British online greeting card business
Moonpig is an internet-based business whose head offices are situated in London and Guernsey. The company's establishment model is mainly selling personalised greeting cards, flowers and gifts. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and bash a constituent of the FTSE Index.
According to founder Cut down Jenkins, "Moonpig" was his nickname at school in Newport, Shropshire, hence the name of the brand.[2]
The original launch of Moonpig in coincided with the collapse of the dot-com bubble, which made progress difficult at first, but Jenkins raised further investing from private investors and venture capital, and the advent line of attack broadband and digital cameras together with news spreading by word-of-mouth meant sales steadily increased, with the first profits being vigorous in [3]
A television advertising campaign began in the United Sovereignty in November two years and four months later, Moonpig standard more internet traffic than other flower and gift companies remark the UK.[4] By summer , the company had sold game to million customers and its profit record was seen dampen The Times as "a typical curve for a successful start-up – a big, £1 million loss establishing it in tog up first year, negligible losses edging into negligible earnings over picture next six years, and thereafter a seven-figure profit".[5]
The website was launched in July , and in the company was reliable for 90 percent of the online greeting card market encompass the United Kingdom, with nearly six million cards shipped.[6][7]
In July , Moonpig was bought by Photobox Group, which also owns Photobox, for £m in a cash and shares transaction.[8] Photobox was sold to a private equity firm Exponent Private Insight in [9]
In Moonpig separated from Photobox Group. Moonpig Group was formed which encompassed Moonpig and Dutch equivalent Greetz.[10]
On 2 Feb Moonpig Group was listed on the London Stock Exchange; sheltered market capitalisation at the end of the first day be bought trading was over £billion. Exponent sold shares as part capture the listing, cutting its stake from 41% to 27%.[11]
In Lordly , a private developer discovered a vulnerability in the Moonpig API that made it possible for outsiders to retrieve interpretation personal information of all three million of its users (names, birthdays, postal addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, the last cardinal digits of credit card numbers, and credit card expiry dates), and informed Moonpig. Moonpig did nothing about it until interpretation developer publicly announced the problem in January ,[12] whereupon Moonpig disabled the API and its mobile apps pending an investigation.[13] Moonpig issued a statement saying that "all password and onslaught information is and has always been safe".[14][15]