM market in Germany are quite overheated (and weird in my humble opinion) I am curious if they can make it fly. A good site and content is one thing, having (happy and returning) visitors is the must crucial element for success!

What’s up with Rebelio?

UPDATE (28-03): I received some info that Rebelio is on the verge of bankruptcy. Currently they are just selling off their inventory. Probably they already ran out of stock in Great Brittain, where they are trying to squeeze out every penny by referring to other webshops… For consumers and the trust in webshops this is not a very great showcase. If you are almost bankrupt, just close the store and cut your losses.

It is strange to see that Rebelio in Continental Europe (Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, Italy, Spain and Turkey) is a total different website then the ones in Great Britain (UK and Ireland). In Great Britain Rebelio has a different design (strongly resembling Pricegrabber!) and offers webshops the possibility to get listed on their website. This looks like the PixPlace strategy that Pixmania recently launched. However, at Rebelio it becomes quite confusing as they use the same name for both concepts. In all other countries Rebelio is still just a webshop selling products.

Rebelio as a webshop (rebelio.nl):

Rebelio acting as an aggregator of webshops (rebelio.co.uk):

I am not really sure where this will lead… I also know that the chat of Rebelio.nl has been offline for quite some time. As this is the only means of contacting Rebelio one might begin to wonder what is happening.

If anyone knows more, let me know

UPDATE (27-06): Rebelio websites are down. They have closed their business at least in The Netherlands, perhaps also in all other countries. Read more

As a webshop you can go to far…

Some webshops are really pushing the boundaries of usability… but you can go to far. I finally bought a Wii console and I must admit that I am totally hooked on it. But after playing Wii Sports and Wii Play for several weeks, you want more. So, I recently wanted to order a new game for my Wii console and I was confronted with the following message:

As it is in Dutch, I will translate this a little. Basically I am asked if I am 3 years and older (or not)… Although I understand the reason why this message is presented (the game is for 3 years and older), I do not understand them presenting it in this way (or at all). I cannot see how a 3-year old is able to run through the whole ordering process

Just picture a little girl ordering a new Wii game, that is pretty funny.  I couldn’t resist the urge to post this on my blog. By the way, the webshop is Dynabyte.

Internet Users Are Shopping Online

The e-commerce infrastructure is still growing. More than 85% of the world’s Internet users surveyed have purchased something online, according to The Nielsen Company’s “Global Online Survey on Internet Shopping Habits,” conducted in October and November 2007. The research company said that more than half of Internet users had made at least one purchase online within the past month. “An emerging middle class and alternative online payment options are spurring online buying in large developing e-commerce economies like China and India,” said Jeffrey Grau, senior analyst at eMarketer.

Mr. Grau noted that much work remained to keep e-commerce growing. Developing countries typically have a tradition of cash-based transactions,” Mr. Grau said. “Much needs to be done to create confidence among buyers and sellers in the online purchasing process for these countries to reach their e-commerce potential.”

Buy online, Payoffline.com

With 18% of internet users still thinking it’s too risky to shop on the web (source: GetSafeOnline), it’s clear that there is a big opportunity out there for etailers that can persuade these wily refuseniks that e-commerce is safe. One thing that might help them is PayOffline – a system launched in August 2007 that enables consumers to shop online but pay for their goods at one of 17,000 physical locations around the UK.

To see how it works, just click on the thumbnail below.

Payoffline charges between 1.25% and 3%, depending on the volume of business, so it is quite expensive. Not even as competitive as credit cards, but this is also due to the fact that there is a handling charge involved for cash. Payoffline hopes to decrease its commission once the economies of scale kick in.

One of their biggest merchants is Flattelly. It implemented PayOffline at the end of October and says 5% of its turnover is coming through the service. Still, a lot of merchants are hesitant of implementing yet another payment method; all of the big players liked the idea and saw the potential but said, “Come back in six months when there’s proof that there is a market out there”.

I quite like the idea, especially if you look into the future and towards other channels, like mobile shopping. Payoffline uses a standard format barcode to identify each customer’s transaction. Customers currently need to print these out. But, they could also send a text message to a mobile phone, and the customer can then access that barcode via a .mobi website. It can then be scanned at the outlet.

Also think of all some other sorts of applications they could offer – ticketing for concerts, for example, or charitable giving. At least I am curious how this new payment method will evolve. I wish them all the best.

Google pushes Product Search

On its US site, Google has pushed Product Search in its top navigation, replacing the Video link. In 2006, Froogle – the previous name of Product Search – was removed from the top navigation in favor of Google Video. Did Google do this because of the coming Chrismas season? Will it stay there or will it be moved once the shopping season is over? It seems Google is still not really sure what to do with its shopping product.

Image taken from Google Blogoscoped