Wrapp Mobile Social Gifting Service Coming to Poland

Lukasz Wejchert Partners with Wrapp as Inventors of New App For Giving Facebook Friends Free Gift Cards From Top Retailers Open Offices, Appoint Country Manager

WARSAW – May 23, 2012 – Wrapp, the new social gifting app that lets you give your Facebook friends free gift cards to top national, multinational, and regional retailers, has opened offices here in preparation for introducing the Wrapp service in Poland.

Polish businessman and online media entrepreneur Lukasz Wejchert has agreed to partner with Wrapp as it starts engaging and integrating with Poland’s best merchants.

Marketing industry executive Thomas Krotkiewski has been appointed Wrapp’s country manager,

Wrapp makes it fun and easy to give, receive and redeem gift cards using mobile devices or the Web, and allows Facebook friends to contribute to the presents.

For merchants, Wrapp is a proven, discount-free marketing platform for conducting performance-based customer acquisition and retention campaigns. With Wrapp, retailers use friend-to-friend marketing to drive highly targeted in-store and on-line sales, and have real-time access to aggregated campaign and customer demographic data.

“I have known and worked with Lukasz for the last six years and would not make a move in the Polish market without his advice and guidance,” said Hjalmar Winbladh, Wrapp co-founder and CEO.

Wejchert, long time CEO of Onet.pl, recently left Poland’s largest online media group to develop his new venture Dirlango, which focuses on technology and mobile driven projects. “I am delighted to work with Hjalmar on Wrapp, which has a nice complimentary fit with other Dirlango products” said Wejchert.

“Wrapp has just introduced its social gifting service in the U.S. with 15 merchants, including some the world’s biggest brands, such as H&M, Gap and Sephora – and now we’re getting ready to do the same in Poland,” said Krotkiewski, entrepreneur and founder of integrated communications agency Spook.se, and former director for Grey Worldwide Warszawa.

Wrapp began its unique brand of social gifting in Sweden in November last year. In January this year it received $10.5 million in Series A funding from Atomico and Greylock Partners resulting in Skype founder Niklas Zennström and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman joining Wrapp’s board of directors. In March Wrapp took its service to Norway and the U.K., and last week introduced its service in the U.S.

During the last five months nearly 250,000 active Wrapp users have given their Facebook friends over 1.7 million free gift cards that could be redeemed in stores operated by some 70 major U.S. and European retailers.

Participating merchants report that the average purchase generated by Wrapp is at least four to six times the value of the free gift card the retailer provides for friends to give to one another.

In addition to Poland, Wrapp will soon be available in the Germany, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Finland, Taiwan, Japan, Australia, Turkey and Brazil.

In the meantime, to start sending free gift cards to friends and family living in the U.S., U.K., Norway or Sweden – or who are planning to visit there soon – download the Wrapp mobile app from Apple’s App Store, Google Play, or use the web app at www.wrapp.com, and connect it to your Facebook account.

Wrapp was started last year by Winbladh and a small team of Sweden’s best and brightest entrepreneurs, including Andreas Ehn, Spotify’s first chief technology officer; Magnus Hult, who played a key role in building Spotify’s original technology and platform; Aage Reerslev, founder of mobile browser maker Squace; Leo Giertz, founder of Barefoot Hackers, one of Sweden’s most acclaimed iPhone development shops; Carl Fritjofsson, strategy advisor to Groupon.se; and Fabian Mansson, former CEO of H&M and Eddie Bauer, who now serves as Wrapp’s chairman.

Winbladh co-founded Sendit, the first mobile Internet company, where he served as CEO, and took it public in 1997, before being acquired by Microsoft. In 2006 Winbladh co-founded Rebtel, now the world's largest independent mobile VoIP company, where he continues as chairman.