Online Jewelry Competition Intensifies: Ice.com Gets Funding, Gains Market Share

Despite soft online jewelry sales (Online Sales Grow, But Luxury Items Suffer), Montreal-based Ice.com, which says its sales are still growing, will announce Monday a $47 million capital investment led by Polaris Ventures, the New York Times reports. Polaris' managing partner Alan Spoon, former president of the Washington Post Company (WPO), will be named to Ice's board. Polaris previously backed Akamai (AKAM), among others.

Average order size at Ice.com has jumped to $285 from $220. “I talked to someone else in the industry who said sales were soft, but we’re bucking the trend,” said CEO Shmuel Gniwisch. He says holiday sales have been strong.

Publicly-traded jewelry retailers include Blue Nile (NILE), Zale (ZLC), Tiffany & Co. (TIF), Bidz.com (BIDZ) and Overstock.com (OSTK).

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Comments

[Lisa:]

Does anyone know how Ice.com's sales compare to NILE's?

2007 Dec 24 02:45 PM

[Long-Short Guy:]

Not much available info on Ice.com. Here's what there is:

"This year Ice.com, a Montreal-based Internet jeweler, has rolled out new videos to promote products and free overnight shipping. It has experimented with new marketing tricks such as buying front-page ads on Microsoft Corp.'s MSN and Yahoo Inc.'s Web sites this week. Ice.com even tried to tap influencers to drive word-of-mouth among blogs, magazine mentions and celebrities."

(From: online.wsj.com/article... )

And this article - www.internetretailer.c...

says Ice.com is the 182nd largest Internet retailer.

2007 Dec 24 02:55 PM