Stardoll.com: From Little Things Big Thlngs Grow

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MayI 2007
FromLittleThingsBigThlngsGrow
Stardoll.com:
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Inspired by a childhood passionfor paper dolls,
Scandinavianborn Liisa started drawing dolls and accompanyingwardrobes,
uploading them to Geocities.The personalpagegrew, evolving to Paperdoll
Heavenin zoo4.
Now calling itself Stardoll.com,the site took $+ million in SeriesA funding from
Index Ventures in February 2006, and $6 million in a B Seriesround lead by
none other than Sequoiain June the sameyear.
It's a rags to riches successstory that makes Stardoll worth taking a look at, and
the spaceis seeinghyper growth. Seeour writeup of Zwinky last week.
Stardoll is all about dressingup dolls online.
Stardoll lets userscreatetheir own doll or choosefrom a large collection of
celebrity dolls which can then be dressedup in virtual fashions. Every celebrity
doll has a wardrobe full of unique clothes and outfits, with new celebrity dolls and
outfits releasedweeklv.
Eachuser is given a pagefrom where they can sharethe dolls they have created,
accompaniedwith a guestbook, diary ftlog), friend connectionsand album.
Most usersare girls betweenthe ageof ro to 17and online safetyimmediately
becomesa consideration.Stardoll adds a layer of anonymity to all accounts.
Userscan never revealpersonalinformation such as their real name or city of
origin on their pages.
Joining the site for the first time, you start with z5 star dollars that can be used to
buy accessoriesfor eachvirtual doll. Accessoriesrangefrom 1 - 35 star dollars
with users able to buy additional star dollars at the rate of ro star dollars to $r.
They currently sell between6o,ooo to tSo,ooo items per day.
In the backgroundis a team that has gror,rrn
to 4o peoplebasedin Stockholm,
with a Los Angeles office on its way. Matt Palmer, former EVP of Marketing for
Disney'sKids Network has been hired to lead the North American push.
Stardoll has 7,t44,TgSmembersand is adding 2o,ooo new members a day, with
5.5 million unique visitors per month.
With its Europeanheritage,languagessupportedinclude French, Italian,
Spanish,Hungarian and Polish,with a dedicatedGerman .de version recently
being launched.So% of traffic comesfrom the United Statesvs. So-Sz%from the
EuropeanUnion.
As a destination this won't appealto all readers,men in particular working in
tech fields, however the numbers speakvolumes for their growing success
amongsttheir target demographic.With Sequoiaamongstits investors it doesn't
take rocket scienceto work out that the site looks like a winner.
There'sa positive messageas well.
Chasingfunding and tryrng to be the next best thing in Web 2.o can be hard at
times, and even a little depressing.Stardoll showsus that from little things, big
things can grow.
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