Loogic English

We love Failbeta, it’s a great work being carried out by Fernando del Pozo to recover those projects of the hispanic internet that have been shut down for some reason. So we thought it would be interesting to bring here to Loogic the projects that appear in that blog. During the coming days, we are going to publish articles written months earlier. These are the ones pertaining to the month of July:

Closebay: Came to light in July 2007. The idea of Closebay, what differentiated it from other classifieds sites was the possibility to sell, purchase or exchange objects with people close to you, from your neighbourhood.

Mypipol: Mypipol was a general social network for young people created by the company One Experience that came out in public in September 2007. It was supposed to be a social network a la Facebook, MySpace or Tuenti.

20 palabras: 20 palabras is an argentinian project that came to light in September 2007 and closed down in February 2008. The idea was innovative, a news blog where each entry could only use 20 words.

Time Machiner: Was a service for sending email to future dates. Is it possible to create a service that guarantees the sending of an email in 2099?

Agregax: Agregax was a search engine for spanish speaking blogs created by Pau Iglesias and launched in April 2006. It was classified as one of the best web 2.0 projects developed in Spain.

After the review of classifieds and flash game sites, I think it would be worth it to devote some time to look at the situation of the private shopping clubs or online outlets that are proliferating on the internet.

Now we can say that ecommerce is functioning well in Spain and I think that, to a great extent, it is because of the success of these kinds of sites that have become an obsession with a lot of people (waking up at 7 in the morning to enter a promotion of Privalia is something not very normal).

No surprise that this success is not only a phenomenon in Spain. In France, for example, there’s a real rage and they have Vente Privee as the best example of this business. This company has made a strong arrival in the Spanish market and already accounts for a few million clients all over Europe. On a European level, there’s another company, Private Outlet with versions for five countries.

So that’s the panorama of the Online Outlets in Spain and Latin America. I have found 10 projects of this kind, 9 developed in Spain and one in Argentina. Of the 10 projects, there are 3 (Privalia, BuyVip and Vipventa) that have received investment and compete directly with each other. There are two others that are beginning to stand out (DreiVip and Ofertix) and another 5 that are in their initial stages. Let’s take a further look at each one of them:

The leaders:

Privalia

Founders: Lucas Carné, José Manuel Villanueva and Bruno Coffre
Founded: 2006
Investors: Luis Martín, La Caixa and Nauta Capital
Funding: around 7 million euros
Access: does not require invitation
Headquarters: Barcelona (Spain)

Buyvip

Founder: Gustavo García
Founded: 2006
Investors: DAD, 3i, MCI, Michael Kleindl, Bertelsmann, Grupo Intercom
Funding: around 17.5 million euros
Access: invitation required
Headquarters: Madrid (Spain), Milan (Italy), Frankfurt (Germany)

Vipventa

Founder: David Ducos
Founded: 2006
Investors: Mobius
Funding: 2.75 million euros
Access: invitation required
Headquarters: Madrid (Spain)
Notes: the blog of Sonia

The aspirants:

Dreivip

Founder: Margarita Olivares
Founded: 2006
Investors: unknown
Funding: unknown
Headquarters: Badalona (Spain)

Ofertix

Founder: Antonio Alcantara
Founded: 2007
Investors: unknown
Funding: unknown
Headquarters: Barcelona (Spain)
Notes: Revelation Web Yahoo 2007

The recent arrivals: Geelbe (Argentina), Glamounity, Sinempujar, Compralia and Vipcompras

Do these newcomers have any possibilities to compete with the other five companies that enjoy a huge competitive advantage and with other companies that have already arrived from other parts of Europe?

As far as the competition between the three big ones (Privalia, Buyvip and Vipventa) with the figures of investments and business that they manage, the leadership is going to be closely related with the creation of a brand, with obtaining the best products at the best prices and with offering the best customer service possible.

An idea for these companies looking to increase their user base: can you imagine if one of these companies reaches an agreement with Tuenti to publish their campaigns of branded clothes in form of an event inside the preferred social network for young people?

Eneko Knörr is a great reference for me as an entrepreneur. I believe he has made a great company out of Hostalia and transmits very good ideas in his blog relating to the world of business and entrepreneurship. He is a simple person, very intelligent and it heartens me to see that after selling Hostalia, he continues to launch new projects within a new company called Ideateca.

Ideateca is described as a factory of ideas, it’s an incubator for internet projects that starts with two initiatives already functioning and with the objective of entering the themes they consider profitable.

There are three projects that are already up and running in Ideateca: Anuncioteca, a classifieds website; Videolandia, a video portal; and two islands in Second Life. Soon they will be launching in Ideateca a flash games portal, applications for mobiles and a service for photologs, amongst other things.

I find it very interesting how Eneko is starting his new business adventure. Being an expert in the world of internet, he has detected those sectors that could attract huge traffic and convert into big business. Through his extensive experience, he will be able to contribute interesting new things in each of those sectors.

Let me conclude saying that in Ideateca they are hiring professionals to work in their projects, mostly they are looking for PHP-MySQL programmers who live in the area of Bilbao.

Kedin, a social network for events, is a project that I intend to follow closely because I believe it will set trends as far as business models are concerned. The founders of the company have a broad experience and very good contacts in the sector that enable them to reach deals we are going to talk about now.

The first deal is the commercialization by Telefonica of the advertising on the Kedin site. The department in Telefonica that deals with the advertising on the portals of the Telefonica group will also take the responsibility from now on for selling the advertising spaces on this site. In Kedin, they preferred a commercial deal with Telefonica instead of with some other advertising agencies because they know the great commercial force of the online sales department of Telefonica and believe that this will bring them some important benefits. Besides, the deal contemplates the realization of joint actions of promotion on the digital platforms of Telefonica, something that will help a great deal in publicizing Kedin.

A second deal is related to the upcoming launch of channels on Kedin, similar to the ones on YouTube, that are directed to the companies that want to promote events of their sector. The first theme channels on Kedin will be dedicated to events of Fashion, and events of Motorcycling, thanks to the deal reached with the editorial group G y J Motorpress.

Three months after the launch of Kedin, the figures are very encouraging: more than 10.000 events in its database, more than 2.000 registered users, and 100.000 unique users in the last month.

More information on the Kedin blog.

On the web of Grupo Intercom, I came across Citrusparadis, an online shop for the sale of ecological and natural cosmetics.

If I am not mistaken, this is the first e-commerce shop from Grupo Intercom. The group has other projects related to ecommerce (Solostocks, Artesanum) but I think this is the first purely ecommerce site that they have been involved in.

But Citrusparadis is not only an online cosmetics shop, it also has an informative and popular blog mostly focusing on ecological products.

At the forefront of Citrusparadis is Catherine Morghese, an expert in natural cosmetic products.