ShopRunner, owned by GSI Commerce founder Michael Rubin's Kynetic, plans to acquire ShopSanity, a service that helps keep consumers organized by tracking orders and aggregating receipts across retailers. With the acquisition, ShopRunner is a members-only online shopping program that offers exclusive benefits, including free 2-day shipping and free returns.
As part of the agreement, all ShopSanity employees will join ShopRunner. ShopSanity co-founders, John Rodkin and Leo Chang, will hold executive-level roles as chief product officer and chief technology officer, respectively. The acquisition provides ShopRunner a west coast presence expanding into Silicon Valley, the ideal location to attract industry leading talent to build out the product management and engineering teams.
“ShopRunner and ShopSanity share a common vision of saving shoppers time and money” said Michael Golden, president of ShopRunner. “I am impressed with John and Leo's success in past entrepreneurial endeavors, as well as the entire ShopSanity team who rapidly and efficiently built a useful service for consumers and a personalized data platform for retailers. The acquisition of ShopSanity brings this significant talent to the ShopRunner roster, and introduces added value to our service as a leading shopping solution for both retailers and consumers.”
The acquisition will serve to accelerate the development of ShopRunner's product suite. Rodkin and Chang will lead ShopSanity's integration into ShopRunner's product offerings and develop new consumer applications to improve the online and in-person shopping experience, including mobile, web and store applications, payment facilitators and personal shopping accounts, all underpinned by a personalized data platform.
“We are excited to join ShopRunner, which is a well-funded start-up with an ambitious culture and impressive results,” said Rodkin. “We look forward to working together to build superior products that shoppers love and driving significant incremental business to retailers.”
Rodkin and Chang have successfully partnered for the development of a series of venture-backed e-commerce, advertising and marketing optimization companies, founding ShopSanity in 2011. Currently based in San Carlos, Calif., ShopSanity will continue to operate as usual until the plans for ShopRunner's new Silicon Valley location are finalized.
