Australian online retailer Catch of the Day will launch a sister site on Monday with the same one-sale-a-day concept, but will substitute consumer goods for services and experiences.
The new site, called Scoopon.com.au, will begin offering deals and discounts for locations in Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney with founders Gabby and Hezi Leibovich expecting a launch in every major city soon after.
It comes as the pair are attempting to extend their online offering, with a Catch of the Day site currently underway in New Zealand. But Gabby says the new site will take a different approach.
“It’s a similar concept, but we will be adopting it to services and experience. So restaurants, bungee jumping, hotels, the list goes on. The deals will start at midday, and then it will go from there.”
Leibovich says he has been able to push the site to his existing users, which he hopes will spread word throughout the internet. Additionally, an iPhone app is set to launch with the site which Gabby hopes will gain some publicity.
“We have 400,000 addicted members who love our site, and we can gain some advertisement in a very short period. All we had to do was announce to our members that we were launching a new site, and then everything works from there.”
“But the great thing is, we can get those members to ask others to come along. A deal will only go on the market if enough people buy it. So if we have 1,000 tickets to the Melbourne Zoo, for instance, those discounted tickets will only be available if every 1,000 is sold. It creates a viral offering then.”
Catch of the Day, which is listed in SmartCompany’s list of Australia’s top 10 online retailers, currently brings in $60 million of revenue per year, but Gabby says the new offering could surpass that with time.
Additionally, he says he will constantly be able to gain new suppliers by offering them exposure to his database of over 400,000 customers. While the supplier reaches out with a discount, Leibovich says they will be rewarded over time.
“We go to somewhere and say, we’d like to give you access to this database. It costs them zero, and all they have to do is give our members a great offer. I think restauranteurs, for example, would jump at the opportunity and get lots of people through door. It’s a winning formula.”
“We truly think that Catch of the Day will be given a run for its money. It’s a very big statement to make pre-launch, but I believe the concept is truly unbelievable, and we do think we’ll be able to get people spending their money.”
Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
