Greenfield Online (NASDAQ:SRVY), a Wilton, CT based company (I grew up around the corner from Wilton, in Stamford, CT) operates the Ciao Group, one of the leading European shopping engines, with operations in Germany, France, Spain, Italy, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. Plans for entry into Japan also seem to be in the works, although that could just be on the Survey side of the business.
Ciao US is scheduled to open up for business in early February, around the time of Greenfield Online’s earnings release (scheduled for February 7th).
You might not have heard of Greenfield before, but you may have been asked to participate in their survey business, which accounts for about 75% of the company’s revenue. The comparison shopping business makes up the remaining 25% of revenues. According to the company’s most recent earnings release (November 7, 2007), the comparison shopping business brought in $8.2m in revenue in the third quarter, up 60.7% from the previous year.
While Ciao is entering a crowded US shopping engine market, there’s always room for more players if the company is willing to spend some money acquiring merchants through the PPC channels. Comments on my post about Pepperjam’s Shogging.com prove that there’s still room for new entrants.
Ciao US will be a PPC based shopping engine, but for merchants who sign up pre-launch, they’ll get free clicks for the first 3 months. Yes, I said FREE. I obviously can’t vouch for the quality of the leads or the quality of the customer service, but these guys seem serious about their US expansion plans.
For details on how to sign up for the promotion, check out the SingleFeed or LoveYourFeed blogs.
[...] Ciao, especializado en compras que ofrece comparaciones de precios y opiniones de los usuarios, debutará en Estados Unidos. Ciao tiene operaciones en Alemania, Francia, España , Italia, el Reino Unido y los Países Bajos [...]
While you’re on the topic of CT – Shout out to Norwalk, CT – my hometown. Are you going to be at ETail?
“Ciao!”
What can CIAO bring the US market that isn’t already here? I guess more PPC options for merchants. blah
Ciao does very well in Europe, ranking as the #2 shopping engine. Hopefully, they can carry over some of that knowledge to the US playing field. According to their investor’s meeting this morning, they don’t intend on competing with existing CSE’s but are aligning themselves as a bridge between facebook and CSE’s. Sounds like social shopping to me. We’ll see…