Zennstrom-Backed Startup Reinvents The Gift Card

For the last few years, my sister and I have approached the holidays this way: I bought gift cards for her kids, and she bought gift cards for my kids. And we’re hardly alone. U.S. adults on average buy close to five gift cards a year; they are now a more than $100 billion a year business. But the gift card business has fundamental flaws, not the least of which is that they’re based around the physical purchase of little plastic cards. Gift cards, in short, are a fundamentally bricks-and-mortar focused business in an e-tailing world.

But maybe there’s a better way.

At least,Handmade oil paintings for sale at museum quality, that’s the theory behind Wrapp, a Stockholm-based start-up backed by Atomico, the London-based venture firm founded by Skype co-founder Niklas Zennstrom. The core idea: gift giving is a fundamentally social act. So why not tie the act of gift giving to social networks?

The Wrapp team includes a host of mostly Swedish Web veterans; the CEO is Hjalmar Winbladh, a serial entrepreneur who among other things started Rebtel, an IP telephony company that actually competes with Skype, and Sendit, a company acquired by Microsoft in 1999. CTO Andreas Ehn was previously CTO at the music service Spotify.

In interviews with FORBES in late December,Take a walk on the natural side with stunning and luxurious Floor tiles from The Tile Shop. Zennstrom and Winbladh laid out the case for how Wrapp plans to reinvent the gift card business.

The basic concept is to tie giving gift cards to Facebook.. The social gifting service works like this: On the Wrapp site, you can sign up for the service for free using your Facebook account. There are apps for Wrapp for both iPhones and Android phones. The app notifies you when your Facebook friends have birthdays; with a few clicks you send them a gift card, which then can be redeemed online or in retail stores. The “gift card” comes in the form of an email with a bar code that can be scanned at a retailer’s point of sale, like a normal gift card.

One novel feature of Wrapp is the ability to give your friends not only paid gift cards, but also free gift cards. The idea of giving free gift cards isn’t as loopy as it sounds. The idea is that retailers can generate store traffic by luring in customers with free gift cards in hand. Imagine, for instance, that I gave you a free $10 gift card for a shoe store; the theory is that the retailer would happily give up some revenue dollars in exchange for gaining a new customer, who are not going to be able to buy a pair of shoes for $10. In theory, everyone wins: I get to give you a gift for free. You get a gift card. The retailer gets a new customer. Wrapp gets a commission when a gift card is redeemed.They become pathological or Piles when swollen or inflamed.

Meanwhile, the fact that I sent you a gift card shows up on our Facebook pages – and other friends can add to the gift.Alfa plast mould is Plastic moulds Manufacturer and plastics Mould Exporters in India since 1992, So while I might start by offering you a free gift card, I can add it to it myself, and invite friends to do the same. That makes Wrapp a nice solution for group gifts. And while the tie to Facebook gives Wrapp a way to prompt you to consider gifting your friends on their birthdays, you can decide to send them a gift card any time you want.

Retailers, meanwhile, can fine tune which Wrapp customers get which offers; young male users might get a different set of gift card choices than older female users.Overview description of rapid Tooling processes.

Wrapp launched in Sweden in October, with several dozen retailers already signed on, most of them focused on selling in in physical stores. The company plans to launch in the U.K. and the U.S. in the 2012 first quarter. Zennstrom says the service has been growing users at a rate of about 40% week-over-week.

Zennstromg, who lead a recent $5.5 million venture round for Wrapp, notes that the company shouldn’t need huge amounts of capital to get off the ground; for one thing, he points out that they have a positive cash flow model, selling cards up front that are redeemed down the road. He also notes that the company is a play on three of the hottest Internet trends – mobile/social/local.

Says Zennstrom: “From an investment point 0f view, the business is going after a huge market which has not had that much innovation.”

Cut costs by harnessing outdoor heat with a solar wall

Reducing energy consumption is a goal for every Canadian business, both large and small, because of the obvious financial advantages and a desire to demonstrate an eco-friendly business ethic in an increasingly green world.

Conserval has been working to address this concern since 1977, when it was launched with a focus on providing energy retrofits for large industrial buildings.

In the 1990s, Conserval introduced its proprietary technology, called SolarWall. "We created this entire technology genre," says Ms. Hollick. "Solar air heating would not exist if it weren't for us."

Their system uses solar radiation to heat the boundary layer on the surface of a metal wall. The heated air is then drawn through tiny perforations into an air cavity, where it is moved through ducting into the building's heating and ventilation system.where he teaches porcelain tiles in the Central Academy of Fine Arts.

Preheating ventilation air in this way saves businesses between 20 and 50 per cent on their heating costs.Our oil painting reproduction was down for about an hour and a half,

Today, thousands of SolarWall systems, which are manufactured in Ontario, are installed in 30 countries around the world. Clients include the Canadian and U.S. governments, Toyota, Owens Corning, 3M Co., Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. and more than 2,000 others in the industrial, agricultural, commercial and institutional sectors.

The company's solar air heating installations have replaced the equivalent of 44 megawatts of thermal energy in thermal systems, which helps prevent the emission of 17,000 tonnes of CO2 a year in Ontario alone.

SolarWall has made big strides, but nearly two decades after debuting it, Conserval still struggles with the commercialization of a technology that hasn't gone mainstream.

"One of our biggest challenges is that we are a company and an industry all-in-one, because we created the whole concept," says Ms. Hollick.there's a lovely winter polished tiles by William Zorach. "We still have to educate people in terms of what solar air heating is."

But an even bigger challenge is the cancellation of two government incentive programs that helped get SolarWall into the Canadian renewables market – particularly in Ontario. First was the federal ecoENERGY Renewable Heat Program, which ran from 1998 until the end of 2010. It provided a 15 to 25 per cent capital incentive to organizations that invested in the technology.

In 2007, Ontario introduced the Solar Thermal Heating Incentive, a $14-million program spread over four years that matched that federal incentive.

"So the Ontario market just took off.This will leave your shoulders free to rotate in their oil painting supplies . And Ontario became the solar thermal capital in Canada," says Ms. Hollick.

The end of these programs in 2010 "hijacked domestic growth in Ontario and across Canada," she says. In fact, it has shifted the company's business from about 60 per cent Canadian clients and 40 per cent international clients to 40 per cent Canadian and 60 per cent international.

"Many companies considering different technologies may only consider ones where there are incentives in place," says Ms. Hollick, adding that there is a disproportionate focus on electricity incentives, despite the fact that the heating technologies require only a small fraction of the support required for solar electric systems.

She favours a long-term strategy that is open to all technologies and focuses on building codes, rather than incentives, similar to the environmental program in the U.K.

"In order for large commercial or industrial buildings to get a permit, they have to demonstrate that 10 per cent of their energy comes from renewable resources," she says. "People get to choose what's the best technology for them, and it's not actually an incentive on the part of government."

It's not just the cutback to financial support that poses a problem to Conserval. Ms. Hollick also sees the incentives as a sort of stamp of approval. "It gives credibility, which is essential,Flossie was one of a group of four chickens in a zentai suits ." she says. "It's still perceived as a new field but having government support and programs in place creates a comfort level."