Kohl’s has announced a partnership with Amazon in a new initiative allowing customers to return Amazon purchases in 10 of their stores in Chicago and LA. Not to be outdone by Walmart’s announcement last week that they would be accepting returns for online purchases in-store, Amazon is once again leveraging its colossal sales engine to create new partnerships to combat the existing offline distribution Walmart has. This one comes right before the holidays, and will likely be a leading indicator of whether consumers value the ability to return items in store, and whether this will drive more in-person purchases for Kohl’s, a reputed holiday retail giant.
In SaaS news this week, Adobe announced the release of its UX/UI graphic design program XD from beta to version 1.0. The new software makes it easier for designers to iterate on client deliverables without having to navigate technical complexities/compatibility, and has already been adopted by several firms as a primary tool in its beta state.
New in SaaS listings this week we have a B2B SaaS business in the real estate lease niche, with a diverse customer base including several leading commercial real estate firms, and low churn of just c.5.2%. Also new this week is another B2B SaaS business in the investment services niche, with a diversified client base of c. 130 clients and rapid compound annual growth rate of c.21% for the 2014 to (e)2017 period. Featured in SaaS listings this week is a $700K software business in the ad space, with a proprietary patent-pending software, an average monthly gross revenue of c.$50K, and a full-time staff that will transition with the business. If you are interested in learning more about these popular SaaS businesses, be sure to request a prospectus, as we have already received several interested inquiries.
This week we also announced the successful acquisition of SilverSiphon by Zillionize. In this article, James Rose discussed what’s it’s like to see the company he built be acquired by a major angel investment firm, stating “I never would have thought it would grow into a product trusted by so many companies and go on to be acquired by a company like Zillionize.” We were thrilled to represent James and SilverSiphon on this deal and are keen to see what the future holds for both James and the business.
This week in event news, the FE team has been in Bangkok attending DCBKK from Wednesday through today, and will be jetting back for Rhodium Weekend in Las Vegas from October 26-29 before heading to Digital Footprint in Los Angeles on October 28. Don’t forget the FE International monthly Boston E-Commerce meetup is also coming up on October 25th at Watermark Apartments in Seaport, where our panel of expert entrepreneurs will share their wisdom on funding your e-commerce business. Click here to register! If you will be attending any of these events, or will be in the area around that time, shoot us an email so we can set up one on one meetings.
Continue reading below for more on Amazon’s partnership with Kohl’s, Adobe’s sleek new UX/UI software, and Bing’s ads budget automation.
Deal Highlights
New:
B2B SaaS – Investment Services – $12K MRR
- Rapid MRR growth reaching a CAGR of c.21% for the period 2014 to (e)2017
- Diversified client base with c.130 clients and several multi-billion-dollar financial institutions
- Low customer churn rate of c.3.6% over the trailing 12 months driving high CLVs of c.$2,485
- Lean and scalable cost structure driving high net margins of c.79% over the last year
- Low owner involvement
Yearly net profit: $115,000
Asking price: $390,000
B2B SaaS – Real Estate Lease Management Platform – $1.7K gross/mo
- Low customer churn of c.5.2% driving strong CLVs
- Diversified customer base including several leading commercial real estate firms
- Secure foothold in the lucrative trillion-dollar commercial real estate niche
- Low owner involvement
Yearly net profit: $18,500
Asking price: $80,000
Sold:
Display Advertising – Food & Recipes – $2K gross/mo
In the News…
Amazon and Kohl’s Sittin in a Tree
Kohl’s has announced that starting Wednesday, they have begun accepting returns of Amazon orders at 10 of their locations. The aim is to expand this number to 82, beyond the current locales of Chicago and LA.
Last week, we reported that Walmart will begin accepting in-store returns for some items purchased online through their app, in an attempt to leverage their brick and mortar advantage over Amazon. Well, it looks like Amazon is not here to lose on any grounds–even brick and mortar, despite their clear distribution disadvantage. The new partnership with Kohl’s is their next move to tie themselves to a robust physical distribution system in order to compete with Walmart on their own turf. Kohl’s is wagering that the increased traffic from Amazon shoppers will offset the potential risk of giving Amazon a leg-up in what is already an increasingly online retail market. Kohl’s CEO Michelle Gass shared her strategy for the partnership, stating “We’re going through one of, if not the, most transformational times in retail, and we have to really think differently. The retail market is big so there is plenty of room for Amazon and Kohl’s to co-exist.”
Amazon has been increasingly aggressive on the retail clothing front, so how long this peaceful partnership among inevitable competitors will benefit them remains to be seen. Do you think this will end well for Amazon, Kohl’s, Walmart, all three, or none? Comment below to let us know!
Adobe Releases New UX/UI Design Software
Adobe’s new user interface design tool, XD, was released from beta this week and is now in working order. Beta testing for the program began back in 2016, and was released from beta into a 1.0 version this past Wednesday.
XD is a tool for helping designers improve user experience and user interface on web and mobile applications. There are a number of problems the program seeks to solve for, namely making it easier for designers to spend their time, yes, designing, rather than on the mundane tasks of making sure everything fits on different resolutions, for example. For application designwork, the biggest hurdle is getting it done quickly without having to navigate technological issues of a program to be able to demo the new design, which can get in the way of making progress on a project for a client. Designers want to be able to mockup and turn over their work as fast as possible so they can get feedback from the client, and then make the necessary changes. XD boasts an intuitive, sleek interface that helps designers create better UX/UI, faster. The future of outsourcing design work just got a lot more efficient.
Online business owners, who often outsource work like this to contractors, will likely experience a smoother development process thanks to Adobe XD.
Bing Lends an Automation Hand
Bing Ads now automatically determines the number of bids it will give a keyword based on the probability that your site will rank for it. This new strategy to bidding is an attempt to maximize the number of clicks that advertisers can gain from the budget they set to spend on ads.
Bing already adjusts the number of bids up or down based on the determined likelihood that any given click will convert in the way the advertiser wants it to. Now, users can set their bid strategy to “Automate bidding: Set my bid to maximize clicks.” The idea is that advertisers can have Bing do the thinking for them, or they can choose to maintain manual bid controls for certain ad groups or keywords in any given campaign. Bing notes that advertisers will want to set the bidding to “Automatic” for at least 30 days in order to allow the algorithm to learn and improve before they make any adjustments. Maximize Clicks is currently not available for shopping campaigns or third-party bidding platforms.
Advertisers will likely benefit from testing the option and seeing if after 30 days, their SEO improves. If you try it out and it’s beneficial, let us know your experience in a comment below!