Ideiasnet reinforces business for female audience
Sergio Zacchi / Valor
Andiara Petterle, director of Bolsa de
Mulher:
Increased user base
Ideiasnet, a company operating in the technology and Internet segments, has decided to increase its investment in the online content area for female audience. The Company, which already owns 93% of the Bolsa de Mulher portal, has acquired three additional specialized sites: direct competitor Feminice; Bem Leve, specializing in health and beauty; and the Estrela Guia astrology site. The value of the acquisition has not been revealed.
"The next step will be to integrate all these products", says Bolsa de Mulher's director, Andiara Petterle. The brands will remain and the sites will continue to operate independently, although under a unified structure. Ideiasnet hopes this will achieve greater cost gains and new business opportunities, such as advertising cross selling on different websites.
The acquisition nearly doubles the number of Bolsa de Mulher's monthly users, with the user base jumping from 3 million to 5.5 million people, says Marcelo Almeida, director of IdeiasVentures, an Ideiasnet unit where companies with total annual sales below R$10 million are concentrated. "The number of users is important because it represents one of the ways to measure the value of this type of business", Almeida explains.
In 2006, American television network NBC spent the equivalent of US$41 per user on its iVillage women's site, which then received 16 million unique visitors per month, to gain control over the business. The total value paid amounted to US$657 million. Other websites aimed at women gained investors attention due to their large following. The auFeminin website network of France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and the United Kingdom counts on 23 million monthly users and trades shares on the Paris Stock Exchange.
In addition to reinforcing its user base, the acquisition offers a new business model for Bolsa de Mulher, whose main revenues come from online advertising. Its main feature is electronic business, used on websites such as Bem Leve and Estrela Guia.
Bolsa de Mulher has already carried out online sales experiments and the plan now is to strongly reinforce this area. "By the end of the year, we will launch an electronic business operation for lingerie sales", Almeida says. With the experience of recently-acquired sites, the wager on virtual sales is expected to be much lighter. "We have earned some years or months of work", the executive says.
Globalization is also in the works for Bolsa de Mulher, says George Ellis, founder and board of directors' vice-president of Ideiasnet. The plan is to expand into Argentina and then move on to Chile and Mexico. According to Almeida, acquisitions abroad are not out of the question.
Ideiasnet has undergone a series of transformation in recent months. In February, it enlisted the support of Carlos Aquinaga as board of directors' chairman, starting a professionalization process which culminated in June with the nomination of Luis Alberto Monteiro Lobato Reátegui for the chief executive position.
In May, the Company announced the entry of Eike Batista onto the business. Batista's EBX holding acquired 47% of the lot of 15 million new shares issued by Ideiasnet. The remainder was bought out by older shareholders. In total, the operation increased funds by R$100.5 million.
Discussions for the acquisition of the three women's sites, however, began before these changes, Almeida reveals. "The negotiations started at the end of last year", the executive says. The sites belonged to Limoges Participações. Despite the reinforcement, the Bolsa de Mulher will maintain a lean structure, counting on a team of forty professionals.
