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:
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.
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.
It does seem that way – hardly a day goes by without someone launching a cashback or voucher code site..
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