San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) November 21, 2013
Locality (formerly Centzy), provider of the most useful, comprehensive search experience for local services, today announced its expansion into more than 10,000 U.S. cities. The company connects millions of consumers with the right local merchants for their needs. Whether it’s finding a stylist who can give great highlights before a big date or identifying the best spa nearby within a consumer’s budget, over 1.5 million people use Locality one or more times each month. Unlike other local search services that provide basic business listings and user reviews, Locality specializes in data that comes directly from merchants, such as their menu of services, pricing, and business hours, generating the most complete results available online covering 60 services in 15 categories.
As Locality continues to aggressively broaden its reach, the company announced that it has raised $ 4.3 million in Series A funding. Matrix Partners led the round and general partner Jared Fliesler has joined the company’s board of directors. Locality will use the funds to build out its platform in an ambitious effort to cover every service at every local business nationwide and develop new ways for consumers to easily connect to local merchants.
Locality’s vision is to build the most comprehensive marketplace for consumers to find, compare, and select local services. With Locality, local merchants are “always open” to answer the most commonly asked questions about their businesses. Locality aims to help merchants extend their reach and build a larger audience of high-intention consumers. Over time, Locality will make it even easier to search and discover new products and services, connecting potential customers with merchants and closing the loop on their purchases.
No One Covers Local Like Locality
Locality takes a radically different approach to local search. It is the only platform to provide a deep and normalized look at entire service categories within a searchable metro. 90% of Locality’s pricing, available services, and hours data is not available anywhere else online. For example, in a recent random sampling of 700 nail salons across the nation, Locality provided operating hours data for twice the number of nail salons as Google.
Locality’s proprietary data collection system ensures that all merchants within a defined area are included in searches and that all listings remain current. The company provides actionable information to millions of potential customers with strong purchase intent — people searching for specific services as part of their daily lives. For example, it’s 7pm and Bob is just finishing his workday. His regular cleaners closed at 5pm, but he really needs to find a next-day wash and fold. Bob can easily search on Locality for a quality, affordable dry cleaner nearby that offers this specific service and is still open. Locality gives consumers the best insight into all of their options.
“Locality does for local services what Kayak does for air travel. We show consumers every service that’s available around them in a way that makes it easy to find the right one for them,” said Jay Shek, co-founder and CEO of Locality. “Whether it’s finding the best yoga class in a new city or searching for a spontaneous mani-pedi near the office, Locality connects consumers to services for everyday life, giving them the power to find services wherever they are, whenever they need information.”
Act Locally, Grow Organically
Locality’s user base is growing rapidly and organically as consumers discover its value. Since its public launch last year, Locality traffic has grown over 10x as consumers use it in big cities and small towns all over the U.S. In fact, 75% of Locality’s traffic comes from outside the nation’s top 10 cities.
“Locality changes expectations of what local search can provide,” said Mr. Fliesler, Matrix general partner and former Square, Google and Slide executive. “Despite the number of companies competing in the local market, no one can do what Locality does and offer consumers this level of detail in local search. The unique and extensible data collection system that the team built allows Locality to scale and enter new markets at an unprecedented rate, and I can’t wait to help Jay and his team design incredible product offerings on that platform.”
“We are fortunate to receive such strong support from Matrix as a firm and from Jared in particular. Jared has great insight into how to build and market successful products in the local space from his time at Square,” added Mr. Shek. “His outstanding, relevant experience makes him the perfect fit to help us turn Locality into the ultimate local marketplace for consumers and merchants.”
To help accelerate growth, Locality is moving its headquarters to San Francisco. The company will maintain a satellite office in New York.
To find out how to join the Locality team in San Francisco or New York, please visit http://www.locality.com/team. To find the right local services for you, go to http://www.locality.com.
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About Locality
Founded in 2011, Locality has developed the industry’s most comprehensive local search experience, covering 60 different services available in more than 10,000 cities. Locality’s proprietary data collection system helps consumers find the information they seek to connect with merchants that best meet their needs. The company is funded by Matrix Partners, Lightbank, ffVC, Cowboy Ventures, and Founder Collective. It is based in San Francisco with offices in New York. To learn more, please visit http://www.locality.com.
About Matrix Partners
Matrix Partners is a premier venture capital firm that has generated outstanding returns for more than three decades. By focusing on early-stage investments and emphasizing long-term relationships with entrepreneurs, the firm has delivered several of the industry’s top performing funds of all time. Matrix Partners has offices in Cambridge, MA; Palo Alto, CA; Mumbai, India; and Beijing and Shanghai, China. Matrix Partners has invested in several game-changing, industry-leading businesses such as Apple Computer, Care.com, Gilt Groupe, HubSpot, JBoss, Netezza, Phone.com, Polyvore, Starent Networks, Sycamore Networks, Veritas, Zendesk, and Zong.
