Greeting cards at stores range in sensibilities, from sappy sentimentality to irreverent humor. E-cards, on the other hand, are pretty safe and tame across the board, said Jeff Gorman, founder and president of VidiGreet.
“Every time my sister sends me one, I kind of cringe,” he said. “It’s just not my sense of humor. I prefer something clever and sarcastic.”
Gorman, a longtime TV commercial director, has launched a video greeting card site that features 15-second videos, or what the site calls “funny, outrageous, stupid, irreverent, gross little comedies,” that can be sent like an e-card.
For example, under the heading “I love you” is a clip of a young couple who are walking hand and hand until Cupid mistakenly riddles the man with bullets after picking up the wrong weapon.
The $80 million e-card market is primarily crowded with illustrated notes and less so with videos. Venice-based Jibjab, which also produces video greetings that include political satires and animation, is the only formidable competitor to Hollywood’s VidiGreet. Most other video greeting sites are not professionally produced.
To launch VidiGreet, Gorman pulled $2.5 million from his own pocket. With more than 20 years of experience in production and copywriting, dating back to a Nike TV commercial for the 1984 Olympics, Gorman knew that commercial shoots are expensive. So he is using a young production crew straight out of film school.
“We’re doing this very guerilla,” Gorman said. Recently, his team filmed 30 clips in four days for upcoming Valentine’s Day and Groundhog Day. (“The poor, little guy never gets the same props as Santa and Easter Bunny so I’m elevating him to star status,” he said.)
Revenue comes from fees of $3.99 for one-day unlimited use or an annual $15.99.
Phone Home
M-commerce, or wireless marketplaces accessible via mobile phones, is a dynamic sector in countries such as Japan, where consumers bought $10 billion worth of goods on their cell phones last year.
Domestically, m-commerce is still a fledgling market, primarily focused on downloadable songs, ring tones, wallpapers and videos for the phone.
Two L.A. retailers are hedging their bets on this relatively new way of doing business. Bundle City, a downtown consumer electronics dealer, and Wicked Cool Stuff, a North Hollywood collectibles retailer, have opened up shop in “virtual malls” that are accessible to subscribers of carriers Verizon, AT & T; and Sprint.
They each have mobile-based Internet addresses where subscribers can purchase products on their phones.
“Our mobile customers are typically shopping at a physical store when they log on to our site to compare an item at that store with our inventory on their cell phones,” said Pez Elias, chief executive of Bundle City. “If our store has a better price, then they’ll buy the product right on their cell phones.”
Bundle City has sold home electronics and house wares on mobile phones for almost a year and sales have grown steadily. By the end of the year, m-commerce is expected to account for 5 percent of the store’s total revenue.
That’s a fairly robust return on investment, since Bundle City pays less than $100 a month to have its m-commerce site set up and maintained. It’s run by Seattle-based mPoria Inc.’s technology and platform, which services about 160 merchants. The retailers’ Web sites are also listed on mPoria’s “mall” on the three phone carriers.
For Brett Dewey, who owns Wicked Cool Stuff, m-commerce is still an experiment. He is trying it out because he believes cell phones are a great medium for impulse buys.
“Nothing we sell is a necessity,” he said. “They’re novelty kind of gifts, stuff you buy on a whim like an 18-inch Michael Myers action figure. A lot of it is just looking for a single fan of a single product, and this is another way to reach that customer.”
Guitar Heroics
A key to Vivendi Game’s $19 billion acquisition of Activision Inc. late last year was its hugely popular “Guitar Hero” franchise.
A month after the merger, “Guitar Hero” has set an industry record, racking up more than $1 billion North American retail sales over the past 26 months, according to the NPD Group.
The latest version of the game, “Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock,” ranked No. 1 in sales by both units and dollars for 2007.
In 2006, “Guitar Hero” developer Red Octane was acquired by Activision for only $13 million.
Google Money
Pasadena’s eSolar Inc., an Idealab company specializing in solar thermal power, will receive $10 million from Google’s philanthropic organization.
That’s the largest single grant among a total of $26 million Google.org recently pledged toward battling health and environmental problems, improving public services and supporting small businesses.
ESolar develops solar-thermal power plants that use heat from the sun to produce electricity. This approach includes an array of mirrors that reflect sunshine toward a kind of water tower. As the water turns into steam, it spins a turbine that generates electricity. ESolar is also backed by Oak Investment Partners.
Staff reporter Booyeon Lee can be reached at (323) 549-5225, ext. 230, or at
[email protected]
.
