Motricity has landed a mobile marketing deal with beauty brand Garnier International.
Garnier will use Motricity’s mCore platform to power its new mobile website. The technology allows Garnier to send its customers coupons and beauty advice tailored to their individual preferences.
Financial terms of the deal were not announced.
The campaign is aimed at increasing loyalty to Garnier products, as well as expanding the brand’s presence in the mobile space. The company’s new mobile website will be available worldwide and will cover the 23 countries where Garnier currently sells its products.
Company CEO Ryan Wuerch says Motricity is working to close similar deals with other retail brands.
“We’re working right now with some of the largest brands in the world that want to create a higher yield associated with their mobile websites,” Wuerch says. “There are more brands that we’ll be announcing very shortly on the back of the Garnier announcement.”
Motricity has had some ups and downs since it went public last June. The company gleaned less money than it had hoped from its initial public offering, raising just $50 million, but then saw its stock rise to $31.95 on the Nasdaq in November of last year.
However, the high didn’t last. Since their peak, Motiricity’s shares have been on a steady decline, plunging to just $6.55 per share earlier this month. The company’s stock is currently trading at about $7.60, less than a quarter of the shares’ value last fall.
“We don’t focus on stock price. We focus on the performance of the company,” Wuerch says.
Motricity has made some gains in revenue, which rose to $32 million in the first quarter of this year, but has struggled to post a profit. Motricity’s losses widened to $6.1 million in the first quarter of this year, from a loss of just $1.5 million during the same period last year, due to expenses related to its acquisition of mobile marketing company Adenyo.
Wuerch says Motricity’s purchase of Adenyo has made the company more competitive.
“The Adenyo acquisition and the scale of the Motorcity brand is giving us a lot of strings when brands are looking for relationships,” Wuerch says.
