Corporate Backgrounder
The idea.
Andy Chen and Robert Chea founded PowerReviews in 2005 to create the operating system for consumer product reviews. Their vision is to make consumer product reviews accessible to retailers and brands of all sizes. In 1996, they launched industry leading online sporting-goods retailer Fogdog.com. Since then, they've worked with over 50 major brands including Palm®, Linens 'n Things® and Kmart™, and served in senior management roles at companies including GSI Commerce and Yahoo!® Shopping. With this deep experience across all facets of online retail, they know how retailers, brands and consumers think. And, together with the other founding team-members, Jim Morris and Gautam Prabhu, PowerReviews has set out to help its clients harness the incredible power the consumer product review.
Free of risk.
PowerReviews provides brands and retailers with a complete solution for consumer product reviews - fully managed, white-label and free of risk - by offering a performance-based payment option. Retailers can choose the performance-payment model by sharing their reviews (but not giving up ownership!) on Buzzillions.com, an award-winning research portal that PowerReviews operates. Retailers pay for qualified leads from Buzzillions.com through their existing CPA/Affiliate programs instead of paying a traditional enterprise subscription fee for the review service.
Free of worry.
Because most retailers don't have experts in Internet copyright law, PowerReviews' offers optional co-branding. Co-branding minimizes the retailer's exposure to defamation, copyright and other liability associated with reviews. Co-branding also means that the consumer is subject to the PowerReviews terms of use, not the retailer's. As an added benefit, the retailer doesn't need to adjust its own policies. This feature is optional.
Free of hassle.
PowerReviews' unique two-level moderation gives retailers peace of mind while letting them maintain full control of their site content. PowerReviews handles first level moderation via automated screening tools and human verification. The second level of moderation keeps retailers in control by allowing them to approve reviews before they are published, or by allowing retailers to moderate by exception.
Retailers also save on legal fees because there are no extended contracts. PowerReviews assumes all the risk and executes straightforward contracts with no long-term commitments.
Patent-pending technology.
PowerReviews developed patent-pending implementation and customer-facing technologies in order to deliver this service free to retailers while providing enterprise-quality functionality and reliability. These technologies include: PowerReviews Asymmetrical ASPSM - providing the ease of ASP integration without the risk and expense of a traditional ASP; Review SnapshotSM - solving the 'too much information' problem by allowing consumers to see pertinent information at a glance; and PowerTagsSM - efficiently and effectively capturing relevant information from reviews and allowing this information to be automatically tabulated.
No more dead-end reviews.
What do retailers and brands do with the reviews once they have them? The PowerReviews team has spent a lot of time making sure that reviews are a starting point, not a dead-end. What makes reviews so valuable is the right kind of reporting. With PowerReviews, there's no reliance on expensive and subjective human analysts. PowerTags technology makes it easier for consumers to write reviews and provide valuable information in a tabulated way. Review Snapshots use that information to summarize key points of the reviews and helps consumers quickly and easily make purchasing decisions. Brands and retailers receive fully automated and highly accurate reports that they can now use as the foundation for strong merchandising and product development strategies.
PowerReviews is a privately held company with $6.25 million in Series A funding from leading Silicon Valley venture capital firms Menlo Ventures and Draper Richards.