A Year of Retail Revolution: shopkick Celebrates Its First Birthday by Adding Partners and Rewards in More Categories and More Places

PALO ALTO, Calif., Aug. 17, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- shopkick, the largest location-based shopping app that rewards shoppers simply for walking into stores, today celebrates a year since its launch with new partners, new categories of content and rewards, broad expansion of existing partners, and a new report on how American retailers, brands and shoppers have embraced location-based shopping. The company is unveiling the details at the American Eagle Outfitters flagship in Times Square today. AEO is one of shopkick's early launch partners, and hosted shopkick's initial launch party exactly one year ago.

The news includes:

• The launch into content partnership with InStyle
• A new pilot program with Toys"R"Us launching this fall
• The Sports Authority's national rollout and performance metrics
• Simon Property Group's (NYSE: SPG) expansion to Premium Outlets
• New usage statistics, demographic information and business performance data

"When we launched, we made two promises.  The first to the retailers and brands: that we could help drive more sales without heavy discounts like the daily deal sites.  The second was to shoppers: that we could make their shopping experience more personal, rewarding and fun," said Cyriac Roeding, the co-founder of shopkick. "And in 12 short months, we've gone farther with the app than we'd ever imagined – delivering more rewards to more people from more partners in more locations."

With today's additions shoppers can earn "kicks" – shopkick's cross-partner currency – with ten retail partners, more than two-dozen brands, and two media partners. And it'll only continue to grow. Shoppers find that the kicks add up. Already, users have been awarded more than half a billion kicks, redeemed for iTunes gift cards, Facebook Credits, charitable donations, gift cards for partner stores and more.

New Partners:

As shopkick's first media content partner, InStyle will extend the magazine's content to shoppers on their smartphones.  Shopkick's more than 2 million active users will have access to a "Shop By Color" virtual Pop-Up Store on shopkick.  "Shop By Color" will offer users product recommendations and styling tips.

Shopkick also announced today that Toys"R"Us will launch a pilot program to bring shopkick's walk-in rewards and special deals to 100 select Toys"R"Us and Babies"R"Us stores in four markets – Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco –this fall. With this announcement, Toys"R"Us becomes the 10th partner in the network, which includes American Eagle Outfitters, Best Buy, Crate and Barrel, Macy's, Simon Property Group, The Sports Authority, Target, The Wet Seal and west elm along with brand partners such as HP, Intel, Kraft, Procter & Gamble, Unilever and dozens more.

By continuing to expand its list of partners in breadth and depth shopkick makes ubiquitous rewards available to shoppers throughout the purchase cycle – from advertisements, to the store, down to the aisle, and now through shopping-related content – exponentially increasing its value for users and partners.

Shopkick Promise Bears Out; Partners Expand

After less than a year in pilot, The Sports Authority (TSA) has decided to expand shopkick from 104 stores in four markets to the full national footprint of 470 stores.

"Our results with shopkick have been fantastic, with a return on investment in the top quartile of all our marketing programs," said Jeff Schumacher, Chief Marketing Officer of The Sports Authority. "We've also started to test shopkick promotions with key brand vendors, and the early results are positive. Good ROI, a great partnership and exciting opportunities with our customers' favorite products – how could we NOT build that into all our store programs?"

This 350% increase shows what a key role shopkick is playing in The Sports Authority's push to innovate in the digital space as it shifts toward a multi-channel marketing strategy.

"Shopkick is unique in the social/mobile space in that it has shopping at its core, with gaming and social mechanics layered on top. And the data we're seeing is proving the importance of that distinction – social and games at the core versus shopping at the core," said Clay Cowan, vice president, e-commerce and digital marketing at The Sports Authority. "This is a great fit with our customers, who love sports and games, and the results show it.  We're fully committed to testing a wide range of social and mobile platforms, but when I look at our emerging channel portfolio, shopkick is at the front of the pack in terms of driving business results."

In addition to the TSA expansion, Simon Malls has decided to expand its shopkick partnership into all of its Premium Outlets because of how enthusiastically shoppers have embraced the program. These expansions mean that shopkick now offers walk-in rewards at nearly 3,000 stores and malls nationwide.

By the Numbers

With more than 2.2 million users, shopkick is the fastest growing location-based mobile shopping application. And the users are engaged:

• Walking into partner stores more than 2 million times
• Browsing more than 350 million items in the app
• Scanning more than 7 million products from our partner brands
• Picking more than 75,000 stores as favorites each day (more than 50 each minute!)

Who's Using Shopkick

Shopkick shoppers are the desired audience for its partner brands and retailers: 59% are women and 85% are between the ages of 20 and 60 years old.

How it Works

In order to provide high-value rewards to consumers for actual walk-ins, the shopkick app, combined with the shopkick Signal – an inaudible sound emitted from a patent-pending device located in each participating retailer – verifies a user is in-store. This ensures that marketing dollars put into the shopkick program are being spent to reward customers who are actually present in the store, something not possible with traditional location-based applications, which rely on GPS technology that has an error radius of 50-1,000 yards on mobile phones. And, because the detection occurs on the user's mobile device, the privacy of presence information is completely under the user's control.

Shoppers earn rewards through the shopkick app simply walking into the more than 2,500 retail and 160 mall locations that make up shopkick's Retail Partner Network and for interacting with partner brand products at 3 million stores nationwide. Walk-in rewards are currently available in all 50 states at select partner locations.

Launched in August 2010, shopkick quickly became the largest location-based shopping app in America and reached 2 million users within a record 11 months since its launch. The shopkick App is available for free on the iPhone from the App Store at www.itunes.com/appstore/ and on Android Market at http://shopkick.com/android.html

About shopkick, Inc.

shopkick, Inc. is a Palo Alto-based startup funded by Kleiner Perkins' iFund, Greylock Partners and Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, and investor in Facebook and Zynga. In August 2010, shopkick launched the first mobile application that hands consumers high-value rewards, offers and exclusive deals at shopkick's national retail partners simply for walking into stores and malls. Even more rewards can be earned for scanning partner brand products at over 250,000 stores nationwide. In combination with a groundbreaking new location technology called "shopkick Signal", the app can verify location within feet, and because the detection occurs on the phone, privacy of presence information is completely in the users' control. Shopkick's growing partner alliance includes Best Buy, Macy's, Target, American Eagle, Crate & Barrel, The Sports Authority, Wet Seal, West Elm, Simon Property Group, Kraft Foods, Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Intel, HP and The CW. Shopkick is the only 100% performance-based marketing platform in the physical retail world, with measurable foot traffic and transactions at stores. The app grew to 2 million users in its first 11 months. The free shopkick app is available for the iPhone and Android.

SOURCE shopkick