TheFind.com pursues vertical strategy with acquisition of Glimpse.com
Shopping search engine TheFind.com has acquired high-fashion shopping site Glimpse.com for an undisclosed sum. Glimpse.com, launched only in February, will remain a separate site geared to savvy seekers of high-fashion apparel and accessories, and TheFind.com CEO Siva Kumar says he intends to add more portals geared to well-defined groups of shoppers.
“Expect a lot of things like that where there is a segment or community and, if we believe they are large enough to have a lot of shopping requirements, there will be a solution,” Kumar tells Internet Retailer. He notes TheFind.com earlier this year created an online shopping mall for PayPal users that lists only merchants that accept PayPal, a payment service owned by eBay Inc.
More than half the searches at TheFind.com are fashion-related, making Glimpse.com a natural fit, Kumar says. While Glimpse.com will remain devoted to high fashion, jewelry, accessories and related items, TheFind.com’s ability to search 500,000 online stores will add to the selection. Instead of displaying items from about 70 merchants, Glimpse.com will be able to draw on products from some 300 online stores, including specialized boutiques, Kumar says.
Small merchants especially will benefit from vertical shopping portals like Glimpse.com, Kumar says, because their goods are more likely to come up in a specialized search than in a search across the entire Internet. “Now they get drowned in millions of retailers in a general web search,” he says. “This adds value to smaller retailers because they can rank very highly in results because they have very relevant items.”
Launched in October 2006, TheFind.com claims 1.5 million unique visitors per month, and Kumar says Glimpse.com has about 50,000 unique visitors monthly. Internet measurement firm Nielsen/NetRatings estimates 718,000 unique visitors came to TheFind.com in July; Glimpse.com did not have enough traffic to show up in its survey.
Kumar says he expects some of the new vertical portals will come from additional acquisitions while others will be developed internally. TheFind.com recently raised $15 million in its second round of financing. The Mountain View, CA-based company raised $11 million in its first round.
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