[April 18, 2012]

Wrapp Prepares for Introduction of Social Gifting in Japan

Wrapp is coming to Japan.

The No. 1 social gifting app for celebrating, thanking, surprising and delighting friends, family and business associates with free gift cards from top retailers has opened offices here, appointed a business development team, and has started to sign up major merchants.

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 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.

"Wrapp has created a totally new and unique way to use mobile phones and social networks to get the people on-line that retailers want as customer, actually into their stores and making profitable purchases," said Toshi Asano, Wrapp's country manager in Japan. "This is a perfect solution in Japan where gift giving is already a part of daily life."

Swedish Roots

Wrapp began its unique brand of social gifting in Sweden in last November. In January this year Wrapp received $10.5 million in Series A funding from Greylock Partners and Atomico resulting in LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and Skype (News - Alert) co-founder Niklas Zennström joining Wrapp's board of directors. In March Wrapp took its service to Norway and the U.K., and earlier this month opend offices in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Taiwan and elsewhere around the world.

During the last four months more than 170,000 Wrapp active users have given their Facebook friends over 1.4 million free gift cards that could be redeemed in stores operated by some 50 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.

Wrapp was started last year by Wrapp's CEO, Hjalmar Winbladh, and a small team of entrepreneurs, including Andreas Ehn, Spotify's 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 (News - Alert) 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 (News - Alert). In 2006 Winbladh co-founded Rebtel, now the world's largest independent mobile VoIP company, where he continues as chairman.

"People in Japan already use their phones in much more sophisticated ways than Europeans, who have come to love Wrapp for the convenience of having their gift cards with them any time they want to buy something they really want," said Winbladh. "It's clear that retailers in Japan understand that daily deals and deal hunters dilute their brand and can be bad for business. In contrast, Wrapp presents merchants in the trusted context of a gift from one friend to another, rather than in paid media channels, and ultimately enables a win-win experience for consumers and the retailers."

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 App Store, the Android (News - Alert) 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 and Japan. Celebrate with friends every day at www.wrapp.com.

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