Wahanda goes stateside

I haven’t updated my blog in a while but its been a manic summer and I simply haven’t had a moment.  A big part of the reason for my silence was that we have been busy focused on the US launch of Wahanda.

Its only been 18 months since we first launched and 12 months since we went transactional so this first step outside the UK is a big step early in our history. The fact of the matter, however, is that the US is a huge unified market and we have strong ties back there through our investors and team.  Most of all, our suppliers and customers kept asking us when we were coming over.  They loved what we were doing in the UK and we hate to let our fans down!

Our launch coincided with our keynote presentation at the Spatec conference in Vegas which was really well received.  We launched with more than 3,000 US spas, salons and studios and more than than 8,000 worldwide.  That makes us the largest health, beauty and wellness website anywhere. Pretty cool.  Of course, we’re adding more all the time so watch this space.

We decided to launch the site without a spa voucher and a limited amount of spa day and spa break offerings but over the next few months those will build quickly.  Although we will continue to base our technology development out of the UK, the US is a core part of growth strategy and we will be building a strong team on that side of the pond.

The reality is that we simply don’t see other people doing and we keep getting a great response from suppliers and customers so we’ll keep pushing on.  If you see anything that can be improved on the US site please let me know.

Last.fm finally available on the Sonos and I’m in Love

It was my good friend Stefan Glaenzer (also investor in Wahanda) who several years ago, as Chairman of last.fm first turned me onto the service — I was blown away.  Here was a powerful way of creating communities and sharing information around a topic that people feel passionate about — music.  Moreover, it had a built in recommendation engine that worked really well and a personal radio station to boot!  Best of all, through the use of its scrobbling technology, it collected this information and build these communities with virtually no effort from the user — it simply monitored the music that you listened to.  Could it get any better?  Well, actually, yes…

At first, the issue was that the scrobbling only worked on your computer.  This was an issue as I actually rarely listen to music on my Mac… I have always preferred using the iPod as I found the navigation through my library easier than iTunes. Then, last.fm sorted that out by enabling scrobbling on my iPod so that when I synched the device to my Mac it tracked all I had listened to.

But that left a bigger problem.  I actually don’t use my iPod that often.  I rarely listen to music in the office (I hate not hearing what is going on and believe that it sends the wrong message to the people around me) and so I really only use it when excercising or on a plane.  But I am a have a big collection of music and am a huge consumer of music at home through my Sonos system.  I was so frustrated that my musical tastes weren’t being tracked fully.  Moreover, I was frustrated that I couldn’t listen to my last.fm radio when I was at home.

Well, someone at last.fm has been working hard and after several years of saying it was coming its now available on the Sonos!  This means that not only can I access my last.fm radio stations at home but it’s also scrobbling my music at home which means it has a much better understanding of my taste. Nothing has transformed my use of last.fm and my view of it as an essential resource in my music library more than that simple step.

One unforseen issue is that my wife happens to use the Sonos as well and we don’t always share the same tastes (I’m still working on that one) but so far that hasn’t affected my recommendations too badly (yet).

So now there is only one thing left for Sonos to sort out.  I wish they measured the degree to which I like a song based on how long I listen to a song not just the number of times I listed to the song.  Like so many people, I often listen to things on shuffle and a song may come up which I listen to for only a few seconds before forwarding to the next. Unfortunately Sonos seems to track that as if I played the whole song.

Then again you can’t have everything… at least not yet.

The perfect wellness gift

The perfect Spa gift - The wahanda gift voucher

All of us have struggled on what to give people on their birthday, valentine’s day, mother’s day or Christmas. Its often hard to find the right present.  And if you are anything like me, you hate wasting your money on something that just gets wasted or forgotten… you want to give something meaningful.

Well, Wahanda has just launched the Wahanda Gift Voucher and it could be exactly what you are looking for.  The voucher (or gift certificate if you prefer) can be purchased in a number of denominations from £25 and up.  It comes in a beautiful gift envelope that really makes the gift feel very special.  And, best of all, it can be used at hundreds of luxury day spas, destination spas, salons, yoga centres, Pilates centres, and power plate studios across the UK.  In fact you can use it to get pampered at some of the best spas in the UK such as Champneys, Dove and The Sanctuary to name just a few.

There is a big trend towards giving people experiences rather than just material goods that I love.  The fact of the matter is that most of us have enough stuff — what we need is more experiences and to live life fully. The Wahanda voucher does that perfectly for me and I can tell you its what everyone in my family is getting this christmas!

Wahanda goes transactional

It’s been a really exciting couple of weeks at Wahanda.  After several month’s of work we launched a new transactional engine which allows consumers to but vouchers from hundreds of spas around the uk.  There is nothing else like this online.

We also launched the Wahanda gift voucher which is the perfect christmas gift.  It comes in a gorgeous package and is available in several denominations and can be used nationwide at the top spas, luxury day spas, yoga, fitness and pilates centres in the country.  It’s the perfect wellness gift and I plan to give it to all my friends and family this christmas!

I have been thrilled so far by the response we have had from our partners.  Every wellness business we speak to tells us that they love the site and are excited about what we are doing to promote the industry.  They all agree that there is really nothing quite like Wahanda anywhere.  As proof, we are getting some great deals and offers which we have launched on the site under our new “Shop” section.  Many of the deals are exclusive to us and we have a special section with our very best deals.

We’re still just at the beginning of of this element of the site but it’s encouraging to see how good the response is so far and am looking forward to the christmas season!

DRM-Free does matter… but its not everything

I was really iritated by this post by Bob Lefsetz.  Essentially, he argued that the reason Amazon and MySpace music shops haven’t taken more market share is that the only people who care about DRM free music are the people stealing music .  Peter Kafka at Silicon Alley Reporter, who I usually agree with, seemed to support the view.

I disagree… completely.  I don’t steal music (I seem to have a rare ethical bone on this subject) but I hate the fact that iTunes places DRM restrictions on so much music. And there are two important reasons:

1. The sound quality of DRM enabled music on itunes is sold at 128kbps which is pretty poor.  DRM free songs on itunes are sold at 256 kbps which still isn’t goo enough but definitely better.
2. I have a Sonos player and if I buy a DRM protected track I can’t play it on the Sonos without some fiddling which really is annoying.

I love my music and I do buy a lot on iTunes but only if its an iTunes Plus track which really limits my options.

If you take these factors and then include the fact that (legal) digital music is still too expensive as compared to buying a CD at the shops AND that the CD gives you some artwork AND physical backup AND lossless compression, I generally buy most of my music on good ol fashion plastic.  Sad but true.

As you can see, there are a number of factors that will get me to switch to buying my music 100% digitally but DRM rights is a major part of them and I am not a music pirate.

The real reason why Amazon and MySpace haven’t gained more traction, despite offering DRM free music, that iTunes has a better product.  Certainly, I think that the selection and library management is miles better than anything else I have seen.  And so, despite the fact that I pray for the day that apple drops its digital rights restrictions, they still manage to keep my loyalty.

The joys of 3G

It was not that long ago that people wondered if 3G would ever live up to its promise — was it just another over hyped technology that no one would use? Well, those of you who are still skeptics will love this one…

I returned from holiday this morning to find that faced with a long wait for BT to set up an ADSL internet connection at our new office, the team had gone downstairs to the local mobile phone shop and purchased a basic 3G dongle (which seem to be taking over the UK), connected it to faithful “Aunty Dorris”, which is our baseline testing machine (Aunty Betty unfortunately died a few weeks back), and were running the entire office internet traffic through the one device. Genius.

Aunty Dorris... another piece of sexy wahanda hardware

I have to admit, that its not the fastest or most reliable connection (the three DO NOT TOUCH post it notes are somewhat of a giveaway) but given that we have 8-10 people sharing the bandwidth it really isn’t bad (in fact, I am using it right now). I am not sure this is what the nice people at the shop had in mind when they sold us the dongle but its better than waiting for BT and certainly better than no connectivity at all.

BT is supposed to be coming tomorrow, and alas, wires are still faster and (slightly) more reliable and so we have to retire Aunty Dorris’s dongle (errr!) shortly but it makes you realise that that fast, always on, mobile connectivity is not that far away. In the meantime, if I am a little slow to reply to emails (no big images please!) you will understand why.