Today, happily surprised that a Spanish developer made his PrestaShop / OpenICEcat integration available for free as open source as well. Before, he asked money for this download, but he got complaints from the PrestaShop user community that made him change his policy. Good. Also for him. Because, now we don't feel restricted to promote his contribution.
PrestaShop is an open source webshop which is popular in France, Spain and Latin America.
Friday, January 9, 2009
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Open Catalog Strategy 2009 (Open ICEcat)
The retail slump is perfect for open content & open source (OS) based solutions. Open ICEcat - the free open catalog - is now breaking through to the top of the etail and B2B market in Europe as brands care more about surviving than protecting holy cows. At the other hand, a percentage of the smaller ecommerce companies have troubles, especially in B2B IT, where margins are low. In particular, the City (London) is hit hard with all its financials, and its supply chain feels the repercussions. Also, on country level ecommerce investments are notably (for us) down in Spain, France, Germany and Italy as well.
Nevertheless, we decided to raise our ambitions for 2009:
1. grow from 4500 registered Open ICEcat users (ecommerce sites) to 10,000
2. grow from 160 sponsoring brands in free Open ICEcat to over 250 brands
3. grow from 380 million product data-sheet requests to over 1 billion.
The first ambition is very realistic, but requires that we realize the committed integrations by Tech Data in Germany and the UK. The co-operation is already live in Spain, NL, CZ and Italia. And it further requires that the planned interfaces with leading OS systems like Magento, PrestaShop, are indeed timely realized.
The second ambition is at first sight tougher. Manufacturers have less budgets available for marketing as they are hit directly by the retail slump. At the other hand, the times is right for a strategy shift from traditional retail to online. ICEcat sponsor Philips, publicly announced that the online channel has to take care of at least 14% (1 Billion Euro) of its LifeStyle revenues. Open ICEcat plays a central role in this strategy with its open network of 4500+ ecommerce sites.
At the same time, we see the Open Catalog as a possibility to promote OS solutions. In the coming days, we finalize a "X-sell tool" with which we can - for example - add the Firefox Mozilla browser as an option to every notebook, netbook and desktop PC.
Given our believe system, I think we should do this. ;-)
The third ambition, is again very realistic given the past in which the usage of ICEcat was growing with around 200% annually. However, Q4 2008 showed a slowdown to 110% growth. In this light, we can only realize this ambition by increasing the penetration in the US, and expanding to other sectors than our four core sectors (IT, CE, Telecom, Office) .
Nevertheless, we decided to raise our ambitions for 2009:
1. grow from 4500 registered Open ICEcat users (ecommerce sites) to 10,000
2. grow from 160 sponsoring brands in free Open ICEcat to over 250 brands
3. grow from 380 million product data-sheet requests to over 1 billion.
The first ambition is very realistic, but requires that we realize the committed integrations by Tech Data in Germany and the UK. The co-operation is already live in Spain, NL, CZ and Italia. And it further requires that the planned interfaces with leading OS systems like Magento, PrestaShop, are indeed timely realized.
The second ambition is at first sight tougher. Manufacturers have less budgets available for marketing as they are hit directly by the retail slump. At the other hand, the times is right for a strategy shift from traditional retail to online. ICEcat sponsor Philips, publicly announced that the online channel has to take care of at least 14% (1 Billion Euro) of its LifeStyle revenues. Open ICEcat plays a central role in this strategy with its open network of 4500+ ecommerce sites.
At the same time, we see the Open Catalog as a possibility to promote OS solutions. In the coming days, we finalize a "X-sell tool" with which we can - for example - add the Firefox Mozilla browser as an option to every notebook, netbook and desktop PC.
Given our believe system, I think we should do this. ;-)
The third ambition, is again very realistic given the past in which the usage of ICEcat was growing with around 200% annually. However, Q4 2008 showed a slowdown to 110% growth. In this light, we can only realize this ambition by increasing the penetration in the US, and expanding to other sectors than our four core sectors (IT, CE, Telecom, Office) .
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Desperate Offensive during Crisis.
Tonie van Ringelesteijn interprets in Webwerld @ Jan 5 the ICEcat data as "Crisis Leads to Desperate Offensive Tech-Manufacturers". I must admit that I had used the word in an email, because the number of new tech products in our database in Q4-2008 had more than tripled compared to the Q4-2007 (168K vs 56K). It must have to do with a collective response to the retail slump.
Very interesting is the news that Google's OS Android operating system is successfully installed on Netbooks.
Very interesting is the news that Google's OS Android operating system is successfully installed on Netbooks.
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