Hashmeta acquires fashion marketplace ShopperBoard

Digital marketing agency Hashmeta has fully acquired fashion marketplace ShopperBoard, making it a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hashmeta Technology. The agency intends to invest in the R&D of the platform and plans to integrate content generated from its influencer network platform, StarNgage, into ShopperBoard. The ShopperBoard app currently hosts more than 70 local brands in Singapore, including Love Bonito, Ohvola and Neonmello, among others.Founder and CEO Terrence Ngu told Marketing that the bigger players such as Amazon and Alibaba have launched their own influencer programmers. With the acquisition, he said Hashmeta is looking to target SMEs with eCommerce platforms that have yet to be fully involved in influencer marketing.“Plenty of companies do not have a team to run influencer campaigns. Instead of having an ‘always on’ strategy, they only run influencer campaigns ad hoc. On the other hand, the major players are constantly keeping abreast of such trends and have formed a team to focus on this aspect,” he said. As such, Hashmeta decided to integrate StarNgage into ShopperBoard to help the smaller players benefit from this trend.He added that while there are no key personnel changes at ShopperBoard, five Hashmeta employees will be joining ShopperBoard, bringing the combined team strength at the fashion marketplace to nine employees. Currently, there are more than 30 employees in Hashmeta’s Singapore office and over 15 employees regionally, including Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and China.Enhanced influencer content and shop by influencer workflow will be among the top software development priorities for the combined engineering team, according to Hashmeta. As part of the integration process, Hashmeta and ShopperBoard have taken immediate steps to effect the streamlining and optimisation of operations of both organisations.According to Ngu, both teams have worked closely throughout the acquisition process to create the optimal path forward for the Hashmeta Group.“The vision for this transaction is simple: Double-down on things that provide the most value to our customers – technology and service. Looking to the future we believe that, together, we will be a healthier company with a larger and significantly more diversified revenue base,” he added.Co-founder of ShopperBoard, Khur Boon Kgim, said since its launch in 2013, the app has been receiving “millions of monthly page views”. “The active users spend more than 12 minutes per day browsing our app on average. Our users are highly-targeted young & savvy female shoppers aged 18-44 in Singapore who are regular online shoppers,” he said.