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Cravebox Launches, Hires Industry Veteran Kitty Kolding as CEO
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New York, NY and Denver, CO, March 20, 2012 -
Cravebox Inc., a powerful new product discovery platform, announced today that it has been spun out as a standalone entity, and has named respected industry veteran, Kitty M. Kolding, as CEO.
Cravebox (www.Cravebox.com) connects brands and consumers via specially prepared, themed boxes delivered to Members’ homes. Members can join the monthly Subscription service, and can make ad hoc purchases of the topic-specific Limited Edition boxes. Each box shipment is created by expert Curators and is focused around a specific activity, passion, topic or occasion that appeals to its fast-growing membership. The company uses sophisticated game mechanics and industry-leading social engagement practices to heighten the excitement and fun for its Members, while delivering a high impact social media activation and customized product promotion for participating brands. To keep the service fresh, fun and engaging, Cravebox Curators source products from a wide range of categories that appeal to the many facets of its Membership’s interests, including Cooking Baking & Grilling; Hobbies, Pets & Recreation; Health & Wellness; Beauty & Skincare; Kids, Baby & Family; and Home Solutions.
Cravebox incubated inside NYC-based SheSpeaks, an industry leader in influencer marketing. The initial beta test, launched in December of last year, was an instant success due to the test team’s best-in-class social engagement skills and extensive consumer marketing savvy. Almost overnight, the program attracted a very large waiting list to enter the beta program, a strong Twitter following, a very active Facebook presence, and a fast-growing Member community, as well as a long list of brands eager to benefit from the program. Because of its affiliation with SheSpeaks, Cravebox will continue to have access to the sizable SheSpeaks community of female influencers, which includes more than 30,000 bloggers.
“By combining my skills and background with the considerable experience from the SheSpeaks team, we’ve been able to build out an offering that absolutely delights our Members, while delivering a promotional platform to brands that simply can’t be beaten – on price, ease of execution, or results,” said Ms. Kolding. “Once I saw the impressive results of the Cravebox beta and started collaborating with the SheSpeaks test team, Iknew we were ontosomething completely unique and truly innovative, for both brand marketers and consumers.”
“We are thrilled by the recent success of Cravebox, and are very excited to have Kitty lead the business. Her experience, skill and energy are a perfect fit,” said Aliza Freud, founder and CEO of SheSpeaks and founder of Cravebox. “The beta launch for Cravebox late last year immediately attracted a large following of socially savvy and influential consumers. This interest allowed us to build instant momentum and we sold out the initial Subscription slots in under three hours- creating a large and still-growing wait list for Cravebox.”
Since its launch in December, Cravebox has been generating an average of 20 million earned media impressions for participating brands each month, and reports on a comprehensive set of success metrics for its brand clients, including measures of increases in awareness, product knowledge and advocacy, as well as increases to partnering brands’ site traffic, social media engagement and follow-on purchase rates. In the coming weeks, the company will announce several high profile relationships with brands and media companies interested in benefitting from the flexible and powerful Cravebox platform.
Prior to Cravebox, Ms. Kolding served as CEO of House Party Inc., a social and experiential marketing services company. At the helm for four years, she led the company to profitability and dramatic growth, tripling the firm's revenue for three consecutive years, while serving many of the world’s most prestigious consumer brands including Kraft, Nestle, Microsoft, GSK, P&G, Unilever, Ford, GM, Turner, NBC, Disney, ABC and dozens more.
Prior to House Party, Ms. Kolding held a series of senior executive positions during her five years at Jupiter Research (NASDAQ: JUPM, fka JMXI, fka JPTR), during which time the company grew to over $100 million in revenues and completed a successful IPO. Prior to joining Jupiter, Ms. Kolding served as Vice President of Business Development for GetSmart, and earlier she founded and was CEO of a real estate research firm called Land Sales Resource (LSR) for eight years which she sold into a roll-up and IPO.
An experienced speaker and noted industry expert, she has frequently been quoted in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Fox News, Fast Company, Variety, Advertising Age, Adweek, Brandweek and Event Marketer Magazine; and has been a featured speaker at leading industry conferences, such as the WOMMA Summit, Digital Hollywood, ad:tech, and the American Marketing Association events.
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About Cravebox
Founded in late 2011, Cravebox (www.cravebox.com) Cravebox is a fun and powerful product discovery platform that connects brands and consumers, via specially prepared themed boxes delivered to Members’ homes. Each box shipment is tailored to specific topics, interests, passions or occasions, and is made available to the Membership in limited quantities via lottery style drawings on the Cravebox website. The contents of each shipment are selected by a team of expert Curators who scour the market for products and accept submissions from brands for products that will delight the Cravebox Membership. Brands can contact curators by emailing Curators@Cravebox.com; Consumers can join Cravebox community by going to Cravebox.com and clicking on JOIN. Headquartered in Denver, CO, Cravebox covers products in a wide range of categories including Health & Wellness; Entertainment; Cooking, Baking & Grilling; Hobbies, Pets & Recreation; Beauty & Skincare; Kids, Baby & Family; and Home Cleaning & Organization.
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