November 16, 2009
Celebrity shopping site OpenSky gets $30M
OpenSky secures funding from Providence Equity Partners and others for tailored shopping experience
Who knows you better than your favorite celebrity? Probably a lot of people, but you might not want their shopping advice. OpenSky.com, a celebrity-focused shopping site, announced Monday that it's secured $30 million in funding from several investors including Providence Equity Partners, Highland Capital Partners, The Raine Group and Canaan Partners.
The six-month-old company, based in New York City, has already signed up more than 600,000 members that can choose to curate shopping tips and suggestions from 75 experts and celebrities on the site including Bobby Flay, Padma Lakshmi, Molly Sims, Tom Colicchio, Veronica Webb and Jackie Warner (basically most of the Bravo line-up and some shopping experts.)
A company reporesntative told me that the curators (celebrity personalities or experts) work with OpenSky’s buying team to find the products they love and that most represent their own style and voice.
Sometimes these items may be of from the personalities' own product like but they can be anything, from anywhere.
When a user signs up for the free service, they can pick the celebrity advice they wish to follow and receive daily updates on shopping must haves such as vintage coffee makers, bamboo cutting boards or self-help books.
Discounts and other deals are connected to following specific shopping experts and there is an auction-like time crunch for how long the discount will be offered for members.
“OpenSky is different; rather than a search box and a long catalog or a flash sale of last year’s goods," said John Caplan, founder and CEO of OpenSky, in a statement. "Consumers want to discover amazing products based upon their interests, and it’s exciting to have experienced investors recognize our early success.”
This company integrates a lot of sharing and user-referral into its membership so that others can learn about great deals and join, follow, and purchase along with the other OpenSky shoppers. This referral system has helped OpenSky grow 50% in volume and revenue for the last six months.
OpenSky has a profit-sharing model in place with each of the curators, wherein the talent and OpenSky share the gross profits from items sold.
Over the next several months, OpenSky will continue to its expansion of expert curators in food, style, health and home, as well as add new experts and categories outside these specialties.
The website has an Etsy feel to it since each expert has a message about the item that they have suggested and the site doesn't redirect the user to outside commercial pages for purchase, but does everything in-house.
OpenSky is true to its mission of being a more personal shopping catalog since it is easy to add and subtract experts that based on their resent suggestions and how close to your interests they are.
In a celebrity-focused environment, it is clear that the company and its investors are betting that the same interest that gets you to tune into a Bravo reality show will get you to buy the star's latest line of leather jewelry or knife set.
“OpenSky is a great company with a unique online retail experience that is driving a real innovation to shopping,” said Al Dobron, a managing director at Providence Equity Partners, in a statement.
Dobron will be joining the board of directors of OpenSky -- this is in addition to his roles on Hulu, Nextag and AutoTrader.com's boards.
Image Source -- Jewelrybloguncovered.com
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