Hearst Corporation, not satisfied with UGO, has acquired the “social shopping community” Kaboodle. The site is very Web 2.0 as it combines a social network and an e-commerce platform. The site launched in 2006 and now attracts over 2 million visitors a month. Terms were not disclosed.
“With this acquisition, Hearst will gain one of the leading sites specializing in social shopping, a combination of online shopping and social networking. Kaboodle’s social shopping community is changing the landscape of online shopping by connecting people with similar taste, and tying together the entire shopping process, from product discovery to purchase.” Kaboodle’s blog is rife with all kinds of interesting product discoveries like the image to the right, “Pet Fish” soap.
Kaboodle launched sometime last year and has managed to gain some amount of traction in the space. The rumoured price of the acquisition goes as high as $40 million. While, in terms of traffic, the site hasn’t yet managed to gain critical mass, one can guess the sales number on it had to be going uphill.
The site has so far raised up to $4 million in VC funding (early stage + series A), including from three high-class Google executives. If the rumoured price is correct, that could be upto a 5-8x return for them. Nice!
