User:JennS2018/sandbox

General Information
Icecat NV is a global syndicator and producer of standardized product data, based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The enterprise was founded in 2001 (webwinkelvakdag, 2018). [ ] and is one of the players in their respective niche segment (Groeneveld, 2018). Today the company is also one of the leaders of the industry which includes IT & Electronics, Toys, Health & Beauty, DIY, Fashion, Automotive, and the fast moving consumer goods. (Icecat.co.uk, 2018) [²]. The company is listed at the Dutch NPEX stock exchange and saw rapid growth in the recent past (Icecat.co.uk, 2018). Next to product datasheets, the company provides additional related services to its clients including leads generation, product mapping, and integration services (Icecat.co.uk, 2018).[ ] Icecat Group consists of Icecat LLC Ukraine and Icecat content sourcing OÜ Estonia which are the cost centres of the organisation and also responsible for the direct sourcing of editor capacity. Other subsidiaries include Iceshop B.V., Icecat Nederland B.V., Syndy B.V.,[ ] Hatch B.V[ ]., and Icecat International B.V..

The main competitors of the company are CNET Content Solutions, Etilize, and FlixMedia.[ ]

History
The company was founded in 1999 as the first Dutch computer online shop under the name TakeItNow. The business is part of the iMerge eCommerce incubator since its foundation. It came clear to the company, that it needs a more convenient way to manage product content and in 2001 TakeItNow became the content provider within the iMerge Holding (Groeneveld, 2018). [ ] In 2006, the company started operation of its unique Open Catalogue and on April 6, 2009 it became the public limited company (naamlooze vennootschap) Icecat N.V. (Iceclog.com, 2018). In an effort to raise capital for further growth, the company successfully announced its IPO at the Dutch SME stock exchange NPEX in January 2017 (NPEX, 2016). Here the company received € 4,4 million (Boogert, 2018). Moreover, the company announced the ICO of its cryptocurrency ICURY in 2018 for R&D purposes (Hoogeveen, 2018). In November 2014, Open Icecat launched its LIVE version, a real-time JavaScript service, providing real-time inserts in client websites, as an alternative to URL format. The same year Open Icecat integrated new sectors in its catalogue such as Lighting and Beauty, L'Oréal Netherlands being one of 300 sponsoring manufacturers. By March 2018, Open Icecat counted roughly 300 sponsoring brands and provided data in 47 languages (NPEX, 2016). The catalogue was used by 75.000 channel partners (Iceclog, 2018) spread over 243 countries and territories worldwide (NPEX, 2016). The business enhanced its catalogue in the sectors DIY, Toys, FMCG, and fashion (NPEX, 2016). [²]

Open Icecat
Under the name Open Icecat, Icecat provides a free and open content catalog to users with product data-sheets to any user that wants to retrieve its product data. The open content approach resulted in the global use of Open Icecat by tens of thousands of e-commerce companies from virtually any country in the world and billions of annual data-sheet downloads. This gigantic traction made Open Icecat a resource where manufacturers like to have their product data included, especially in the IT & Electronics industries. Manufacturers (and brand owners) pay Icecat for providing their product data as free product content to their e-commerce partners. (NPEX, 2018).[

Full Icecat
Under the name Full Icecat, Icecat is providing access to its complete product content database on a subscription-only basis. By providing coverage guarantees, editorial service levels, content integration services and e-commerce apps, Icecat is providing value add to e-commerce companies. As the Full Icecat fees are very competitive and benefit from economies of scale and the sponsoring of the Open Icecat database by manufacturers, it’s very attractive for e-commerce companies with larger catalogs to outsource the production of product content to Icecat for an increasing number of product categories. It reaches from specifications to high-resolution images, marketing texts, manuals, videos, reasons-to-buy, cross-sell, categorizations, multimedia content, multilingual marketing text, upsell options, and 3D-shots. Technically, the Full Catalogue is identical to Open Icecat, as they only differ in the number of brands listed. Full Icecat contains datasheets for the products of over 20.000 brands as of May 2018 (Nl.icecat.biz, 2018). The data is available in XML, CSV, JSON, URL, and Icecat Live format (Iceclog.com,2018).

Corporate Identity
Icecat employs more than 150 people from over 20 nationalities and has an estimated number of 50 000+ customers from both Open and Full Icecat services. These are used actively from 243 countries.

Headquarters
Icecat is headquartered in Amsterdam, Noord-Holland. The other two offices are situated in Nieuwegein and Kiev.

Finance
In 2017 Icecat generated a revenue of more than € 7 million, accounting for 1 million more than the previous year. The half a year interim of Icecat for 2018 showed a growth of 24.4% for the first six months, in comparison to the previous year (21.5%). This led to revenues of 4.2 million from both the national and international business [ ].

Icury Martijn Hoogeveen - Icecat CEO - has kept a close eye on the development of cryptocurrencies since Digicash was created in 1992 by David Chaum. He tried Digicash to observe the technology in an R&D lab. However, it was too early. The first bitcoin hype in 2013 also caught his attention and he decided to invest into cryptocurrencies for the 1st time. Next, he invested in blockchain cloud provider Ledgable in 2017. On the basis of this experience, the Icecat team saw a great business opportunity and after these 4 years of studying and looking into blockchain tech, Icecat decided to create and launch ICURY.

In 2018 Icecat issued its very own cryptocurrency to carry on with the innovative and up-to-date nature of the company. The currency got the name ICURY: Icecat CryptocURencY.[ ] It was issued by Icecat Content Sourcing O.Ü., being the Estonian daughter company, in close cooperation with TACXE/Ledgable blockchain team (Schmidt, 2018). Aim of ICURY is to decentralize and tokenize Icecat’s content syndication network, and incentifying the creation of great content.

The key advantage
Adding the ICURY coin and blockchain has the potential to rally its already thriving e-commerce ecosystem. If Icecat’s e-commerce ecosystem adopts the ICURY, there’s a multiplier effect.

Ownership
Martijn Hoogeveen is involved in Icecat as an CEO and founder since 2001. He got the idea of Icecat’s services while creating and managing earlier retail and e-business enterprises. The former professor multimedia/e-commerce is a driving force of the innovation and global expansion of Icecat. Via his investment vehicles Netvalue and iMerge, he has 18 years of experience in the management of fast-growth tech ventures, portfolio management, and mergers acquisitions, what is useful for the continued fast-growth of Icecat[ ]

Icecat’s shareholders
The main Icecat’s shareholders are: Alena Velychko, Sergii Shvets, and Snijders Invest BV and iMerge.[11]

Relation with iMerge
The Dutch based company, iMerge was founded in 1998. The privately held company has its HQ in Nieuwegein, the Netherlands. iMerge BV is active as an e-Business investor. 75% of Icecat’s stocks is held by iMerge, the daughterfund of Netvalue BV. Martijn Hoogeveen, the CEO of Icecat, founded Netvalue. Since 1999 iMerge and Netvalue have been active business partners. They invested into several promising companies and startups. Here are a few examples: Icecat (e-business content), Iceshop (e-business-facilities), Hatch BV, previously Iceleads (e-business sales leading), Testseek (products test and reviews seeking, e-business content)