TechCrunch
Jifiti Raises $2.5 Million For Gifting App Which Combines Thoughtful Shopping With The Convenience Of A Gift Card
Jifiti, a startup trying to reintroduce thoughtful gifting in the age of the ubiquitous gift card, has raised $2.5 million in seed funding, the company is announcing today, along with the official debut of its mobile app’s new interface, designed for improved ease of use.
The investment comes from Simon Property Group, a real estate company that operates over 300 malls in the U.S. and Asia, plus Schottenstein Stores Corp., owners of American Eagle and DSW, and the Jesselson Group.
Jifiti’s app arrives at a time when buying a gift usually means loading up a web browser and clicking around a bit. And when you’re not sure of someone’s style preferences or size, those who need to buy presents for friends and family often turn to the gift card instead. But gift cards are viewed somewhat like stuffing cash into an envelope – useful, sure, but not much time or care went into the gift selection process.
With Jifiti, the idea is to re-introduce the possibility of actually browsing through a brick-and-mortar retailer’s racks to locate a gift, while also eliminating the hassles of gift wrapping, shipping, or getting something the recipient doesn’t want or need.
To use the service, you locate an item you want to buy, then scan its barcode in-store to “purchase” it with the Jifiti mobile app. The item is sent to the gift recipient through an in-app notification or email. And to redeem their gift, the “giftee” simply visits the retailer’s shop to pick-up the item you selected in his or her own preferred size or color, or can use the virtual gift card to pick out something else entirely. This process also works online, via the retailer’s e-commerce site. In either case, it’s just a matter of showing or entering in the provided gift card number.
Though in the end, the Jifiti gift essentially functions like a gift card – it ties into the retailers’ gift card systems to work, in fact - it’s also meant to evoke the feeling that someone really shopped for you and thoughtfully chose your present.
For obvious reasons, Jifiti makes sense to mall owners, brick-and-mortar retailers, or even those with both physical and online stores.
The startup recently completed a test of its product’s prototype in three Simon-owned malls in the Boston area.
“We brought it to them because we really wanted to catch people when they’re in that shopping mode – they’re walking through the stores and they want to buy people gifts,” explains Jifiti co-founder Shaul Weisband. “Simon malls, which saw this as a way to connect the in-store to the online, realized the potential and actually invested in the company,” he says.
The investment will see Jifiti featured in over 100 more Simon malls by this holiday season, meaning it will be promoted through signage in the malls, video screens and through co-promotions with the mall’s retailers.
Jifiti currently works with retailers like Gap, Nike, Barnes & Noble, Sephora, Gamestop, Hot Topic, Brookstone, Columbia Sportwear, Banana Republic, Old Navy, Athleta, and more. In total, the app works with around 25 retailers today, with another 7 nearly ready to go live.
Weisband declined to provide the number of consumers using the application, because, so far, the company hadn’t been focused on getting out to market, but had rather been more interested in proving the concept. However, he would ballpark the adoption at “tens of thousands,” and spoke off record of other projects in the works which would help Jifiti gain even greater visibility and adoption online and on mobile.
Prior to the new investment, the Columbus, Ohio-based company had only a small amount of pre-seed funding from friends and family, so the focus when raising this round was on bringing in strategic partners. “We know hard it is when it comes to user acquisition and getting to the shoppers,” says Weisband, who says he’s thrilled by Simon Property Group investment. “They’re forward thinkers…they’re always looking ahead to what the mall of the future is going to be like, and how they can integrate technology for their users,” he remarks.
In addition, the CMO of Simon Property Group Mikael Thygesen has now joined Jifiti’s board, as a result of the new funding. The plan now is to focus on the rollout to the 100 or so new malls, as well as on other new product initiatives which would help to transform physical items into digital purchases.
The updated version of the Jifiti mobile application is available here for both iPhone and Android.
BMW Officially Unveils The i3, An Electric Hot Hatch With A $41k Starting Price
Watch out, Tesla. BMW has officially entered the EV market. With the BMW i3, officially announced today, the Bavarian auto maker has a vehicle and, with that, a platform, that could shake up the electric vehicle market. Meet the BMW i3, the ultimate electric driving machine.
The BMW i3 is the company’s first production electric vehicle under the “i” sub-brand. Priced at $41,350 in the US (£25,680 in the UK) and headed to the US market in the second quarter of 2014, the i3 isn’t a car for the masses. Even though it’s one of the least expensive EVs available, the sticker is still out of the reach of many. Worse yet, its EV range is less than that of competitors including the Nissan Leaf. But it’s a BMW. And it looks fantastic.
BMW no doubts expects the i3 to be a low volume production car. It is, in a sense, for early adopters. The 22-kilowatt, 450-pound lithium-ion powertrain is good for just 80-100 miles and provides 170 horsepower and 184 found-feet of torque. That’s good for a pokey 7.0 second 0-60 time. For those buyers with a bit of range anxiety, the i3 can be equipped with a a 34-hp, 650cc two-cylinder generator, turning the car into a Chevy Volt-like extended range electric vehicle.
But for BMW, the i3 isn’t about building and selling the best electric vehicle right now — rather, it’s about building a platform for the future. This is standard operating procedure in the automotive world.
Tesla started with the Roadster, a vehicle that borrowed a good chunk of its framework from Lotus. From there, once many of the bugs were worked out of the novel electric powertrain, Tesla released the Model S sedan, a car that cost about three-quarters what the Roadster did. Chevy is doing the same thing with the Volt.
The Chevy Volt didn’t have to be a breakthrough hit to be a success. The Volt is built on the Voltec platform that’s also going to be used the Cadillac ELR coupe and other upcoming GM extended range electric vehicles.
The BMW i3 is a sort of test bed. The production car features a stable of technology and creature comforts not found in the rest of the auto maker’s line-up. BMW calls the architecture LifeDrive, consisting of the Life Module and Drive Module. The Life Module is void of pillars and is the first mass-produced monocoque made of carbon fiber reinforced plastic. The material is 30 percent lighter than aluminum and is tougher than steel, contributing to the i3′s relatively light weight of 2,700 pounds. Expect to see this sort of material and design in upcoming BMWs.
The Drive Module consists of the drivetrain, battery pack and everything that propels the i3.
The i3 and its big brother the i8, have never been a secret. BMW has long paraded concepts and near-production examples around, sort of proclaiming to the world that BMW will, at least eventually, participate in electric vehicles.
The EV market is still in its infancy and is still experiences shakeups as early upstarts shut down. Tesla seemingly owns a large chunk of the public’s mindshare, Nissan can’t build enough Leafs to meet demand, and GM is rolling forward with new vehicles built on top of the Volt’s platform. Better yet, startups are popping up, eager to join the EV race. But with the BMW i3, the rest of the market should take notice — there’s suddenly a new player on the field that knows a thing or two about building compelling cars.
I'll Be Talking With Eric Migicovsky, Creator Of The Pebble Watch, At TechCrunch Disrupt SF
Eric Migicovsky is an unlikely hardware mogul. His first product, the Pebble Smart Watch, came to him after experimenting with watch designs and then caught fire, going from $0 to $10 million in funding on Kickstarter. His watch captured imaginations and inspired a new craze for usable, powerful smart wearables.
He also has excellent taste in hats.
We’ll be talking about what’s next for Pebble, how his retail expansion is going, and what it takes to make a hardware startup in an a software-heavy environment. I’ve made it a personal mission to bring cool hardware guys like up on stage every Disrupt and I’m pleased that we got the coolest of the cool.
Disrupt SF takes over The San Francisco Design Concourse from September 7 to 11. Tickets are currently on sale here. If you are interested in becoming a sponsor, opportunities can be found here.
Eric Migicovsky is the founder of Pebble Technology, the company behind the Pebble smartwatch. He helped create the largest Kickstarter project to date.
You can follow him on Twitter at @ericmigi. He lives in Vancouver and when to the University of Waterloo.
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