Dynamic shopping that learns user’s tastes
Dibsie.com is a dynamic shopping catalog site that ‘learns’ members tastes and then presents products based on that knowledge created database. The company was founded by Garren Givens, Dylan Fareed and Scott Poniewaz. If the three amigos sound familiar, many may remember that they had previously worked together on CampusDibs. CampusDibs was launched in 2010 and considered a Groupon clone aimed at serving up daily deals for college students.
The idea of learning a user’s preference in order to make targeted recommendations has seen a lot of interest of late, especially in New York. Hunch was acquired by eBay and The Fancy scored a $10 million venture capital investment in late 2011.
Dibsie.com appears to be in part a self-serve platform, where small businesses can upload their products alongside more established brands. The company soft launched at the New York Tech Meetup in August, 2011. Since then the three amigos have spent countless hours in contacting and adding hundreds of small businesses wanting to use Dibsie as a platform for their offers.
White label platform possibilities
In a recent phone chat with VentureBeat, Garren Givens stated that: “We’re not a blog, a social wish-list, or bookmarking site where people are grabbing things from all over the web, only some of which you can buy. We curate products from thousands of brands and surface the things you are mostly likely to be interested in based on your taste and social graph.”
There are all kinds of eyeballs viewing the Dibsie site. In the past two months, over fifty thousand visitors have browsed the merchandise. The company also holds a spot on the Entrepreneur’s Roundtable Accelerator. Garren seemed thrilled with the results. “Our beta partners have seen a 400 percent lift in purchase intent for items people found while browsing Dibsie.” According to VentureBeat, “Garren says the technology behind Dibsie could be used as white label platform, allowing fashion magazines to easily turn on a compelling, highly social shopping experience for their sites without having to do any heavy lifting.”
The Pitch
It’s understandable that the magnitude of positive feedback has helped Dibsie get a foot in the door with some of the mega magazine publishers in New York. As of now, no deals have been finalized. There is still quite a bit of buzz surrounding the company. For those that are curious or would like to learn more about Dibsie.com, the company can also be followed on the reality series ‘The Pitch.’ The company made it into the final three competing for the big prize.
Source: Venture Beat
