Stipple, the San Francisco-based technology company, founded in 2010 with the vision of turning editorial photos into storefronts for consumers has closed its doors.
The company created tagging technology that made it possible for advertisers to offer consumers promotional discounts, or additional information, about products seen in online photos. For example, a movie star on the red carpet might be wearing a dress, shoes or watch that a consumer might want to know more about. When a consumer hovers over the picture with a mouse Stipple dots appear on the items where discounts or other information is supplied. Clicking on the dot reveals the additional information and provides a direct link to where the consumer can purchase the item.
In the event of a purchase a portion of the revenue is shared with Stipple, the website owner, any stock agency involved and the image creator. Selling-Stock was never able to find any photographer who earned significant revenue from Stipple images.
“We had turned on revenue, but did not scale fast enough. We were not yet profitable,” Stipple Founder and Chief Executive Ray Flemings said. “Like many companies we got into the Series A crunch and we weren’t able to raise more money,” he added, referring to the explosion in early-stage funding several years ago and the follow-on investing that didn’t keep pace.
Stipple last raised $3 million as part of a Series A financing in 2012 to expand from Twitter to other social networks, according to VentureWire records. At the time the company said it had tagged more than 80 million images and had more than 140 brand partners including Nordstrom, Nike, Zappos and L’Oreal.
In total Stipple had raised $10 million. Among the investors were Floodgate, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, entertainer Justin Timberlake, Sands Capital, Global Brain Corp., Parkview Ventures, Quest Partners and Thomvest Ventures.
Stipple’s competitors include
PICT,
Luminate Inc. and
ThingLink Inc.