New concepts
For instance, there is Gilt.com and One Kings Lane. Gilt group is running daily sales of merchandise that they are aggregating from a variety of designers. One Kings Lane does the same thing with housewares. Really clever. One location for customers to go and find the deal of the day. So far, they are both posting huge numbers. How long that will continue, who knows but the desire for a bargain works in good times and bad.
Then there is another group of blogs that are similar but using different content. Goldstar ( which I recently blogged about ) is posting tickets available at a discounted price, in different cities, on a daily and weekly basis. Another site came my way this past week called Escapeer. Escapeer is pulling together in NYC so far, but I am going to assume other cities are soon to come, where you can search for activities that are available that day such as bike riding, helicopter rides, skiing etc. I'd like to see them eventually list and link to all the classes in different areas of each city from yoga to spin. Someone will probably launch another site for culture happenings from galleries and museums. Maybe, maybe not.
Then there are food sites such as Foodzie and Foodoro that are pulling together all the artisinal products that are sold on the web and creating a market destination.
The web has become such an unruly universe. It isn't surprising to see sites like these pop up. If you like the site, it becomes your destination location for sales, events or activities. All of these websites have in common the ability to create larger audience for the vendors that they are selling. Rolling them up under one roof and creating a unique experience which people can come to daily and discover new things. I am sure I could come up with a bunch of other sites with different products but you get the gist.
The key to the web is making sure that no matter what your product, it is essential to get it in front of the eyeballs that are looking for it. It doesn't have to be your personal companies site. It has to be everywhere so that the user finds it easily and executes on the purchase be it an event or a product, everybody gets to share in the rewards, consumer and provider.
Just an observation.
Comments (Archived):
I think your last paragraph is perfect:”The key to the web is making sure that no matter what your product, it is essential to get it in front of the eyeballs that are looking for it. It doesn’t have to be your personal companies site. It has to be everywhere so that the user finds it easily and executes on the purchase be it an event or a product, everybody gets to share in the rewards, consumer and provider.”But I still have questions around the business model. Sites like Gilt can make money because they’re selling actual stuff. Escapeer’s About page says that “Partners pay Escapeer.com a small fee to use the Escapeer.com platform,” so that’s how they can make money.Now, what about sites that simply aggregate information, sending people to other destination sites? (Outside.in?) My question would be, Can they sustain that on advertising from local businesses?I’m asking because – since Outside.in won’t (yet) come to Canada, and certainly not to my tucked-away neck-of-the-woods on an island off the BC coast – we built something similar for Victoria BC called http://metrocascade.com.As yet, there’s no advertising on MetroCascade, and we’re not yet sure how exactly there’s going to be a business model for it, we’re for sure still tweaking out the UI (and by “we” I mean the 2 guys who are software people – I’m just sort of free-floating around, making suggestions, since I can’t program or build websites in Ruby on Rails!).My impetus in wanting something like this for my city is because so much of what happens here, happens in silos – without connections. And then it’s over before anyone has had much of a chance to learn about it. This frustrates me tremendously (I volunteer in the arts, and have connections to the tech community, too; and I mess around with issues pertaining to urban development – I see into 3 silos that don’t connect, and it makes me crazy.)So the idea with MetroCascade.com was to build a platform that people could go to see/ read all the different voices in this community, see some of the photographers, and learn about events, too. The hope was (is) that eventually some sort of synergy would develop. (To that end, we have a “see” cascade – photos; a “read” cascade – news, blogs; and a “do” cascade for events.)But it’s a slow slog for the time being. Maybe one day, when we get the UI worked out for the “Read” cascade (it’s a firehose right now) and the “Do” cascade (Events) working perfectly, and people really start using it to find out what’s going on here, we’ll get local advertisers on board. I kind of wish we were also selling widgets or an actual commodity, though – then I’d be more sanguine about thinking we had a viable business on our hands… 😉
I was wondering how well gilt.com was doing? I haven’ t found a bargain yet, but I am an excellent shopper. I like goldstar and I thank you for bringing it to my attention.
Supposedly Gilt is doing quite well. I haven’t shopped there but my kidshave.
Very on target seeing another trend early here…I note Bloomberg interview this morning with Michelle Peluso and recalling you mentioning it years ago .., here. Love the ease of the (re) search tools.