ComparisonEngines

Update: Sorry about the disappearing post. Ran into problems with Flickr so went over to Photobucket, but that ended up messing up the WP formatting…went back to Flickr.

Shopzilla is the only shopping comparison engine to truly take advantage of email newsletters. Must be an incredible $$$ maker for Shopzilla.

Impressive that they put this together less than 24hrs after the Golden Globe awards were announced.

Just in case you thought I was picking on Shopping.com the other day, I also took a closer look at Shopzilla’s numbers through Scripps’ earnings call.

Q2 2005 revenue of $29.5 million and earnings of $7.6 million.
Q3 2005 revenue of $32.5 $35.2 million and earnings of $7.3 million.

I like the 19% increase in revenue, but why did earnings decrease 4% quarter to quarter? As Shopzilla is now part of a larger entity, I didn’t get the kind of answer I was looking for.

According to Farhad Mohit, Founder and Chief Product Officer, “at this stage in the game where gaining marketshare is most important, we are very very pleased with the topline revenue growth that we are experiencing and take that as a sign that we are helping more and more consumers and sending an increasing number of quality leads to our retail partners.”

From the press release:

John Phelps, currently chief operating officer of Shopzilla, has been named president of the online comparison shopping service, which is the newest operating subsidiary of The E.W. Scripps Company.

Phelps succeeds Chuck Davis, who has been named chairman of Shopzilla. Davis, 45, was president and chief executive officer of Shopzilla when it was acquired by Scripps in June. He will serve in an advisory role and also will work with Scripps to explore business opportunities in rapidly growing interactive marketplaces.

Read the full release.

Shopzilla’s second quarter 2005 EBITDA of $7.6MM on revenue of $29.5MM highlights the strong growth of shopping comparison engines and puts the company ahead of Shopping.com in terms of quarterly revenue. Shopping.com reported second quarter 2005 revenue of $27.8MM, $1.7MM less than Shopzilla.

As Chuck Davis, Shopzilla’s CEO points out, the company has been “growing sequentially, quarter-over-quarter, since the holidays. In a seasonal business like shopping, which normally skews heavily to the fourth quarter, this trend is quite exciting.” According to Farhad Mohit, the company’s fourth quarter 2004 revenues were $25.1MM and first quarter 2005 revenues were $26.9MM (as the company was a private corporation until the recent E.W.Scripps acquisition, there is no way to confirm these numbers). While Shopping.com’s fourth quarter 2004 revenues of $31.7MM and first quarter 2005 revenues of $28.9MM were higher than those reported by Shopzilla, it’s important to note that Shopping.com has seen a sequential, quarter-over-quarter downward trend in revenues since the fourth quarter. In truth, this is what should be expected with a shopping related site. That’s what makes Shopzilla’s strong growth even more interesting.

Here’s a closer look at what makes Shopzilla tick. I sat down with Farhad Mohit in his company’s LA office a couple weeks ago to get an overview of the company. I will follow up with Farhad in the near future to more thoroughly hit on some of the subjects covered in our conversation… Read the rest of this entry »

From the E.W. Scripps earnings release (which I read through TheStreet.com and PaidContent.org):

“In the three days that we owned the business during the second quarter, Shopzilla contributed about $1 million in revenue and about $350,000 in segment profit. Based on its rapid growth and competitive edge among online comparison shopping services, we’re convinced that Shopzilla will provide the company and its shareholders with an excellent opportunity for increased value.”

Cataloging products is extremely difficult. While most comparison shopping engines require merchants to include manufacturer part numbers (MPN), universal product codes (UPC), etc., not all merchants follow the rules and there are many ‘bundles’ which are assigned fictitious unique identifiers. Because of this, all shopping comparison engines run into categorization problems and end up throwing a lot of resources towards solving the problem.

Shopzilla today announced the launch of zLabs which showcases the company’s investment into R&D to advance comparison shopping search technology. “The first research project to be featured within zLabs is Robozilla, a fully functioning version of Shopzilla wherein all the clustering and alignment of products, prices, availability and images from various merchants is done in a completely automated way. “

I’m just learning about Robozilla now, so I’ll post an update later.