Venture Capital News: BIGWORDS.com Banks $300K
2014-07-31
NEWPORT BEACH, CA, Leading online source for cheap textbooks, BIGWORDS.com has raised $300K from Lighter Capital.
BIGWORDS.com has released a new version of its popular online shopping service that automatically integrates crowdsourced coupons with proprietary multi-item price comparison technology. The integration is a first of its kind in e-commerce. Sites like RetailMeNot offer crowdsourced coupons but lack price comparison -- a feature that is critical in today's fast-paced online shopping environment -- and price comparison sites such as Pricegrabber don't offer crowdsourced coupons.
To accelerate adoption of its new service, BIGWORDS.com has raised $300k from Lighter Capital, a pioneer in revenue-based financing. BIGWORDS.com is a profitable company that began as a site for buying college textbooks. Today, it's the leading online source for cheap textbooks, saving students $1,000 per year on average. In 2012, BIGWORDS.com began offering a wide variety of consumer products, from games and gadgets to lawnmowers, all of which could be price compared at BIGWORDS.com. The service is now used by millions of consumers annually. Lighter Capital's investment is the first time BIGWORDS.com has taken external capital under current ownership.
Crowdsourced coupons is a multi-billion dollar industry that has become an essential part of online retail. Shoppers find and contribute millions of coupons to online shopping sites annually, saving consumers countless dollars while democratizing e-commerce for everyone. Using the new BIGWORDS.com service, consumers are able to search for coupons by store or category, browse current coupons, or 'suggest a coupon' by manually entering any valid discounts they find on the Internet, into the coupon database. This allows users to 'share the wealth' with fellow shoppers. BIGWORDS' staff curates all coupons to verify their validity before publishing them to the public.
'What we're introducing today is a major step forward for BIGWORDS.com's proprietary Multi-Item Price Optimization„˘ technology and for online shopping in general,' said Jeff Sherwood, CEO at BIGWORDS.com. 'Crowdsourced coupons are fantastic, but product prices on the Internet are dynamic, which means that some stores may undercut others' prices either with prices, coupons, or shipping rates. By combining price comparison data science with crowdsourced coupons, we're ensuring that shoppers get the absolute best deal for all the products they're buying online.'
'We think what BIGWORDS.com is doing is a game-changer for e-commerce,' said BJ Lackland, CEO at Lighter Capital. 'Price optimization and crowdsourced coupons are huge markets independently, but never before have they been offered together. If you look at the valuations of companies in either market, you get a sense for what's possible with BIGWORDS.com. We are very excited to be part of this huge opportunity.'
About BIGWORDS
BIGWORDS.com is owned by Bigger Words, Inc., based in Newport Beach, CA. Since 2001, the BIGWORDS.com price comparison site has been saving consumers money through its proprietary Multi-Item Price Optimization„˘ technology. BIGWORDS stays on top of the multitude of retail business models, so that consumers can rely on it to find the cheapest product every time.
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