Rue La La Sees Staff Cut Backs – Plans to Outsource Sales Force
Here we are less than two weeks into the New Year and the daily deals industry continues to show signs that 2012 may be the year that we see many deal providers throwing in the towel or at least making some significant cutbacks. The Boston Globe reports that Rue La La, a members-only flash sales site that launched in 2008, laid off 65 of its 550 employees on Thursday and will be outsourcing its sales force with an as yet unnamed company.
Rue La La’s parent company, Retail Convergence Inc will also be closing down another site, SmartBargains and merging it into Rue La La.
The Globe goes on to say, “Rue La La had been a drag on the earnings of its previous parent company, GSI Commerce, a division of eBay Inc. GSI bought Rue La La in 2009 in a deal valued at $350 million but in 2011 spun off Rue La La as a private company, with eBay retaining 30 percent ownership.”
Rue La La remains optimistic and in a statement said it has seen ‘‘dramatic growth with nearly $300 million in sales in 2011 and similar growth planned for 2012 and beyond.’’
Daily Deal Media reported on Rue La La last May when it was preparing to launch its daily deal site, Rue Local. At that time Mark McWeeny, Rue Local president said, “Our customers are very different from the coupon-clipping customer that frequents Groupon. They spend more than the average ticket, tell all their friends and they come back.”
It seems like something in that statement didn’t work out quite right.
Source: The Boston Globe
Travel Site, Group-Buying Escapes, Prospers with Group Buying
Group Buying Escapes, travel sector of leading Australia’s leisure coupon company, RewardsCorp Group, is taking travel deals to new heights by combining solid alliances with major, international deal sites and utilizing consumer market knowledge obtained though their big brother company.
The Group recently reported a staggering 24% of its market revenue is strictly the result of travel deals. Furthermore, the travel sector did a complete 180 turnaround in only three short months, from June to September, and transformed from the smallest to largest company sector raking in $158.5 million from $123.9 million. Now five months in, Group Buying Escapes had sold up to 53,000 room nights and about 10,000 travel vouchers.
RewardsCorp Group Director, Randall Deer, sites the Village Coconut Island Deal as their light bulb point moment when the power of Group Buying became evident. By promoting the resort for five days, 998 vouchers were sold, filling The Village Coconut Island up to 7,984 room night bookings.
“Travel is a specialist market but through our wealth of industry experience we are able to consistently orchestrate attractive, packaged deals to sought-after international and domestic destinations which are helping drive this exciting, new business for our partners.” – Randall Deer, Director, RewardsCorp Group
Group Buying Escapes currently works with major players, most notability, Groupon, Your Travel Deal, Living Social Escapes, Escapes Guru, Scoopon, The Travel Scoop, Spreets and Wow Stays. To Randall Deer, these major partnerships as a key to the company’s success:
“Our innovative business model is simple but successful, … Targeting the movement of low shoulder and low yield inventory, Group Buying Escapes’ marketing partnership with the major sites (Groupon, Scoopon, Living Social and Spreets) delivers pre-paid quality bookings to maximize resorts’ revenue while delivering a highly efficient, credible and manageable reservations platform without risk of oversell.” – Randall Deer, Director, RewardsCorp Group
Source: ETravelBlackBoard
