Here’s an interesting one: a new startup aims to help retailers replace traditional promotions and incentives such as coupons and discounts with virtual goods and virtual currencies for a wide range of social games and networks. The American/French company, dubbed Ifeelgoods, is launching today. Ifeelgoods was formed by e-commerce entrepreneur Michael Amar, former Shop.org Executive Director Scott Silverman and alumni from Google, DAOODA and PayPal. The company is backed by multiple investment firms such as Tugboat Ventures, Quest Venture Partners and Kima Ventures alongside a couple of angel investors like Adbrite CEO Iggy Fanlo, Vincent Worms and Nicolas El Baze (of investment firm Partech International) and David Scacco of MyLikes. Ifeelsgoods’ goal is to make online retail promotions more effective and less expensive by using relevant virtual goods and currencies from the most popular social games in lieu of traditional promotions such as discounts, coupon codes or gifts with purchase. It comes in the form of a hosted solution that lets retailers manage their own virtual goods promotion offers, redemption and related customer services. “In retail, incentives and promotions are critical sales tools but they are one-size-fits-all and can be very expensive,” says Michael Amar, Ifeelgoods CEO and co-founder. “As social networks and social games become even more integral in people’s daily interactions and personal relationships, it’s evident that retailers who learn how to capitalize on these trends will have a powerful advantage over their competition.” Ifeelgoods will partner with (unnamed) publishers of social games to make their virtual goods and virtual currencies available to retailers to offer as incentives to customers. They will in turn benefit from exposure to existing and new players and increased sales of virtual goods and currencies, Ifeelgoods hopes. Executives from Ifeelgoods, aside from Amar and Silverman, include Dimitri Ducourtieux, COO and Vice President of Europe, who previously led major technical projects for top European retailers including Otto Group, Intermarché and Yves Rocher; Suchit Dash, who joins as its Vice President of Product after an extensive career at PayPal; and Vida Ha, who spent five years as a senior software engineer at Google before joining Ifeelgoods as Lead Engineer. The company can also boast an impressive advisory board; it includes people like Iggy Fanlo (CEO of AdBrite), Siva V. Kumar (Co-Founder & CEO of TheFind), David Marcus (CEO of Zong), David Selinger (CEO of RichRelevance) and Meir Zohar (Founder and CEO, eXelate). Ifeelgoods is headquartered in Menlo Park, California and has locations in Washington, DC and Paris, France. 0 0 1 1 2 2 3 3 4 4 5 5 6 6 7 7Authors: Robin Wauters