AOL Buys Three Dot.com Startups

From Bloomberg Businessweek: AOL Inc., the once-dominant Internet service provider that saw its market value, subscriber base, and influence dwindle or evaporate over the past decade, bought three dot-com startups yesterday (Sept. 28) in a bid to restore its relevance.

 "Chief Executive Officer Tim Armstrong appeared on stage during a tech industry conference in San Francisco to announce the purchase of TechCrunch Inc., an influential news blog and the host of the event. AOL paid about $25 million, according to two people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified because the terms weren’t made public. The company also bought 5min Media, a network of online videos, and Thing Labs Inc., a creator of social-networking tools."

In the last few years AOL had morphed into a news aggregator/originator that, unfortunately, few people were even aware of. At the very least, these acquisitions have revived its profile -- if only temporarily.

Lise Watier Implements iCongo eComm Suite

iCongo Inc., a leading eCommerce platform provider with B2C, B2B, multichannel, Order Management and Marketing systems, announced today that Lise Watier, a leading global beauty brand, has selected iCongo’s E-Commerce Platform, Order Management and Comprehensive Marketing Suite as the foundation for its online growth and brand extension.

With iCongo, Lise Watier will have "a robust and flexible platform and suite of tools to create a successful social commerce channel," says iCongo.

The online storefront will provide customers with complete self-service access, while supporting social interaction and user contributions, with features such as customer ratings and reviews, user recommendations and social applications. Lise Watier Customer Service representatives will be available via phone and online chat to quickly respond to customer inquiries.

With the iCongo E-Commerce Platform, Lise Watier will leverage a centralized marketing engine allowing content to be accessed and shared for various online marketing activities including microsites, galleries, search marketing, email marketing, promotions and more.

“Lise Watier is eager to become even more accessible to women across Canada by offering them a unique beauty shopping experience through a user-friendly online channel. We have selected iCongo because they have demonstrated how – through both their technology and services – Lise Watier can achieve healthy results and see continual growth by driving greater value for our customers” stated Serge Rocheleau, CEO of Lise Watier Cosmétiques.

“We are pleased to be working with a globally recognized and leading beauty brand like Lise Watier.The iCongo eCommerce Platform will provide Lise Watier with a comprehensive suite of marketing and eCommmerce functionality enabling them to drive continual revenue growth for the organization.” added Irwin Kramer, CEO of iCongo.

Fits.Me's Shape-Shifting Robot Lets You Try On Clothes Online

Fast Company reports that Fits.me, an Estonia start-up, is offering a robotic mannequin that takes your body measurements and mimics your shape, so that you can see online exactly how clothing would fit you. A German eCommerce test-run showed that the robots increased sales 300%, while reducing returns 28%.



"When I was a kid, I had this dream that one day, I would have an army of robots to rule the world," says Heikki Haldre, Fits.Me's CEO. "I've only got a couple now, but that's okay."

The robot is capable of replicating 2,000 body shapes. When a retailer signs up with Fits.me, they first send in their clothes. Each size is placed on the robot, which then cycles through all the body shapes it knows. While that's going on, a camera is taking pictures of each permutation. This photographic log is then stored in an online database. Once you go online and type your measurements into the retailer's site, it calls up the photo corresponding to your precise body type and clothing size.

Fits.me is now pursuing several new retail partnerships. Though there's only a male mannequin for now, they'll be unveiling a female mannequin in November. The expansion was funded by a $3.5 million second-round of financing; the lead investor has been the Estonian development fund.

The company retained four different university research groups to create the mannequin. The first prototype took three years to perfect.


Fits.me Virtual Fitting Room

The New World of Interactive Retail

Here's a quick look at the coming world of interactive everywhere retail (shown at shop.org, Sept. 28, 2010 - created by Resource Interactive...nice job!)

Widget Benefits from Maginus Multichannel Software

Widget UK Ltd, a fast-growing consumer electronics distributor, saw its business double in three years after it began using IT solutions from Maginus, providers of integrated software solutions for multi-channel retail and distribution companies.

Maginus lets Widget manage business-to-business orders in a single, fully integrated system, enabling the company to buy and stock more efficiently because the solution provides extensive reports on sales and margin by product, season, promotion and customer.

Widget was initially a supplier of third-party products for Psion handheld computers. In 2002 the company became the first distributor to specialise in GPS, and was TomTom’s first distributor in the UK.

The fully-integrated Maginus solution provides purchasing, sales and order processing, accounts, returns, EDI, warehousing and supply chain, white label web sites and reporting, giving Widget a 360° view of its business.According to Mark Needham from Widget, “Customers often call us to find out detailed information regarding their credit, an invoice or a sale. With Maginus the user can easily drill down to get the necessary information. This means customers get detailed information immediately and staff are able to handle calls quicker and more efficiently, improving our customer service offering.

The solution has allowed Widget to improve their processes across the business. While the company’s turnover has doubled, staff numbers have increased by only around 20%.

The technology also helps Widget get money back from suppliers. Needham said, “The market Widget operates in has low margins, hence the need to get supplier rebates through as quickly as possible. Maginus’ technology handles supplier rebates automatically, a process that had to be managed manually before and was very time consuming.”

Going forward the company is looking at implementing business intelligence and data warehousing solutions which will help it assess both trends and market analysis. It also wants to increase flexibility and introduce microsites for specific events.

See also "Widget improves collection of channel stock and sales information."

M&S Wins Big With mCommerce

According to Internet Retailing, UK merchant Marks & Spencer’s mCommerce site has attracted 1.2million visitors since its launch in May, with more than ten million page views and 13,000 orders from the site – including one single order for £3280 – shown in figures from the company and the Mobile Interactive Group (MIG), which consulted on the sites user experience, functionality and design.

The most popular handsets to hit the mCommerce site are iPhones, followed by Android. Types of orders range from clothes and food to widescreen TVs and even furniture – the largest single order through the site so far being £3280 for two sofas.

Sienne Veit, Social and Mobile Commerce Development Manager, Marks & Spencer said, “We approached MIG because of their success in the Retail space, their capabilities in delivering great mobile campaigns and for their in-depth understanding of the mobile consumer experience.

“For M&S the mCommerce site is all about getting product quickly and easily to consumers via mobile and paying for their product on their mobile device," Veit explained.  Our aim is to integrate mobile as a channel to stand alongside web, phone and stops as part of ‘Shop Your Way’, to increase basket size and drive sales.  We’ve also incorporated a customer feedback facility to enable customer review’s, we’ve also given consumers a choice of delivery method.”

Consultancy for the development of the mCommerce mobile internet site between M&S and MIG, in conjunction with Usablenet, commenced in early April this year and took a phased approach. Phase one was ‘Discover and Definition’, moving through to ‘Concept look and feel’, ‘Design Refinement and Approval’ to ‘Making sure the site worked on Multiple Handsets’. Throughout all phase’s user experience, design and usability were the focus of discussions.

Features on the site, which includes full product ranges for Women’s, Men’s, Kids Clothing, Home and Furniture, Technology and more. include a store finder to locate your nearest outlet and the ability to search per product and then to refine these searches to a specific item. The site also allows the shopper to register account information.

To learn more, join MIG’s interactive Webinar focussing on how to implement a mobile strategy in Retail.  The 60 minute webinar, which takes place on Wed. 5th October at 9am, is being run in partnership with the IMRG and will give participants the opportunity to put their questions to Sienne Veit, Social and Mobile Commerce Development Manager, M&S and Tim Dunn, Director of Strategy at MIG. Please visit the Webinar registration page here

New Payment Tokenization Service Unveiled for the Akamai Cloud

Akamai Technologies, Inc., a leading provider of cloud optimization services, today unveiled its Edge Tokenization electronic payment security service. Seamless and undisruptive to a retailer's existing eCommerce workflow, the Akamai solution enables credit card data to be converted to a token prior to Web transactions landing on a merchant's infrastructure.

By alleviating the requirement for retailers to route customer credit card data on their own infrastructure, the service helps reduce information theft and compliance risk while lowering Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliance costs. Edge Tokenization automates credit card tokenization within the Akamai cloud, providing payment security and operational convenience for Web retailers without the need to increase spending on internal infrastructure.

To facilitate its Edge Tokenization, Akamai has integrated its cloud-based technology with tokenization solutions from its partner CyberSource, a Visa company. The relationship with CyberSource, one of the world's leading payment management services providers, offers Akamai's customers turnkey integration to enterprise payment tokenization services.

"We've always maintained merchants shouldn't seek to secure payment data, but instead, eliminate contact with it," said Michael Walsh, president and chief executive officer, CyberSource. "Akamai's Edge Tokenization automatically combines the concept of hosted payment acceptance and payment tokenization with cloud-based web infrastructure, making it easy for online merchants to meet compliance requirements with less cost, complexity and time."

Relying on Akamai's distributed and massively-scalable EdgePlatform, Edge Tokenization enables consumer credit card data to be identified and replaced with an anonymous token, which along with the true card number, is stored in a secure data vault managed by the tokenization provider.

Although hosted payment acceptance and payment tokenization solutions that eliminate the need to route or store credit card data on merchant infrastructure have been available for some time, Akamai's focus on next-generation, cloud security has produced the industry's first offering that automatically incorporates these technologies as a part of a merchant's web infrastructure, making it easier for merchants to adopt and maintain an Enterprise Payment Security 2.0 strategy.

"Meeting stringent PCI compliance standards often takes repeated efforts, significant investment, and regular maintenance, translating into high costs and significant IT resources," said Tom Leighton, chief scientist and co-founder, Akamai.  "We developed Edge Tokenization as a cost efficient solution for Web retailers to complete transactions in the cloud securely and at scale, while improving performance."

For a variety of product information and white papers related to Akamai's Edge Tokenization offering, please visit http://www.akamai.com/html/solutions/security/edge_tokenization.html. Each quarter Akamai also publishes a "State of the Internet" report with data gathered across Akamai's global server network about attack Internet traffic, average & maximum connection speeds, Internet penetration and broadband adoption, and mobile usage, as well as trends seen in this data over time.