When the company posts its Q4 results next week, we’ll know exactly how much mobile contributed to eBay’s revenue in 2012, but based on the new moves, it’s clear the online shopping giant is preparing for another banner year for mobile.

As part of the reorganization, which took place at the end of last year, mobile is now reporting into the company’s main marketplace division, rather than being a standalone product group.

The restructuring is similar to moves that other companies are making now that smartphones and tablets are becoming a main part of the user experience, and not just a second or third screen.

Steve Yankovich, eBay’s former VP of mobile and main spokesperson on the subject, has been appointed VP of innovation and new ventures. In his new role, he will focus on the company’s Red Laser application, which allows users to find product information by scanning a bar code. He is also working on developing new mobile experiences.

Additionally, Kevin Hurst, who was previously VP of product management at eBay Mobile, is now VP of mobile products. Instead of reporting to Yankovich, as he previously did, Hurst is now reporting to Dane Glasgow, the VP who heads up the company’s marketplace division.

Hurst will be based out of Portland, Ore., where eBay operates an office with 100-plus employees focused on mobile.

In an interview with AllThingsD, Hurst said it’s clear “we’ve gone through our incubation phase. We are pretty much going mainstream [with mobile].”

I’ve written about eBay’s mobile momentum before, mostly because it’s impressive. As of the end of September 2012, its apps had been downloaded 100 million times, and users have listed 100 million items to its marketplace using the app. It also forecast mobile revenue to hit $10 billion in 2012. Based on that estimate, I’ve calculated that mobile will make up about 16 percent of its total revenue.

That’s roughly double the percentage I reported last week based on one analyst’s recent estimate for Amazon’s mobile revenue.

The new apps being released today on iPhone and iPad are designed to decrease friction for both buyers and sellers in the marketplace.

For example, shoppers will find that the search bar now features auto-complete to anticipate what they are typing. The apps also provide an improved check-out experience, by allowing guests to make purchases without registering for an eBay or PayPal account, which was required in the past.

“It was a huge hurdle,” Hurst admits. “We’ll be working in 2013 on reducing that friction more.”

Selling has also become easier for those who like using their camera phone to take pictures of the item they are selling.

Now when listing items from the iPhone or iPad app, eBay will complete many of the fields for the user, especially in electronics, which have common characteristics. For instance, when attempting to sell a Kindle Fire, the app automatically fills in all the tablet’s specifications and provides a standard photo. It even makes suggestions for a sale price based on eBay’s current inventory.

Posting an item could literally take just a couple of minutes.

Additionally, the listing process can be started on the mobile phone and completed later on the tablet or PC.

“It’s very common for people to use their iPhones to access eBay and then later on iPads and then the PC. This multi-device world allows people to switch from one device to the other,” Hurst said.

Currently, eBay does not allow users to list items on eBay through the mobile browser because of technical limitations, like lack of access to the phone’s camera from inside the browser. “For the foreseeable future, we won’t offer it on the mobile Web,” Hurst said. “When it’s ready, we’ll add that.”

Both the iPad and iPhone apps are free and are available in iTunes. The Android application has already been updated with some of the new features, but a fully functional version will be available soon.

As I had previously reported, Yahoo’s key business unit — its advertising sales force — is now getting details of a reorganization by its new leader, COO Henrique De Castro.

In making the changes, just weeks ahead of Yahoo’s annual sales conference in Las Vegas on Jan. 21, De Castro is borrowing rather heavily from the set-up of the powerful ad business at Google, from whence he came.

By shifting the sales organization to a “category” model, sales reps at the Silicon Valley Internet giant will sell all of Yahoo’s ad products, as well as its search offerings, across channels in a vertical process organized around advertiser segments, such as automotive, entertainment and packaged goods.

Yahoo has long sold its advertising in a regional and tiered organization against premium and performance inventory in display and search, designed to avoid vertical conflict. Thus, the sales staff have built up advertiser relationships across many areas, which will not work in the new system.

Sources inside the company said regional leaders will now be shifted to running various verticals. There will be support specialists for those areas, too.

Mark Ellis, who was most recently VP of North American sales and global partnerships, will pay a key role in the new org, said sources. It is not clear, though, what role Peter Foster, who has headed audience advertising, will play. Another high-ranking exec, Keith Kaplan, has apparently been shifted to focus on agency relationships.

As I had previously written, there are many different ways to organize sales, but making such major change has potentially large ramifications on Yahoo’s financial performance, at least in the short term, since advertising makes up the bulk of its revenue.

According to numerous sources inside Yahoo, the changes are causing some measure of worry and confusion across the salesforce at the company, since it comes after a lot of wrenching changes over the last year.

That includes the departure of well-regarded Chief Revenue Officer Michael Barrett in mid-October, after De Castro got the COO job. He has left a large gap in sales leadership and in maintaining strong relationships with big advertisers and agencies. De Castro himself is not as well known in the ad marketplace, despite many years at Google in its sales organization.

He will likely have a more high-profile next week at the International CES, the huge annual consumer electronics show taking place in Las Vegas, along with new Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, who was a top product exec at Google. The pair is planning on meeting with major ad clients while there, which is their first significant outreach to marketers since taking their new roles at Yahoo.

De Castro had outlined the new ad reorg plan immediately after a multiday offsite with top sales leaders several weeks ago, and said the changes would come at the very beginning of 2013.

The ad staff at Yahoo begin to hear of the changes on Friday, so it looks like De Castro has met his deadline.

“I’m not intimidated by going on eBay, but I don’t know how to sell, and PayPal is another deterrent,” she said.

But the San Jose resident lucked out after hearing about eBay’s new pilot program on the radio.

The program offered to send an eBay employee to her home to pick up the items and deliver them to an expert, who would attempt to sell them — for a cut of the proceeds.

“I can’t tell you how fabulous this is. You never know what’s going to sell, but you might as well try,” said Weber, who was visited by two eBay employees in December.

The program is one of several pilots that eBay is experimenting with as it tries to figure out ways to connect with consumers locally by having a physical presence, rather than conducting everything anonymously over the Internet.

Last month, I got a close look at the pick-up service as well as a similar pilot that allowed people to drop off clothing and small consumer electronics at a mall. The two trials are being conducted in a small number of markets for a limited period of time, but could be expanded if successful.

A third pilot that falls into the local category is something called eBay Now, a same-day delivery service that is being tested in San Francisco and parts of New York City. The program allows users to place orders at major stores, like Macy’s or Toys “R” Us, from a mobile phone and have them delivered to their door within a couple of hours.

Last month, I met briefly with Vikram Singh, director of eBay’s consumer business, who is heading up the pick-up program, and with Amanda Thomas, the director of new business pilots at eBay, who is leading the drop-off centers, to get the scoop on both programs.

Both Singh and Thomas said the trials have been great for introducing eBay to new customers. But what stood out about both programs was how little risk eBay was taking on their end for conducting them. While it must pay for some infrastructure, like the drivers, vans and mall kiosks, there’s no fear that eBay will end up with inventory it doesn’t want. For both trials, eBay is tapping into its network of selling assistants, who are registered with eBay to sell items for a fee.

In Weber’s case, her items were picked up by two eBay employees, who took careful inventory of every plate and serving dish before delivering the items off to a selling assistant.

Once the item is logged by eBay, it is then up to the seller to come up with a fair price to get the item sold, keeping in mind that the pick-up program takes a 25 percent cut. In the future, Singh expected to experiment with charging a fee for the pick-up service, as well, to see if consumers would still be interested.

Singh said of the 70 pick-ups conducted by mid-December, no one had questioned the cut. He said he has also been happy with the quality of items being picked up, except that there have been too many books.

If the items don’t sell, the owner can either choose to donate them or have them returned to their home. The owners receive payment in the form of a printed check or via Paypal within three weeks of the items being picked up.

The mall pilot worked a little differently.

During the trial, consumers were invited to drop off a bag of used clothing or small electronics for evaluation while they shopped. When they returned, a registered seller would offer a set price for the entire bag. The consumer could either accept the offer and receive payment via PayPal, or choose to list the items on eBay using their own account.

If they opted to sell the items themselves, the registered sellers on site would provide advice on how to price the items and how to list them to get the most attention.

For instance, a seller told me the best way to sell something was to use every character allowed in the headline to describe an object. For instance, some of the keywords to describe the navy blazer in the photo on the left included navy, peacoat, blazer, new and buttons. Within just a few minutes, she draped the blazer over a mannequin, snapped a photo of it using an iPad and had it listed for sale.

Thomas said during the first week, of the 2,000 people who stopped by the booth, 30 to 40 percent were new to eBay. The pilot operated out of a mall in San Jose between Nov. 26 and Dec. 25.

In a separate interview, Devin Wenig, eBay’s president of global marketplaces, said the experiments are focused on keeping eBay competitive — against large commerce companies like Amazon, as well as against start-ups that are constantly entering the space.

By being proactive about getting new sources of inventory, it ensures that eBay has a good selection of items for sale, not just the items from people who have sold on eBay before. A key component of eBay’s success is to list both used and new items side by side to give consumers the most choices, he said.

“We have 350 million items for sale, which is nine times larger than Amazon,” Wenig said. “That wouldn’t be the case if we separated out the two businesses.”

Wenig said he plans to use the pick-up service to sell a number of lawn ornaments that came with his home, which he doesn’t personally care for. Listing them on eBay and being responsible for shipping, however, seemed like a burden. Getting them out of his garage, however, is something he’s definitely interested in.

“People make their living on eBay and that feels good, but to be the belle of the ball, we have to step it up. We can’t get complacent,” he said. “We have to move faster and innovate at a quicker pace.”

Devin Wenig, eBay’s president of global marketplaces, said in an interview that next year the company will stop running mobile ads inside of its applications.

“We aren’t happy with the user experience and we don’t need the money,” he said.

This year, eBay displayed ads inside of its iPhone app as an experiment, but found that they were distracting and cluttered up the smaller screens. The ads also didn’t deliver meaningful revenue.

“It’s not worth it,” Wenig added.

Fortunately for eBay, it has options.

The primary way it makes money is through selling products online. Meanwhile, other media properties that are mostly supported by advertising are left dealing with the fact that ads on mobile don’t perform as well as they do online.

“Some don’t have an alternative business model. In this case, it’s better to be lucky,” said Wenig, who, as the former CEO of Thomson Reuters Markets, knows all too well what it’s like to be in the other camp.

Despite eBay’s lack of enthusiasm for mobile advertising, it is a huge promoter of mobile commerce in general, as it serves consumers wherever they want to shop.

The San Jose-based company announced back in September that its mobile apps had been downloaded 100 million times since launching four years ago. That’s not a trivial number, given that it’s equal to the number of active users on eBay last year. Additionally, this year, eBay expects to transact more than $10 billion in mobile volume from its apps. In fact, the company just hit its biggest mobile shopping day ever on Dec. 2.

For advertisers, this should be a reminder that there is still a lot of work left to be done to make advertising run smoothly across a range of mobile devices. EBay’s huge mobile audience should be attractive to marketers over the long term, but given that it was only conducting experiments for now, its decision to hold off on in-app advertising won’t be counted as a huge loss.

In what will be a major shift in how the Silicon Valley Internet giant sells online advertising, Yahoo’s new COO Henrique De Castro has briefed employees on a plan to move its sales organization to a “category” model, according to numerous sources close to the situation.

Simply put, that means its sales reps will sell all of Yahoo’s ad products, as well as its search offerings, in a vertical process organized around advertiser segments, such as automotive, entertainment and packaged goods.

This is how Google, where both De Castro and CEO Marissa Mayer recently worked, conducts its ad sales efforts. (After copying free food and smartphones, staff evaluation efforts and more, What Would Google Do seems to be strategery at Yahoo these days.)

In contrast, Yahoo has long sold its advertising in a regional and tiered organization against premium and performance inventory in display and search.

The move from regional to vertical is a “seismic shift,” said one source quite accurately. That’s because Yahoo’s go-to-market efforts have been designed to avoid vertical conflict and its sales staff have built up advertiser relations across many areas. In a vertical organization, those reps will be forced to give up these long-term relationships with marketers, some of which have been built over years.

There are, of course, many different ways to organize sales — and each has its fans and detractors. But one thing is clear: Making such a major change has potentially large ramifications on Yahoo’s financial performance, at least in the short term, since advertising makes up the bulk of its revenue.

The change might also result in some attrition among the sales staff, said sources, although many at Yahoo are expecting that De Castro will bring in his own execs from outside to help with the transition. (One interesting name I heard floated was former Googler Penry Price, who was close to De Castro when they both worked there. He is currently president of Media6Degrees, an ad targeting start-up.)

De Castro (pictured here) will need all the help he can get as he overhauls Yahoo’s sales efforts. Well-regarded Chief Revenue Officer Michael Barrett left Yahoo in mid-October after De Castro got the COO job.

His departure has left a large gap in sales leadership and in maintaining strong relationships with big advertisers and agencies. De Castro himself is not as well known in the ad marketplace, despite many years at Google in sales (more on that to come).

Currently, the key ad execs at Yahoo under De Castro are Peter Foster, who heads audience advertising, and Mark Ellis, VP of North American sales and global partnerships.

De Castro outlined the new ad org plan to staff immediately after a multi-day offsite with top sales leaders last week, at which Yahoo’s acquisition options in the ad tech market were also discussed.

Sources said De Castro noted that the changes could take place as early as January 1.

De Castro is also planning to have Yahoo’s annual global sales meeting for the end of January in Las Vegas. Last March, the gathering — then set for about 1,300 advertising staffers in Florida — was cancelled due to a restructuring under ousted CEO Scott Thompson.

In addition, sources said, Yahoo is planning on having a much more prominent presence at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show — also taking place in Las Vegas in January — in order to solidify its relationships with advertisers.

Its big weapon at the giant annual confab will apparently be Mayer, who has not yet interfaced significantly with the company’s big ad clients since taking the top job in July. At CES, sources said, Yahoo is hoping the “Marissa Halo” — i.e. excitement around the telegenic exec — will help boost its business.

The company’s second round was led by Menlo Ventures, with all existing investors participating, including Mayfield Fund, Inventus Capital and SoftTechVC. To date, the Menlo Park, Calif.-based company has raised $15.5 million.

Other companies putting a new twist on the eBay marketplace concept include San Francisco’s Threadflip and Twice.

Threadflip distinguishes itself by handling a lot of the hard work for sellers, such as figuring out shipping costs and sending sellers the correct box to their door. Similarly, Twice tries to make it easy by asking sellers to send the merchandise to its warehouse, where it handles all the photography and shipping.

In contrast, Poshmark is focused on mobile. In fact, sellers can list woman’s clothing and accessories to the marketplace only through the iPhone app, making it the platform’s virtual thrift store. Not until recently did Poshmark start allowing customers to buy from the Web site, and you still can list items only from the phone. Next year, the company plans to launch an iPad and Android app, using some of the funds it has raised.

The app also enables sellers to add Instagram-like filters to the pictures they take before posting items for sale. Poshmark also provides additional support, including sending sellers prepaid and pre-addressed boxes to their doorstep once their item has sold. Poshmark charges sellers 20 percent of each sale, and buyers must pay $7 for shipping.

Poshmark, which debuted about a year ago, reports that its customers are now posting $2 million worth of items to the marketplace every week, and that the average user visits the site seven times a day, for a total of 25 minutes.

According to a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission on Friday, proceeds from the sale of Rent.com totaled $145 million, which resulted in the online retailer recording a gain of $118 million.

Atlanta-based Primedia purchased the apartment listing service back in March.

EBay had previously said that Rent.com was instrumental in helping build its eBay Motors division, but now the division is better off with Primedia’s other properties, including ApartmentGuide.com, Rentals.com and RentalHouses.com. EBay originally acquired Rent.com seven years ago for $435 million in cash.

Coincidentally, eBay spent about the same amount of money that it made on the Rent.com sale on three acquisitions during the quarter. The company did not name the parties involved, but said two were for their marketplaces business, while a third was for PayPal. The total spent was $149 million, primarily in cash.

One of those acquisitions is likely Svpply, a social commerce site it disclosed buying earlier this month as part of its new homepage unveiling. In general, these acquisitions are drops in the bucket. Over the past two years, the company has spent billions on acquiring other companies, including roughly $3 billion on GSI, and several other smaller acquisitions, including Red Laser, Milo and Zong.

The purchases have helped transform the company from strictly a payments- and marketplaces-driven business to one that offers services to other retailers, like Toys “R” Us. In July, the company raised $3 billion in debt, but said it wasn’t expecting any “meaningful mergers and acquisitions activity in the near term.”

Photo Credit: eBay

Those are all words being used to describe eBay’s third quarter. But while the analysts are skeptical about whether eBay can keep up the growth it has enjoyed over the past two years, CEO John Donahoe says he’s feeling better about the company than he has in a while.

“The company is in the strongest position it has been in for many years,” Donahoe said in an interview. “And I think with what’s happening in the world of commerce, it plays well to our strengths and capabilities. I think we are a stronger company, more innovative and more customer-focused and getting better every day.”

In the third quarter, eBay hit the high end of its guidance and raised its outlook for the year, but since it has a track record of beating forecasts by a lot, analysts were hesitant to call the quarter a home run.

Mark Mahaney of Citi, which has a “neutral” rating on the stock, called eBay’s results “solid, but not exceptional,” and “slightly soft” because “this company has exceeded the high-end of its guidance for eight straight quarters.” Colin Sebastian of Baird Equity Research, who has an “outperform” rating and a price target of $58, was also reluctant to say the company was on fire: “Although management raised the implied guidance range for Q4, the midpoint of revenue guidance is slightly below consensus, which we believe is prudently cautious at this point ahead of the holiday spending ramp.”

Still, investors pushed eBay’s stock up $2.24, or 4.6 percent, to $50.44 a share in midday trading, putting it close to the company’s 52-week high of $50.65 a share.

In reaction to analysts’ neutral stance on the stock, Donahoe said: “We’ve beaten our guidance every quarter for I’m not sure how many quarters — and we beat it again this quarter. We are having a strong year, and our share price is up for the year, but you know how it is, there’s always a hope that it goes higher and higher. Our growth rates have been very steady; we don’t overly worry about that.”

Part of Donahoe’s confidence stems from the work eBay has done over the past year to overhaul its marketplaces business. The turnaround has included fixing the back-end technology and revamping the design, including a new logo and homepage redesign. This holiday, eBay will use TV commercials to help get the word out that it’s a new eBay. The tagline being used is, “From the new to the hard to find, when it’s on your mind, it’s on eBay.” PayPal, which also has updated its look and feel, is running an online marketing campaign featuring actor Jeff Goldblum.

In the third quarter, all three of the company’s divisions grew: PayPal’s revenue jumped 23 percent year over year, marketplace revenue grew by 9 percent, and its GSI division increased by 12 percent. In addition, it sees new opportunities to grow revenue by helping brick-and-mortar stores like Toys “R” Us and Macy’s compete online. It is also expanding into in-store payments through PayPal. As Donahoe likes to say, if PayPal captures just 1 percent of the offline payments market, it will double in size.

During the company’s conference call yesterday, Donahoe confirmed rumors that PayPal is undergoing a restructuring, which could result in layoffs. He said the new structure is designed to consolidate its product groups from nine to one. “Here’s the way to think about it — customers want a seamless experience across the Web, online and offline,” he said. If that’s the case, then those product groups should not be separate. He reiterated that it has nothing to do with cost reductions. “While it’s true there will be reductions, we are committed to accelerating the pace of innovation,” he said. “We aren’t seeking cost reductions — this is 100 percent about streamlining the creation of great products.”

The site was initially a peer-to-peer swapping service, where parents listed and shipped boxes of clothing to each other, but now ThredUp has taken over processing and distributing all the used clothes itself.

Even though dealing with inventory is more expensive and difficult, customers are willing to pay for an experience that’s more reliable, said ThredUp CEO James Reinhart.

“The expectations in e-commerce are so much higher these days,” Reinhart explained. That’s the same tune we’ve heard from some ThredUp competitors, like Twice.

Some 7,000 new customers now join ThredUp per month, with a 46 percent retention rate, Reinhart said.

And now that things have clicked, investors have thrown down some more funding for the company to expand into clothing for juniors and adults and to open additional distribution centers.

The company has raised $14.5 million in Series C funding led by Highland Capital Partners and including previous investors Trinity Ventures and Redpoint Ventures, for a grand total of more than $23 million raised.

As most readers know, I love a good internal memo from Yahoo — and now I have landed a really meaty one.

It’s the “Yahoo! Three-Year Product Strategy” plan, a 21-page report that was completed in mid-2011 by a team headed by former product head Blake Irving.

While it is a year old — and five CEOs ago (no, really) — it’s an important read since it tracks closely to the strategic vision that Yahoo’s latest CEO Marissa Mayer discussed earlier this week at an all-hands employee meeting and, according to sources, is very similar to one she seems to be pursuing.

That includes a focus on personalization, mobile, social, improving Yahoo’s advertising tech platforms and more.

And here’s the centerpiece of goals — called “Five Strategic Elements” — from the Irving memo:

1. Infuse deep personalization using science and data into every consumer and advertising experience we build.

2. Delight our customers with best-in-class products, iterating frequently for constant improvement.

3. Build for connected devices first with localized, in-context, multi-screen experiences in mind.

4. Power real social relationships with features that enable 1:few conversations around content.

5. Build a digital media ecosystem that creates a premium marketplace for advertising and content and distributes Yahoo! experiences across the Web.

Sound familiar?

In fact, at the event’s Q&A part yesterday, one staffer specifically pointed out that her broad presentation to employees sounded a lot like the one Irving had proposed the year before.

Since that was never truly implemented, due to never-ending management crises, the obvious question was asked: “Why would things be different this time?”

Mayer answered that the execution against that strategy wasn’t good and she would have a better model to pull it off.

The memo, embedded in its entirety below, is really instructive to use as a possible roadmap, outlining Yahoo’s challenges, as well as the competitive landscape.

Noted the report, quite clearly: “Yahoo! does not have an audience problem, as we are growing on pace with the Internet. Yahoo! does, however, have an engagement problem, as our share of time spent is flat, relative to our competitors.”

It’s aim is to fix that by building the “One Yahoo! experience, in which each of our current and future products fortifies the whole.”

Easier said than done, especially in building up its ad tech business, as the report adds, zeroing in on its most potent rival:

“To defend and grow our share of the premium advertising market, Yahoo! must continue investing to reach parity where necessary and achieve sustainable differentiation against Google with our premium marketplace and technology stack.”

There’s a lot more than that, so dig in to the document, which suggest a whole lot of spending to turn around Yahoo.

Since Mayer is well on her way in that department — including bouncing CFO Tim Morse, who was very bottom-line wary — more on that, next!

You must now download the full report here, which was removed from DocStoc here after a takedown request from Yahoo’s lawyers.

Rakuten, the Japanese e-commerce giant which recently made a $50 million investment in Pinterest, is making another online retail bet on Daily Grommet.

Rakuten will be the lead investor in a Series B round for the Lexington, Mass.-based online marketplace, whose motto is “fresh finds, true stories.” The site highlights a new daily product by featuring it with a story about its origin.

Daily Grommet said it would use the new funding for expansion. It declined to say how much Rakuten is investing, but the start-up has raised about $6 million since its launch in 2008.

Both Daily Grommet and Rakuten have focused on linking small and medium retailers directly with consumers, using discovery and social tools and large marketplaces. Daily Grommet was already working with Rakuten’s U.S.-based Buy.com site.

Since its start, Daily Grommet has featured about 1,000 unusual products, dubbing its platform “Citizen Commerce.”

That is more than just a catchy buzzword, said Jules Pieri, co-founder and CEO of Daily Grommet, which she likens to a Kickstarter for products.

“We are combining Main Street store shopping and journalism, trying to help products succeed and de-risk them by building distribution and awareness,” she said, noting Daily Grommet operates with the same motto of Buy.com that you buy from people and not the Internet.

Rakuten CEO Hiroshi Mikitani said he was attracted to this concept of making online retail more personal and informational than transactional.

“[Daily Grommet] has a higher mission,” he said. “We think creative curation and discovery are very important.”

Here’s the official press release about the investment:

DAILY GROMMET ANNOUNCES SERIES B FUNDING LED BY JAPANESE E-COMMERCE COMPANY, RAKUTEN

Investment Builds on Both Companies’ Missions to Empower Small to Medium Businesses to Connect Directly with Consumers via Discovery Shopping and Personal Interactions

Lexington, MA; September 17, 2012 – Daily Grommet, an online shopping site and marketing platform for innovative and undiscovered products, today announces a round of Series B funding led by Rakuten, one of the world’s largest online marketplaces. Daily Grommet plans to use the capital to further expand its highly curated e-commerce site and product launch platform.

Together, the companies provide significant benefits to one another, as Daily Grommet will allow Rakuten to advance its sourcing, curation, and storytelling capabilities and deepen consumer connections to its merchant partners. Daily Grommet has gained a large and influential following because of its proven ability to expertly source and vet high potential unknown products. Since its launch in 2008, over 1,000 products and emerging companies have been featured on DailyGrommet.com, many of which have become household names. The company’s “Citizen Commerce” movement creates connections between inventors and consumers, by enabling product purchases that express powerful contemporary values around sustainability, quality, technology and social enterprise.

“Tens of thousands of new products are launched in the U.S. every year, so it’s not hard to believe that many go unnoticed or are simply hard to find,” said Jules Pieri, co-founder and CEO of Daily Grommet. “Our goal is to bridge the gap between traditional marketing and e-commerce by connecting inventors and undiscovered companies with consumers. Their stories are heroic and inspiring and we succeed at leveling the playing field, so the best products and companies can win, not just the biggest ones. Championing the independent creator builds great trust within our community. Working with Rakuten, with its longstanding empowerment mission, will allow both of our businesses to share knowledge and collaborate on product discovery, disrupting and improving the tired old ways of launching products.”

Daily Grommet, with its online editorial and video capability, showcasing the story around a particular product, has already been proven complementary to Rakuten’s Buy.com site, as the two have worked together to help expand Daily Grommet’s reach.

Daily Grommet began using Pinterest in mid-2011 as an extension of its community sourcing for high-quality Grommet submissions. Usage of the “Finds YOU want to see featured on Daily Grommet” Pinboard continues to rise rapidly and consistently represents one of Daily Grommet’s top referral sources. In May 2012 Rakuten led a strategic round of investment in Pinterest.

“Our investment in Daily Grommet supports our overall global strategy of creating an enhanced consumer experience in e-commerce,” said Hiroshi Mikitani, CEO of Rakuten. “Particularly in light of our recent Pinterest investment, we’re excited to be working with a company that shares our view of curating new, innovative and unique products across the web and the world. Daily Grommet is a perfect fit with the Rakuten family, as its team has shown great vision and passion for launching undiscovered products and companies. Our core business model of empowering merchants aligns perfectly with the goals and vision of Daily Grommet.”