Is a turn-around possible? Microsoft bought into a reward shopping engine years back (Jellyfish) and they have the deepest pockets of all. In the UK, media groups have been moving into this reward shopping space for over a year (see Trinity Mirror/Sky). Then there are the existing niche sites and new players like your own company. It's going to be very, very difficult.
Nov
21
2008
Yahoo sells Kelkoo to private equity firm Jamplant
3 Comments
Information just in: Kelkoo has just completed it's sale to a newly formed private equity company "Jamplant" as of last night, meaning that Kelkoo will no longer be a subsidiary of Yahoo and will continue to trade as an independent entity.
Well this one came out of nowhere! That's twice it's been sold. I'm looking into more information about who Jamplant is and who is behind it - I wonder if it's some old Kelkoo shareholders buying it back...
Rumour has it that Kelkoo has been suffering over the last year or so with declining margins from loss of organic traffic and that disagreements between Kelkoo and Yahoo staff over how to improve things were rife. Is a turn-around possible?
UPDATE:
- Mike Arrington has a good post with more information and the actual update email from Kelkoo MD Glen Drury to the team
- Pierre Chappaz also announced this on his Kelblog (I ran it through google translator)
- Profile information on the new mysterious Jamplant
- It's also worth looking at my previous post on this topic and Kelkoo's challenges which are part of the reason for them being sold on.
Comments
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Nov 21 2008 -
Nov 22 2008
As one of the Kelkoonians who was part of the adventure from 2000 to 2006 today is a day of mixed emotions. On the one hand being bought by Yahoo made us feel proud, on the other hand the missing match between the two cultures (could be summed-up as CPM meets PPC I guess) wasn't really taking Kelkoo further. It'll be really exciting to watch Laila and Glen taking it on the road again - searching for that next big thing in comparison shopping, and maybe this time finding a US partner that can give it real scale.
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Nov 24 2008
It does seem that way - hardly a day goes by without someone launching a cashback or voucher code site..
