Sunnyvale, California, April 8, 2008 - Kaboodle (www.kaboodle.com), the largest and fastest-growing online social shopping community where people discover, recommend and share products, announced that it will create brand profiles and enable retail partners to claim and manage their profiles on Kaboodle. Kaboodle's brand profiles launch with some of the community's favorite brands, including Beauty.com, shopbop.com, Design Public, Free People, Nordstrom, Karmaloop, UncommonGoods, Brookstone, Ballard Designs, Ivy Blue, Home Decorators Collection and Zappos.com.
Kaboodle's Brand Program is designed to help retailers and brands build awareness within the Kaboodle community, enhance relationships with customers, and take advantage of unique merchandising and sales opportunities. Kaboodle's comprehensive program includes advertising and affiliate opportunities, contests and giveaways within the Kaboodle community, "Add to Kaboodle" buttons which can be syndicated to partners' online stores, and now brand profiles in Kaboodle.
"We are excited to take part in Kaboodle's Brand Program, where we see a unique opportunity to engage with the Kaboodle community through our drugstore.com and Beauty.com brand profile on Kaboodle. In addition, we will soon incorporate the 'Add to Kaboodle' button next to products on Beauty.com, and plan to do the same on drugstore.com in the near future, making it even easier for products to be added to personal Kaboodle pages. Drugstore.com and Beauty.com also look forward to working with Kaboodle on programs and contests to further promote our brand and products." said David Lonczak, chief marketing officer, Drugstore.com. "Our brands' profiles on Kaboodle will simplify the process of drawing valuable insight from our customer interactions, and will afford us the chance to engage with the Kaboodle shopping community to further our brand loyalty among their users as we reach out to the brand savvy consumer."
Brand profiles, the latest enhancement to Kaboodle's Brand Program, are designed to meet the needs of retailers and brands. Profiles can be customized to reflect a company's branding, messaging, current promotions and featured products. The company's most popular products are also highlighted to help "fans" and others discover new products they'll love. Brands can interact with users by featuring "Help Me Choose" polls on their profile and offering deals and discounts to the Kaboodle community. Kaboodle has created a new brands section to allow easy access to brand profiles and featured products. Retailers will now have a specific dedicated area to promote their brands, separate from any community added products.
"Brands are to Kaboodle like bands are to MySpace," said Manish Chandra, CEO and co-founder of Kaboodle. "Brand profiles put control into the hands of our members, allowing them to save time and money while engaging with their favorite brands in a fun and convenient manner. Our retail partners love the profile program as they understand the evolution of online social shopping and the need to interact directly with the consumer. Kaboodle is providing the platform for brands to reach these consumers on a one-to-one level."
"Ballard Designs sees the Kaboodle Brand program as a great tool to reach a new audience of avid home dècor shoppers," said Michael Ippolito, president and CEO of Ballard Designs. "By customizing our brand profile, we can constantly tailor which Ballard Designs home furnishings and accessories are featured, allowing us to connect with shoppers more frequently and on a more engaging level."
"The Kaboodle community has a strong sense of fashion and trends. The new Brand program allows shopbop to reach the fashion forward shopper and introduce her to new and exciting products at shopbop.com," Michelle Remstein, marketing analyst at shopbop.com.
Kaboodle has over six million monthly unique visitors and more than 500,000 registered users who have added three million online products to the site. It is the fastest growing online social shopping site and continues to attract users who want to shop online, discover new products, browse the gift guide, create wish lists, and suggest and share product information.
About Kaboodle
Kaboodle (www.kaboodle.com) is a social shopping community where people discover, recommend and share products. Kaboodle's powerful shopping tools allow people to organize their shopping through lists, discover new things from people with similar style, get discounts on popular products and find best prices. At the heart of Kaboodle is a fun and engaging community of people who love to shop. Community members create and join groups, share advice, feedback and product suggestions and personalize their profiles with polls and other widgets. In August 2007, Kaboodle was acquired by Hearst Corporation (www.hearst.com), one of the nation's largest diversified media companies.
Contacts:
Julie O'Grady, Kaboodle, Inc., 650-269-9989, julie@ogradycom.com
