Mid-Atlantic Angel Group Portfolio Co. Preclick Corp. Acquired by Smileboz
Smilebox Inc., a leading photo services company, announced today it has acquired Preclick Corp., a leader in print-to-retail software for retailers such as Walmart, Costco, Walgreens, Sam's Club and Meijers. As part of the transaction, Smilebox acquired the technology assets, intellectual property, relationships and retail contracts associated with Preclick's photo organizer software that powers the printing service of retailers nationwide. Smilebox plans to enhance the Preclick retailer offerings for holiday 2009 with custom versions of Smilebox that will support 1-hour, direct-to-store printing.
Brian Smiga, founder and CEO of Preclick, will become vice president of business development and retail at Smilebox and will focus on bringing Smilebox and Preclick assets together to advance retail photo solutions for the company. The acquisition is a key component of Smilebox's strategy to provide consumers with a range of flexible and cost effective ways of sharing and preserving their photo creations. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
"Preclick's deep partnerships with leading retailers significantly accelerates our print-to-retail strategy," said Andrew Wright, founder and CEO of Smilebox, Inc. "More than 65 percent of online consumer photo prints are printed at photo retailers and the retailer share is growing. Adding print-to-retail capabilities to the Smilebox platform will take retailers in a fresh direction beyond commodity 4×6 prints to larger, premium formats including cards, collages and invita tions as well as scrapbook and photobook pages," he added.
"Smilebox provides retailers with the market's largest catalog of more than 900 high-quality and continuously refreshed designs, which is unparalleled in the industry," said Smiga. "In addition to generating more print sales, the combination of quality designs with consumer photos will also drive over-size print orders that command higher retailer margins."
Smilebox lets customers quickly turn life's moments into digital creations to share with others or save for themselves. Smilebox users can email or post to a blog or Facebook any design for free. For $1.99 to $3.99 customers can purchase premium designs to print at home or retail, get more music choices, share full screen without ads and more. Customers can also subscribe to Club Smilebox for $5.99/month or $39.99/year to make all designs premium, burn their Smilebox creations to DVD or save video files to an iTouch or iPhone. Smilebox is available for the PC and Mac platforms.
About Smilebox Inc.:
Founded in 2005 by Andrew Wright, Smilebox is the leading way friends and families celebrate, share and preserve special moments in their lives. Since the service's launch in June 2006, more than 8 million people have installed Smilebox and more than 70 million Smileboxes have been played worldwide. Smilebox is the only service that supports20all personal media (photos, videos, music), all content types (ecards, invitations, slideshows, digital scrapbooks, photobooks and postcards) and all sharing methods (email, print, burn to DVD, blog and post). Smilebox is a privately held company and headquartered in Redmond, Washington.