Stardoll.com: From Little Things Big Things Grow
Duncan Riley
26 comments »
Inspired by a childhood passion for paper dolls, Scandinavian born Liisa started drawing dolls and accompanying wardrobes, uploading them to Geocities. The personal page grew, evolving to Paperdoll Heaven in 2004.
Now calling itself Stardoll.com, the site took $4 million in Series A funding from Index Ventures in February 2006, and $6 million in a B Series round lead by none other than Sequoia in June the same year.
It’s a rags to riches success story that makes Stardoll worth taking a look at, and the space is seeing hyper growth. See our writeup of Zwinky last week.
Stardoll is all about dressing up dolls online.
Stardoll lets users create their own doll or choose from a large collection of celebrity dolls which can then be dressed up in virtual fashions. Every celebrity doll has a wardrobe full of unique clothes and outfits, with new celebrity dolls and outfits released weekly.
Each user is given a page from where they can share the dolls they have created, accompanied with a guest book, diary (blog), friend connections and album.
Most users are girls between the age of 10 to 17 and online safety immediately becomes a consideration. Stardoll adds a layer of anonymity to all accounts. Users can never reveal personal information such as their real name or city of origin on their pages.
Joining the site for the first time, you start with 25 star dollars that can be used to buy accessories for each virtual doll. Accessories range from 1 - 35 star dollars with users able to buy additional star dollars at the rate of 10 star dollars to $1.
They currently sell between 60,000 to 180,000 items per day.
In the background is a team that has grown to 40 people based in Stockholm, with a Los Angeles office on its way. Matt Palmer, former EVP of Marketing for Disney’s Kids Network has been hired to lead the North American push.
Stardoll has 7,144,735 members and is adding 20,000 new members a day, with 5.5 million unique visitors per month.
With its European heritage, languages supported include French, Italian, Spanish, Hungarian and Polish, with a dedicated German .de version recently being launched. 30% of traffic comes from the United States vs. 50-52% from the European Union.
As a destination this won’t appeal to all readers, men in particular working in tech fields, however the numbers speak volumes for their growing success amongst their target demographic. With Sequoia amongst its investors it doesn’t take rocket science to work out that the site looks like a winner.
There’s a positive message as well.
Chasing funding and trying to be the next best thing in Web 2.0 can be hard at times, and even a little depressing. Stardoll shows us that from little things, big things can grow.
Duncan,
This is one of the best pieces on Tech Crunch in a while. It’s a throwback to the original essence of Mike’s vision with TechCrunch: Cover great companies with even greater entrepreneurs who are overcoming odds with innovation and hard work. Stardoll isn’t my cup of tea (lol obviously), but ill suggest it to whoever it may apply to. Who would you see as a potentially acquiring StarDoll? Viacom? Disney?
-JLB
You need to change the link to stardoll the current link takes you to a landing page with adult links
Perhaps it’s meant to do that?
Duncan,
Excellent article here. Makes me smile. A real business that makes money. Sweet!
Stardoll’s biggest demographic is tween girls. I must say, from my experience using the site, that the place just needs to be cleaned up a little. Lots of spamming, not a very good time using it.
10 mil is a lot of play money
Great business model taking money off Children
Easy money eh like with ringtones..
A copy of the second life model;
Creating false economy; rename is “virtual ecomony” and then build a bridge to link it to the real economy.
on second life you buy land you cant touch; here you build dolls you cant touch…
-RB
Who here plays with dolls? Raise your hand.
Very cute!
–
We Will Create Your Very Own Domain Name - http://PowerNamer.com
Bit of a public rant here, but am I the only female annoyed by the screenshot alone? How traditional is that? Model games? Be a celebrity? Paper dolls have changed…
Lelia, I see that there’s a tab on the site for shopping. Shouldn’t there be a tab for videos that contains snippets of romantic comedies?
That Zwinky TV commercial is absolutely horrible. Why in the world am I seeing that at like 11:45pm when I’m watching Conan on NBC? I really doubt their target market is a bunch of twenty something guys who think Conan’s retarded brand of humor is the epitome of television (I include myself in that group, btw).
What is so amazing is that a simple site, started by a hobbyist, can take off and have a life all of its own. This proves that a website which is passionately developed can morph in time. I bet Liisa had no intention of creating a site that mushroomed as it has.
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmzuuuuuuuuuuuuuuughvfkiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
Ed: indeed! Perhaps it should have how-tos on dishwashing and taking care of babies!
hey its THE REOL VANESSA anne hudgens i fond stardoll.com and they made a doll of me cool thank you bye
como say what?
Hae can you like tell me Vanessa Hudgens email, i would love to get to know here through stardoll.com……………………….. you web site is the best i have seen in a while, keep doing what you are doing and you will impress all the people in the world!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Rock On yol!!!
P.s you can put this on your web site if you want………mwah chow for now
its actualy the correct plave 4 a perv to go nd chat up lilns s add just stay away!!
its a bit like a chat-up girls line…
Tanya-X
hi diana what are you doing!
bonjour
hey every1 stardoll is the coolest webite stardoll is the same as real live really full with fun and excitment my name on there is xx-Danielle i love stardoll it’s out stardoll world lol x
ridiculo como sua casa