NHDailyDeal.com Sets Benchmarks for Regional Daily Deals Sites
Launched about a year ago, NHDailyDeal.com has been providing highly-discounted daily deals in the New Hampshire region. However, the amount of savings passed on to customers via NHDailyDeal.com has just been realized.
Total savings passed on to customers amounts to nearly $125,000 since November 2010. This figure is a considerable feat since the site is committed to serving primarily residents in and around the Granite State of New Hampshire only.
During this period, the site has sold nearly 6,000 deals and more importantly, the site has earned the reputation of being true to its commitment of providing the maximum possible discounts to its local community.
Using the collective buying format found across most daily deals sites, NHDailyDeal ensures that one or more irresistible daily deal offers are presented each day. Participating merchants include local event organizers, restaurants and retailers.
NHDailyDeal promotes participation from friends and family, underlining its unique community appeal. The site’s increasing popularity is also visible on its crowded Facebook page. People can stay updated about NHDailyDeal deals via Facebook as well as present their suggestions or get their queries about daily deals answered. Members can check NHDailyDeal daily deal alerts on their emails too.
Source: NH.com
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
China’s Daily Deal Industry Continues to Struggle
Earlier this fall, we began hearing news that China’s daily deals and group buying sites were in trouble. The industry suffered from overcrowding with a reported 5000 to 5700 sites this past June. Within just a few months over 700 of these sites had closed causing massive layoffs. Many companies that have remained in business have cut staff by as much as 70 percent.
Now according to The Financial Times LTD, many merchants are finding it difficult to collect money owed to them, in many cases, what amounts to thousands of dollars, due to collapse of many of the smaller sites.
Signs of trouble became evident when Groupon China’s Gaopeng laid off massive numbers of workers without notice, simply locking them out when they tried to return to work after a lunch break.
The latest numbers are showing that as of October, more than 1000 sites have closed, leaving just over 4000 sites in operation. As the industry struggles, the larger sites have become more aggressive in advertising and expansion of their sales teams beyond the larger cities, essentially squeezing the smaller sites out of business.
Indications that the daily deals and group buying industry may be facing serious problems are not exclusive to China. In October BuyWithMe, one of the top daily deals sites in the U.S. unexpectedly laid off a large part of its staff and sold out to Gilt Group. This past July alone, 38 daily deals sites closed and by September a total of 170 sites had vanished in 2011.
While these closings may not signal an end to the daily deals industry, they may be an indication that the craze merchants and consumers once had is cooling.
Source: The Financial Times LTD, TIME.com
E-Commerce Start-ups for Holiday Shoppers: GiftSimple, Presentify.me & BarkBox
Digital shopping is in full swing this holiday season and start-ups are taking notice and advantage of this trend. Three innovative gift buying start-ups to take note of this season have arrived just in time for online shoppers. Presenting GiftSimple, Presentify.me and BarkBox:
GiftSimple stands by its name in providing an easy way for customers to get the gifts they really want through social media. The company, launched last week, is essentially a social gift registry, suitable for any occasion. Users create their own want list of gift ideas they would like and post it to Facebook for friends to see. The genius part of the model, is it allows friends to pay partial amounts towards a gift until the full amount is reached. In this way, users can get those expensive gifts they truly want, but my not feel comfortable asking for due to a high price. If a gift is not paid for in full, the recipient may “cash out” and collect the money that was raised – A win-win for everyone. Giftsimple collects a standard 3% fee on the total amount raised towards each gift.
“Many people find it difficult to save up for a large-ticket item, and receiving contributions toward that purchase would really help; but organizing a group gift offline can be hassle. At the same time, we all get presents we don’t want.”- Jessica Lachs, founder, GiftSimple
You can find the GiftSimple Facebook app directly on Facebook
Presentify.me works with major deal sites such as Groupon and GiltCity to make deal vouchers that are specially customized in the form of gift certificates. Uniquely, the company is inadvertently, taking the social stigma out of giving deal vouchers as gifts – An elephant in the room topic that has been circling the e-commerce and daily deal industry for months. The aim of Presentify.me is to make discounted vouchers as desirable and acceptable as any other regular gift certificate given as a gift. Users may choose from six different voucher design which they prefer to suit the gift giving occasion and are only constricted to a small mention of the deal company the voucher came from. Currently, the site works with Tippr, Groupon, Deal-find and GifltCity, with more to come in future months.
BarkBox, is a full service monthly subscription service like many others, except it is strictly for, you guessed it, Dogs. Weather the gift will be given to the owner or actual pet, this subscription service is the one-stop-shop for dog presents. Users may choose from various monthly services such as bones, shampoos, and other treats for a small monthly fee of $25 per month. The genius of the company, like many others recently, is the fact it takes a niche within the deal industry and focuses on it. If you have a friend that puts a stocking up for their canine companion, BarkBox is a must for your online holiday shopping destinations this season.
Source: Mashable
Daily Deals News Bites for November 27-December 3 2011
Singapore’s Sprooki, a location-based app, says it will make it easy for consumers to find local deals, make purchases via their mobile device such as iPhone or iPad and then redeem the deal without the need to print out a voucher. The app was designed with malls and retailers in mind, allowing them to promote offers to shoppers in the near vicinity.
Sprooki users can follow their favorite merchants and receive special offers. This provides the merchant with the added opportunity to gain repeat customers and build brand loyalty.
According to Terence LEE from SGEntrepreneurs, there are those that think shopping centers have fallen by the wayside when it comes to ecommerce, but he said this is far from the truth.
“…I like how this company has not forgotten the fact that malls still hold much sway in the Singapore retail industry. Sprooki is smart to leverage on them to promote their own app, while at the same time offering malls a tool to promote their brand alongside the merchants under them.”
You can learn more about Sprooki by visiting the site at www.sprooki.com. – SGEntrepreneurs
Koobflog.com, a site described as a social network for golfers says it has added an online store just for golf gear and accessories. The store is divided into categories to make it easy for shoppers to find exactly what they’re looking for, such as accessories, gloves, balls, bags, clubs and even training aids.
With the holiday shopping season in full gear, you may be wondering what to get that special golfer in your life. Koobflob may have the answer.
“Finding the right gift around the holidays can be difficult, but there is an easy solution for the golfer on your gift list,” said Anthony Westrup, Koobflog co-founder.
Koobflab also provides a place for users to connect with other players through their forum, research information on golf courses and book tee times with on-line Tee Time reservations to over 3000 courses in partnership with GolfNow’s booking engine (over 4 million tee times booked!).
“In our on-going commitment to providing the most comprehensive golf site on the internet, offering a shopping venue is a logical value added choice for our community,” said Westrup.
You can find the Koobflog online store by going to the main site and clicking on the Golf Store link. – PRWeb
Frugalo, yet another mobile app looking to help consumers sort through the confusion of managing their daily deal vouchers, launched this past week. The app links to users Facebook friends allowing them to share deals, get alerts when a Facebook friend makes a purchase and lets users get together to take advantage of special promotions.
The app connects with Gmail accounts and imports all users’ purchases from major deal providers such as Groupon, LivingSocial, kgbdeals, GiltCity, Bloomspot, and BlackboardEats.
Founded by two former Digg employees, Michael Cieri and Scott Reynolds, earlier this year Frugalo is backed by funding from AngelPad, a mentorship program founded by a team of ex-Googlers.
To find out more about Frugalo, you can check out the site at www.frugalo.com – Social Barrel
