The EW Scripps Company, under the name United Media, owns the worldwide copyrights to a number of comics including Peanuts. Peanuts is responsible for 95% of Scripps’ licensing revenue.

Snoopy.com is the official home of the Peanuts gang. It’s a great site with tons of content which can keep kids of all ages busy for hours. However, the SnoopyStore leaves a lot to be desired as it’s just a partnership with CafePress. Yes, CafePress allows you to customize a lot of apparel (and a few other tchotchies) with Snoopy or Woodstock, but there are thousands more Peanuts products which should be available through the SnoopyStore. How do I know? Check out these search results for ‘Snoopy’ on Shopzilla. I count over 100 categories of products well beyond shirts, hats, and mugs.

Shopzilla prides itself on being a technology company. In 2006 and beyond, this technology focus becomes even more important as all of the shopping search engines need to crawl the web to build more comprehensive and relevant databases of products and then figure out how to automatically categorize products and normalize product pages.

However, I still want an expert’s advice. This expert might be a hired gun creating original content like Ice.com produces with Sparkle Like The Stars. This expert might be a friend or a random group of passionate people - and there are a number emerging social commerce models. Yahoo’s Shoposphere is just one example. This expert might be an editor like Shannon McCarthy or Peyton Mays over at MSN Shopping who can recommend the latest spring styles or holiday gift ideas. There’s also a place for a less human touch that feels a bit human. Examples of this would be PriceGrabber ranking products by popularity or ChoiceStream figuring out my preferences through personalization. Some of these experts aren’t scalable, but all are important and will play a role in helping consumers figure out what to buy.

Which brings me back to Shopzilla and Peanuts. Shopzilla should power the SnoopyStore on Snoopy.com. That’s a no brainer. What I would LOVE to see, though, is a real Peanuts aficianado bring life to the huge selection of Peanuts products on Shopzilla. This list of 100 Snoopy categories doesn’t have the character I’d expect from a comic which inspired indelible Jazz pieces like Cast Your Fate to the Wind and Lucy and Linus (listen to previews) or a beagle who is a “virtuoso at every endeavor- at least in his daydreams atop his doghouse.” This Peanuts expert would bring the human touch to a comic which deserves nothing less.

Moving beyond my creative bizdev/marketing dream come true, doesn’t this just make simple economic sense for Scripps? Yes, Shopzilla still has to be very very efficient at monetizing clicks, but the Peanut’s expert can help consumers figure out what to buy and therefore increase conversion rate…a metric all merchants and all shopping search engines are trying to optimize. From a higher level perspective, Scripps benefits by selling more Peanuts licensed products, and I don’t think the company would have a problem pushing a limited edition, high end Snoopy watch from Fossil over a Snoopy mug from CafePress.

Related Scripps News:
Wall Street Wrong about Scripps (SSP) - March 20, 2006
Comments on the uSwitch Acquisition - March 20, 2006
Another Stellar Quarter for Shopzilla - February 2, 2006
Shopzilla - A Sharp Focus on Techology - November 21, 2005

–
Learn more about Shopping Search. Subscribe to the Feed.