Fast Lane Ventures announced last week it has agreed to sell its stake in the TV and online teleshopping company Shopping Live to the German group Home Shopping Europe for an undisclosed amount.
A 24-hour channel, Shopping Live offers live programming up to five hours per day. The channel is currently represented on such major satellite TV operators as Kontinent TV and Tricolor TV as well as on the cable TV channel of MTS, a leading Russian mobile operator.
The website broadcasts short live entertainment videos to showcase products for purchase.
Fast Lane claims the TV channel has shown excellent results, currently reaching 7.5 million of 53 million Russian TV households via satellite and cable – but admits it has had less traction among Internet users.
“Currently, the site’s traffic reaches just 5,000 unique visitors per day,” Shopping Live CEO Ilya Kirik said in an exchange with East-West Digital News.
“Developing online shopping requires more time than a few months. In particular, people outside Moscow and St. Petersburg usually prefer to buy via the TV channel or local shops rather than online. Nevertheless we are ahead of plans for online traffic volume,” Kirik added.
The acquirer, a successful German multichannel mail-order company, intends “to expand the reach and product offer of Shopping Live further to differentiate it clearly from other providers,” said Home Shopping Europe Chairman Konrad Hilbers, adding that the company’s intention was to become number one on the Russian market.
Established two years ago by Western entrepreneurs Pascal Clément and Oskar Hartmann, Fast Lane Ventures has developed a number of startups on the fast growing Russian Internet market. The sale of Shopping Live represents the second exit for the company, which earlier this year sold Sapato.ru, the leading Russian online shoe and accessory retailer, to the top e-commerce group Ozon.
