August 11th, 2011 : posted in News by M Bryant
Some weeks after reaching a settlement over the Groupon.com.au domain, Stardeals has relaunched on the domain under the confusing banner “Stardeals Groupon Australia“.
You’ve probably heard the Stardeals / Groupon story by now? Two opportunistic Australian brothers snatched up Groupon.com.au as well as the Australian Groupon trademark just months before Groupon began to move into the Australian market.
The brothers, Gabby and Hezi Leibovich, are behind Scoopon and Catch of the Day.
Groupon initially offered them $286,000 for the domain, which they accepted – though they later reneged on [...]
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July 15th, 2011 : posted in Commentary by B Marsh
There’s no doubt that Daily Deals are here to stay, with daily deal providers sprouting up all over the place on an almost daily (pardon the pun) basis, so I thought I’d take the time to reflect on where we came from, where we’re at now & what the future might hold.
Where we came from…
In my opinion, it all started around 2004 with a popular website in the US called Woot!
Woot! provided one deal a day, everyday. The deal was almost always a product that would be delivered to you: no restaurants, no sky diving, just a [...]
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July 7th, 2011 : posted in News by M Bryant
Niche group buying site Beautyscoop were forced to change their name to Bellabuy after Scoopon accused the startup of trademark infringement for using the word ‘scoop‘.
The co-founders of Bellabuy are two work-from-home mums who say they couldn’t afford to make an objection to Scoopon’s claims.
“We were told by our lawyer to get rid of the name. Scoopon eventually agreed to a 30-day period in which we had to completely rebrand our website and redo all our promotional material,” said one of the founders, who remained anonymous.
The founders estimated [...]
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June 6th, 2011 : posted in News by M Bryant
There have been numerous concerns and questions about the sustainability of Groupon since the company released an IPO valuing themselves at around $20 billion. Moreso, the group buying model itself, pioneered by Groupon, has been re-examined for its long term validity.
The IPO revealed that Groupon lost $US413m in 2010 after aggressive customer acquisitions.
Local group buying sites responded yesterday maintaining that they are profitable, despite the huge losses of Groupon in the US.
Catch of the Day revealed that their site Scoopon is showing profits, while Deals.com.au founder Adam Schwab [...]
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June 2nd, 2011 : posted in News by M Bryant
Stardeals, the Australian expansion of daily deals giant Groupon, launched their service in Perth this week.
The group buying site launched in Sydney in February this year, and soon moved into Brisbane and Melbourne. The site also offers national deals.
“Perth is a very vibrant cosmopolitan city with a lot of great businesses that we’re keen to partner with in order to offer consumers in Perth the very best deals,” says Stardeals managing director, Patrick Schmidt.
The group have been slower on expansion downunder than many of the other local sites: Spreets, for example, now servicing over a dozen Australian [...]
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May 23rd, 2011 : posted in News by M Bryant
James Packer has made a significant investment into daily deals sites Catch of the Day and Scoopon, partnering with a consortium of other investors.
Packer’s Consolidated Press Holdings and Tiger Global Management teamed up with Andrew Bassat, co-founder of Seek, and Glenn Poswell of Gannet Capital.
The group have purchased 40 percent of the deals business that is owned by brothers Gabby and Hezi Leibovich. The total investment is said to be $80m.
“It is still early days in Australia when it comes to online retail, and to support our next [...]
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