The UK retail giant Tesco has bought out iVillage’s stake in the UK subsidiary iVillage.co.uk. The UK site for the woman-focused portal opened in 2000, and was a 50:50 joint-venture between Tesco.com and iVillage.
Tesco will purchase iVillage’s ownership interest in iVillage UK, which will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tesco. Additionally, the subsidiary has entered into a 20-year agreement where it will license from iVillage content and intellectual property, including trademarks and copyrights.
The license agreement is structured such that iVillage will receive the greater of a set monthly fee or a percentage of gross revenue.
Here’s my follow-up question: will iVillage US now sell out to Wal-Mart? It already has a close relationship with Wal-Mart, through its iVillage Parenting Network.
Also see NMA’s analysis of the deal: “Players within the women’s portal market will increasingly have to define very clearly what they’re about…Although quite how iVillage’s community-focused user base will respond to presumably a greater emphasis on e-commerce remains to be seen.”
Subscriber content
?
Subscriber content comes from Gigaom Research, bridging the gap between breaking news and long-tail research. Visit any of our reports to learn more and subscribe.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Comments have been disabled for this post