[April 22, 2012]

Wrapp Social Gifting App Coming to Australia

Wrapp, the hot new social gifting company backed by Skype and LinkedIn founders Niklas Zennström (News - Alert) and Reid Hoffman, has opened offices in Sydney and is working with some of Australia's biggest and coolest retailers to make gift giving a social networking experience.

Wrapp makes it fun and easy to give, receive and redeem gift cards using mobile devices or the Web, and allows Facebook (News - Alert) friends to contribute to the presents for birthdays, special occasions, or just adding a special touch when saying thank you, congratulations or get well soon.

For merchants, Wrapp is a proven customer acquisition and retention platform for conducting discount-free performance-based campaigns. With Wrapp, retailers use friend-to-friend marketing to drive highly targeted in-store and on-line sales, and get real-time access to aggregated campaign and customer demographic data.

"We think gift giving should be an everyday occasion," said Tony Been, Wrapp's newly appointed country manager for Australia. "Now, thanks to Wrapp, you can do it simply and instantly with friends and family around the world - and because the gift cards are stored in your phone they're always with you when you want to buy something you really want."

Wrapp's unique brand of global social gifting started in Sweden last November. In January this year the company received $10.5 million in Series A funding from Greylock Partners in Silicon Valley and Atomico in London resulting in Hoffman and Zennström joining Wrapp's board of directors. In March, Wrapp took its social gifting service to Norway and th U.K., and earlier this month opened offices in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Taiwan, Japan and elsewhere around the world.

During the last four months more than 170,000 people have given their Facebook friends over 1.4 million free gift cards that could be redeemed in stores operated by some 60 major retailers in Europe.

Participating merchants report that each sale averages four to six times the value of the free gift card they let Wrapp users give to their friends.

"Retailers have been struggling for the last couple of years to find a way to use the latest mobile and social technologies to their business advantage," said Hjalmar Winbladh, Wrapp's CEO. "Daily deals, they found, dilute their brands and more often than not drive unprofitable sales from consumers who don't come back without a discount. We think it's time for retailers worldwide to turn Facebook fans and loyal customers into their best sales force ever and only pay for the service when consumers make a purchase in-store."

Wrapp was started last year by Winbladh and a small team of entrepreneurs, including Andreas Ehn, Spotify's (News - Alert) first chief technology officer; Magnus Hult, who played a key role in building Spotify's original technology and platform; Aage Reerslev, founder of mobile browser maker Squace; Leo Giertz, founder of Barefoot Hackers, one of Sweden's most acclaimed iPhone development shops; Carl Fritjofsson, strategy advisor to Groupon.se; and Fabian Månsson, former CEO of H&M and Eddie Bauer, who now serves as Wrapp's chairman. Winbladh co-founded Sendit, the first mobile Internet company, where he served as CEO, and took it public in 1997, before being acquired by Microsoft. In 2006 Winbladh co-founded Rebtel (News - Alert), now the world's largest independent mobile VoIP company, where he continues as chairman.

Wrapp will soon be available in the U.S. and Australia. In the meantime, to start sending free gift cards to friends and family in the U.K., Norway or Sweden, download the Wrapp mobile app from Apple's (News - Alert) App Store, the Android Market, or use the web app at www.wrapp.com, and connect it to your Facebook account.

About Wrapp

Wrapp is a social gifting service for celebrating friends' occasions with free and paid gifts from attractive brands. Wrapp allows friends to contribute to gifts, and makes it fun and easy to give, receive and redeem using mobile devices and the web. Founded in the first half of 2011 by a group of serial entrepreneurs, Wrapp is based in Stockholm, with offices in the U.K., U.S., Germany, France, the Netherlands, Taiwan, Japan and Australia. Celebrate with friends every day at www.wrapp.com.

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