This will help "support the continuing growth of Thorntons and its transformation into a fast moving consumer goods company with increasing sales to third party retailers".
One of the big issues is that in recent years all the big product innovations have come from Apple which sells through its own shops and website with only a small percentage of sales through third party retailers".
Flipkart, Snapdeal and others have since adopted marketplace-based systems, which match third party retailers with consumers, but ShopClues was among the first to do so in India.
That said, the price might make up for it: while it's $99 bucks through Sprint, you can get it for as cheap as $25 bucks through third party retailers.
If you're lookin' to put some pink in your life, you can find the Pink Pearl and Pink Curve at Verizon's official spots for $80 and $100 bucks respectively (w/ 2 year contract) starting today, and third party retailers on August 15th.
Snapdeal, founded four years ago as a marketplace for third party retailers in India to sell goods online, has raised an additional $627 million from SoftBank Internet and Media to continue building out its business in the country, both organically and through acquisitions.
Souq says that it will use to scale up its business, which (like Amazon) operates a soup-to-nuts marketplace that works with third party retailers, and sells goods directly to consumers.
(And for those paying extra close attention: yep, the very same HTC Merge that Verizon decided to delay forever until eventually deciding to not sell it in their own shops, but to allow third party retailers to sell it to those who requested it. It's a very special week of hand-me-downs for U.S. Cellular, isn't it?).
That sum does not include research and development, shipping or, with a third-party retailer, the wholesale discount.
