Newegg.com an online geek-haven that ships 40,000 computer peripherals a day, bringing in $1.9 billion in sales last year is turning into a mainstream online retailer.
Last week, it launched Neweggmall.com, which sells everything from diamonds and shoes to car headlights and lamps.
As a niche e-commerce site for the tech savvy, the company has done tremendously well. Is Neweggmall.com poised to become the next Amazon.com?
“It’s a natural progression of our business,” said Bernard Luthi, vice president of merchandising at Newegg, based in the City of Industry. “We’ve built a loyal customer base and we’re simply offering them the convenience of being able to shop for consumer goods.”
Loyal is right. Customers spend an average of 20 minutes at Newegg.com, four times the industry average for online retailers. The average basket size for shoppers is about 10 times that of Amazon.com. Newegg doesn’t accept orders if the items aren’t in its three massive warehouses.
Neweggmall.com will be different, though. The 15,000 products sold on the site do not come from Newegg’s own warehouses. It partners with nearly 100 vendors with plans to contract with 200 more by the end of the year as a kind of marketplace. Neweggmall.com takes a cut of each sale.
It’s likely to be a low-risk venture for the 2,200-person company. As it was already set up to run an e-commerce site, Newegg only needed a few additional employees to launch its mall site.
Neweggmall.com offers a hodgepodge of items, from a jade beaded Buddha bracelet to art prints.
“We don’t want to just list the top 10 health and beauty products and the top 10 auto parts,” Luthi said. “We want to go deep into each category and be the kind of one-stop shop where you can buy items you can’t find anywhere else.”
Highway Star
South Korea has plans to make its highways wireless so that passengers traveling at 60 mph can get online on their laptops.
Calabasas-based Strix Systems has been awarded the contract to provide the wireless technology for Korean Highway Corp. It has successfully completed the first test project, a 19-mile stretch of a freeway between Seoul and Pusan.
The Strix network has more radio capacity than others, said Kirby Russell, the company’s spokesman.
Radio signals, coupled with the company’s proprietary algorithms that improve radio performance, allow users to get online while in vehicles moving at highway speed. They’re able to view streaming video on laptops and mobile devices, use voice-over Internet protocol products such as Skype and run multimedia applications.
Strix Systems, an eight-year-old company of 50 people, does more than half of its business overseas. It has about 500 customers.
Last month, it deployed one of the largest voice-over IP systems in the world at the 72-story Landmark Tower Yokohama in Japan.
Strix is also a supplier for Kenya Data Networks, which is equipping African villages in 42 countries with Wi-Fi so that telecommunications service through voice-over IP technology can be deployed at low cost to users.
Money for Veoh
Westwood-based Veoh Networks, a leading Internet TV site, has received $30 million in funding.
The new investors are Intel Capital, the global investment arm of Intel Corp.; Adobe Systems Inc.; and Gordon Crawford, senior vice president of Capital Research Global Investors.
This brings the four-year-old company’s total venture funding to more than $68 million. The site is backed by media heavyweights, including Michael Eisner’s Tornante Co. and Time Warner Investments.
Veoh attracts an average of 28 million unique visitors a month, and they spend about 100 minutes on the site. This is to view content from 100,000 publishers, including CBS, Viacom’s MTV Networks, FearNet and Lions Gate, along with independent filmmakers and content producers.
New Views
Russell Fine, co-founder of popular horse-racing wager site YouBet.com, has launched a new company, Opposing Views.
OpposingViews.com is a forum for debate on issues ranging from politics, health, personal finance and parenting.
The Web site will go into a testing phase, with $1.3 million in venture funding secured from Frontera Group and Gil Elbaz, co-founder of Applied Semantics, among other private investors.
The seed funding will go toward bringing in the site’s first 100 experts and implementing media partnerships.
Opinions and views will be provided from associations such as the National Rifle Association, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and the Sierra Club.
Site-Shop Funding
CrownPeak Technology, which develops Web management software, has raised $6 million in funding from SunAmerica Ventures.
This brings the L.A. company’s total funding to more than $10 million.
The company builds Web content software, which lets companies manage their sites without having Web experts on hand.
Crownpeak’s clients include Hyundai, Crain Publications, the ACLU and the state of Virginia.
Staff reporter Booyeon Lee can be reached at [email protected] or at (323) 549-5225, ext. 230.
