eBay Buys Svpply To Help Spruce Up Image

By: Talha Bhatti  |   September 8th, 2012   |   Business, Living, News

eBay, the grand daddy of online auctions, is looking to upgrade its image from one of an antique store to a shopping site that is relevant and up-to-date. eBay does not enjoy the same sort of reputation and excitement that other companies like Amazon enjoy, even though both these firms are pioneers in online shopping. To help with the face lift, eBay has recently acquired Svpply, an online product discovery site that show cases products from other stores.

 

The Svpply site is similar to the very popular Pinterest website that allows users to pin images of products that they find interesting onto a digital board. Svpply takes the model one step further and links the products on display to the actual store where it can be bought. Also the website creates a store for items that are added to its database and the actual brand can then take over and curate the products.

 

There is no news about how much the acquisition was worth but the latest details from Svpply state that nearly 3,000 fresh items are added every day and a total of 1.1 million products exist in the database. There are currently 70,000 stores on the website and ways of connecting them to buyers are in the works. The six member team running the Svpply has previously secured $55,000 in funding from venture capitalists.

 

Svpply has stated wired magazine that the site will not be shut down because of the buy-out and instead will keep running but the team will move to New York to work on projects for eBay. They will be working closely with the staff of another eBay purchase called Hunch that offers similar services as Svpply. The staff of Hunch has created a system that displays a “taste graph” that offers users recommendations about different products and services based on taste.

 

Source: Wired