Reevoo secures investment from Banexi

Reevoo, the online business that helps shoppers decide what to buy, has secured investment from Banexi Ventures Partners, the French venture capital firm that backed price comparison site Kelkoo.

Existing investors, including Eden Ventures, are also committing funds, which will be used to support Reevoo's international expansion programme and extend services for retailers, manufacturers and shoppers.

Reevoo collates and publishes impartial user-generated content from proven purchasers of products and displays them adjacent to the products on retail partners' sites.

These customer reviews contain a combination of unedited opinions and scores submitted by purchasers.

These help customers visiting retail partner sites to make informed purchasing decisions.

Reevoo.com is fast becoming the next-generation web destination for shoppers to choose which product is best for their needs and which retailer to buy from.

The revenue model is based on a monthly fee for collecting reviews and displaying them on retailer sites, together with click-through referrals to retailers via the Reevoo portal.

Reevoo offers the leading user-generated content solution in the UK, providing services to more than 50 high street and pure play retailers across a range of sectors, including Comet, koodos, Dixons, Vodafone, Currys, Maximuscle and Woolworths.

Reevoo now intends to accelerate its international expansion and has announced the opening of offices in Paris to develop its French operation.

A French portal, reevoo.fr, has also launched.

Richard Anson, CEO and co-founder of Reevoo, said: "There is real momentum in the Reevoo business and this funding from Banexi and our existing investors will enable us to expand our footprint beyond the UK.

"Already, 15 per cent of visitors to our site are international, which demonstrates that trusted impartial opinion on the web has huge potential across the rest of Europe".

Traffic sent to retail partners from the Reevoo portal has leapt 20-fold in the last four months and is rated among the mostly highly qualified on the UK web.

Reevoo content has been displayed a quarter of a billion times across Reevoo's retail partner sites to date.

Retail clients have reported conversion rate uplifts greater than 100 per cent for customers who read our reviews.

YouGov research commissioned for Reevoo reveals that customers' buying decisions are five times more likely to be influenced by online reviews of products than by online advertising.

The same research found that 84 per cent of UK adults want a kite mark to identify reviews written by genuine purchasers and managed by an independent company, which supports the Reevoo model.

Philippe Herbert, Partner at Banexi Ventures Partners and new board member of Reevoo, commented: "Reevoo is a perfect fit with our infomediary investment strategy, which has included Kelkoo, Quotatis, Adenclassifieds and Brandalley.

"Online promotional strategies need to engage with what the customer is thinking and wanting.

"Other promotional mechanics, such as price comparison, have been damaged by a very mixed quality of execution.

"The strength of Reevoo is that the published customer opinions are always real and unvarnished, which means that the model is untarnished.

"This creates a win/win/win ecosystem: shoppers want clarity about the products they're thinking of buying, retailers are more credible for hosting real opinions and product manufacturers are looking for direct and meaningful feedback from consumers".

Reevoo was founded in 2005.

It received start-up funding from Angel investors, including current non executive directors and advisors, and Series A funding from a consortium of investors, led by Eden Ventures, in December 2006.

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