One Kings Lane, the San Francisco-based home decor site, on Tuesday announced that it had raised a $50 million Series D round, bringing its total amount raised to $117 million. The new funding will go technology, marketing and merchandising, the company said. Read more »
The co-founders of two companies changing the face of connected retail, Warby Parker and Birchbox, will join us at our upcoming RoadMap conference next month. They’ll talk about the forces changing the retail landscape and how they expect to connect with the consumer of the future. Read more »
About a year after launching, social marketplace Copious is expanding to appeal to men. In addition to launching new men’s clothing categories, it is also adding new verticals for photography, home decor and design. Read more »
At the Entrepreneur Roundtable Accelerator Demo Day in New York, 10 startups debuted, pitching services ranging from marketplaces for custom goods, catering and yoga gear to companies looking to optimize online video. Here are a few that stood out. Read more »
In its first acquisition, New York-based beauty discovery startup Birchbox has acquired JolieBox, a Paris-based subscription beauty company. With the purchase, Birchbox expands its footprint to France, the United Kingdom and Spain. Read more »
BigCommerce, an e-commerce platform that powers the online stores for 30,000 small- to medium-sized businesses worldwide, is on Wednesday announcing that it has raised $20 million Series B funding from General Catalyst and Floodgate. Read more »
Retailers are looking increasingly to social networks to bring in customers and ultimately drive more sales. But data from online marketing provider Monetate show that social still lags email and search in sales conversions and average purchase amounts. Read more »
Chicago-based Boomerang, backed by Groupon founders’ Lightbank, is launching Tuesday to give Facebook users a way to give friends paperless gifts, including vouchers for local restaurants, spas, sporting companies and theaters. Some gift options are free, offering merchants a new way to attract customers. Read more »
SafePay Solutions Group is launching a tool in the U.S. and Canada for merchants and consumers that uses a smartphone to verify online purchases. Users who sign up will get the chance to confirm all online purchases using their cards at registered SafePay registered retailers. Read more »
Things are looking up a little for beleaguered daily deals company Groupon. Shares in the company rallied Monday morning after a Morgan Stanley analyst upgraded the company to “overweight.” Read more »
Between Pinterest and Fab and Fancy and Svpply and Wanelo and Lyst and many other similar startups, the social-meets-design-meets-commerce space is nothing if not crowded. But a couple of former MySpacers believe they can push through the pack with Uncovet, an e-commerce site rolling out to the public today. Read more »
Launched in November by former Squarespace CEO Dane Atkinson, data analytics startup SumAll gives small- to medium-sized online businesses a much-needed leg up in understanding the real-time metrics that are having the biggest impact on their bottom line. Read more »
New York-based Group Commerce today announced that it has raised $21 million in new funding to help expand its footprint into the U.K., Germany and other parts of Europe, as well as further develop its platform to support all kinds of e-commerce. Read more »
The Internet has tapped the wisdom of the crowd, but new content-to-commerce startup StyleSaint is about to test its taste. Read more »
Sahil Lavingia, a 19-year-old app designer behind Pinterest and Turntable.fm, has built a simple service called Gumroad that lets anyone monetize a link without having to set up their own store. The company announced it has raised $7 million three months after launching. Read more »
PayPal has only taken tiny steps into the increasingly busy Russian market — but now the American payments service is working on a partnership with Russia Post that could prove a dramatic boost. Read more »
In just a short time, modern tablets have become potent shopping tools that generate an outsize effect on online commerce. 2011 was the year that the tablet became an online retailer’s best friend as it emerged as the preferred device for many shoppers to make purchases. Read more »
The traditional ways that retailers and merchants reach out to users and how they expect them to discover, shop and pay are getting disrupted by mobile and social. And that’s created really empowered shoppers, who are using these tools to augment and alter their buying patterns. Read more »
Project Slice, which just raised $9.4 million, is introducing an app called All My Purchases for the new Yahoo Mail that organizes a user’s online receipts, shipping notices and daily deals and helps people make sense of it all like a Mint for online purchases. Read more »
Thanks to bigger selection, convenient return policy and addition of digital goods, Amazon is quickly sucking up more of our spending dollars. No it is not just me talking — data shows a sharp jump in per account spending and it is only the beginning. Bezos FTW! Read more »
