eBay-owned social shopping network Svpply to shut down

Svpply, bought by eBay for two years ago, will be closed on August 31st

Social shopping network Svpply was an interesting idea: it featured items that people could recommend, and share, with their friends. It was kind of like window-shopping online, and acted like a Pinterest for clothes. Now, two years after being acquired by eBay, the service is saying goodbye.

As of August 31st, both Svpply, and Want by Svpply, will be shutting down. The company broke the news in a short blog post on Tuesday. While short on details regarding why Svpply will soon be no more, the post did describe how eBay has leveraged Svpply's features over the past couple of years.

"Svpply was acquired by eBay in 2012 and the talents and expertise of the Svpply team were leveraged to create more personalized shopping and selling experiences on eBay, including eBay feed and collections, which launched on eBay in 2012 and 2013 respectively," the company wrote.

"Feed and collections deliver a tailored shopping experience for millions of eBay users around the world, helping them easily discover items that match their interests and curate collections from the 650 million items on eBay."

The company is allowing customers to export the links that they have added to the site, and said it was making the announcement now to give them enough time to do so.

The news that Svpply is shutting down is actually less surprising than the fact that it was able to exist for another two years after being acquired. At the time of the acquisition, though an eBay spokesperson told VatorNews that Svpply would continue to exist, and that employees would be working for both Svpply and eBay, it was also clear that eBay had its designs on Svpply's tech and talent.

“With Svpply.com, eBay gains access to technology talent to further improve the shopping and selling experience for its customers. Svpply.com assets – including a talented team of six designers and developers – are well-suited to help eBay advance more personalized experiences and merchandising options on eBay.com,” eBay wrote at the time. 

Now that it has spent a couple of year integrating the technology into its own products, Svpply has obviously outlived its usefulness as a standalone service.

"As we look to seamlessly integrate our business models, we will be retiring Svpply.com. We encourage customers who enjoyed the Svpply experience to continue expressing their passions and interests by creating collections on eBay," eBay spokesperson Amanda Coffee told VatorNews.

New York City-based Svpply was founded in 2009 by Vimeo co-founder Zach Klein, along with Ben Pieratt and Eric Jacobsen.

The site offered a curated collection of products from stores from around the world. Members can keep track of items they want, as well as discover products through people and stores they follow on the site. Members can also share items they like with friends. Once users saw something that they want to buy, they were taken to the retailer’s website to complete the purchase.

The site says that it currently has 1.1 million products from 70,000 stores, with 3,000 new products being brought in daily.

The site raised $550,000 in seed funding in November 2010. The company lists its investors as Spark Capital, Founder Collective, Andy Spade, Steven Alan, Jason Hirschhorn, Idan Cohen, Jonathan Kraft, Alex Gezelius, Adam Pritzker, Dennis Crowley and SV Angel.

(Image source: wallwallhd.com)