Did you see that gap in the market? Oh wait, it’s gone
It’s one thing finding a gap in the market and launching a new business model around it.
But when more than one person then identifies that same gap, it can very rapidly go from being an untapped goldmine, to risky business.
Mumbrella recently wrote about the launch of Scoop of the Day, the site that offers Sydneysiders a discounted offer on anything from restaurants to spa treatments available only for 24 hours.
Its founder has modelled this business on the very successful US website Groupon. The problem is however, is he’s not alone.
I absolutely love the idea behind these sites (and am signed-up to most of them), but have to agree – there is no way they can all survive in our smallish market.
Woot was the originator of this concept, it started in ’04 (four years before Groupon).
There is an Australian version of Woot, Zazz, which is still going. Although personally I think it’s a bit rubbish compared to Woot – but then Woot has 10x the volume of potential buyers, so..
Oh, and I think the sudden popularity might have something to do with the $US 135 million Groupon got from Digital Sky Technologies last month..
Someone should launch a site that offers the best offer from the sites that all offer an offer a day.
Be OK if the last Scoop wasn’t back on April 19 – is it still operating? No Twitter updates either.
@Chris: Hilarious idea. Love it.
Try http://au.dealsucker.com/ – it does aggregate some of the one-day sale sites
The whole game is about traffic and eyeballs to the site. Catchoftheday the parent company of scoopon.com.au is The country’s most visited online shopping site currently with over 400,000 members. It is quite obvious the it’s sister site scoopon, has a big jump on the market already. You will notice that some of the names mentioned on top are already struggling. In every niche there is a market leader that does exceptionally well, while the others may do ok. wotif,realestate,seek,carsales,catchoftheday,dealsdirect are the winners currently in their respective categories.
The winner will emerge soon: 1. The one with the most consistent supply of great deals 2. Traffic : You can put the best deal on the site, but if you don’t have the eyeballs that see the deal – not many will be sold !
Overall : competition is great for everyone, it brings more participants to the space and the strong will survive.
And another aggregator site has just started up called All the deals. They’re going to have their work cut out keeping up with all the new sites that are launching!!
Not sure there’s a viable gap in the market for these things … Not sure they’re worth doing to begin with.
It’s like those crappy city guides popping up all over au … Just because no one is doing something online doesn’t mean you should do it half arsed.
I saw a market in the gap, but I didn’t mind the gap and fell into the cracks that are so wide in these copycat business models…
If we all stopped buying stuff so fast perhaps they’d stop starting businesses oriented around selling us stuff faster!
If you get my drift
storyofstuff.com