Online review site secures funding and launches French portal
An online business that helps shoppers decide what to buy has secured investment from a venture capital firm that backed a similar successful price comparison site sold to Yahoo for €470 million in 2004.
Advertisement
Reevoo, which also launched its French portal in March 2008 at the time of announcing its funding, collates and publishes impartial user generated content from proven purchasers of products and displays them adjacent to the products on retail partners’ sites. These customer reviews contain a combination of unedited opinions and scores submitted by purchasers.
These help customers visiting retail partner sites to make informed purchasing decisions. The Reevoo web site claims to be fast becoming the next-generation web destination for shoppers to choose which product is best for their needs and which retailer to buy from. The revenue model is based on a monthly fee for collecting reviews and displaying them on retailer sites, together with click-through referrals to retailers via the Reevoo portal.
In the UK, Reevoo offers a user generated content solution through its services to more than fifty high street and pure play retailers across a range of sectors, including Comet, koodos, Dixons, Vodafone, Currys, Maximuscle and Woolworths.
The investment that Reevoo received in March from the French venture capital firm Banexi Ventures Partners is earmarked for acceleration of international expansion ahead of expected second funding round within 12 months. Existing investors, including Eden Ventures, are also committing funds, which will be used to support Reevoo’s international expansion programme and extend services for retailers, manufacturers and shoppers.
Banexi Ventures Partners is the firm that backed Kelkoo, the price comparison site sold to Yahoo for €470 million in 2004.
Richard Anson, CEO and co-founder of Reevoo, said, “There is real momentum in the Reevoo business and this funding from Banexi and our existing investors will enable us to expand our footprint beyond the UK. Already, 15 percent of visitors to our site are international, which demonstrates that trusted impartial opinion on the web has huge potential across the rest of Europe.”
“Traffic sent to retail partners from the Reevoo portal has leapt twenty-fold in the last four months and is rated amongst the mostly highly qualified on the UK web. Reevoo content has been displayed a quarter of a billion times across Reevoo’s retail partner sites to date. Retail clients have reported conversion rate uplifts greater than 100 percent for customers who read our reviews.”
YouGov research commissioned for Reevoo reveals that customers’ buying decisions are five times more likely to be influenced by online reviews of products than by online advertising. The same research found that 84 percent of UK adults want a kite mark to identify reviews written by genuine purchasers and managed by an independent company, which supports the Reevoo model.
Philippe Herbert, Partner at Banexi Ventures Partners and new board member of Reevoo, commented, “Reevoo is a perfect fit with our infomediary investment strategy which has included Kelkoo, Quotatis, Adenclassifieds and Brandalley. Online promotional strategies need to engage with what the customer is thinking and wanting. Other promotional mechanics, such as price comparison, have been damaged by a very mixed quality of execution. The strength of Reevoo is that the published customer opinions are always real and unvarnished, which means that the model is untarnished. This creates a win/win/win ecosystem: shoppers want clarity about the products they’re thinking of buying, retailers are more credible for hosting real opinions and product manufacturers are looking for direct and meaningful feedback from consumers.”
Reevoo was founded in 2005. It received start-up funding from angel investors, including current non executive directors and advisors, and Series A funding from a consortium of investors, led by Eden Ventures, in December 2006.
Comments on this story? Send an email to the editor: address - editor [@] thechilli.com
 |
|
|
© Chilli Publishing Ltd 2008 |
13 APR 2008 |
