Startup BidMyWay.com ‘like eBay meets Groupon’
SANDRA GUY sguy@suntimes.com May 13, 2011 10:16PM
Jozee Lewis, who loves finding deals online, got her spa visit at JW Marriot hotel's Valeo spa using Bid My Way (BidMyWay.com), which lets deal seekers sign up for free via Facebook, set their budgets, bid once on an item or buy it immediately at 95 percent of its value. She uses her deal on Friday, April 29, 2011. | Richard A. Chapman~Sun-Times
Updated: October 10, 2011 11:04PM
Jozee Lewis loves finding deals online, especially when she gets to control the purchase price. She has found a solution with Chicago startup Bid My Way (BidMyWay.com), which lets deal seekers sign up for free via Facebook, set their budgets, bid once on an item or buy it immediately at 95 percent of its value.
“It’s like eBay meets Groupon,” said Lewis, a 35-year-old Humboldt Park resident who found her latest deal at Valeo, a wellness spa at the JW Marriott hotel downtown.
“The spa experience was really fun and relaxing,” she said.
“I love fashion and I like having my hair done differently all the time, but I don’t like to spend money,” Lewis said. “I like picking my price and setting my own parameters.”
The site charges a bidder’s credit card after he or she wins a bid.
BidMyWay combines discount shopping with social media by enabling subscribers to input their spending budget and location preference — say an Italian restaurant in Oak Park — and name their best price among the restaurants that pop up from the search. The subscription is free.
The site offers deals for spas, restaurants, travel, hotel and outdoor sporting activities.
The winning bids are kept confidential, and participating merchants accept or reject offers without disclosing how they made their decisions.
Bids are submitted each day, with the winner announced at 7 each morning.
“We provide a value that fits the consumer’s budget and perceived value of goods or services,” said John T. Shave, CEO and founder, who is known for building Chicago-based telecom provider GlobalCom into the largest privately owned telecom company in the United States in 2007 and 2008. First Communications, based in Akron, Ohio, bought GlobalCom for $58.5 million in cash, or 10.5 times EBITDA, on Oct. 2, 2008.
Shave sees parallels between running GlobalCom as the upstart competitor to AT&T and leading BidMyWay amid a crowded field of deal giants such as Groupon and LivingSocial.
“It’s about carving out a niche and being really good at it,” Shave said.
BidMyWay and its related app and BidMyBudget site, the latter set to launch in late summer, are subsidiaries of EliteMediaWorx, a Chicago-based company that also owns EliteCityDeals.com and DoctorDeals.com.
BidMyWay is part of another local trend — tech companies on a hiring blitz for salespeople, software developers and computer programmers. The company intends to expand its work force 10 times, from today’s seven employees to 75 by year’s end, and to 888 people nationwide in 2015. The company has raised $1.35 million in venture funding to underpin the expansion.
“We should hit 1,000 employees by 2016,” Shave said.
Daily-deal sites are popping up in Chicago nearly every day. Among the many entrants are:
† ScoutMob, a free mobile app that lets shoppers scan for deals by neighborhood and redeem virtual coupons.
† DealRod.com, a site that gathers, organizes and delivers all of the best local deals from Goupon, LivingSocial, Gilt City and others via personalized daily emails.
† ShopAlerts by AT&T, which provides subscribers messages about deals in their local area.
† Offers.com by Local City Deals aggregates local deals and sends one daily e-mail with that information.
† Dealavue.com showcases deals and coupons to Chicago-area shoppers based on the shoppers’ location and interests. Shoppers can view the deals on a map.
† DEALCOR.com offers movie ticket discounts with no expiration dates.
† DealRadar, run by Local Offer Network, aggregates daily deal offers.
Technology startups throughout Chicago, including Groupon, other find-a-deal sites and social-media players, together garnered $1.3 billion in venture capital in the first three months of this year, according to the Illinois Technology Association.
That compares with $717 million for all of last year, according to the Illinois Venture Capital Association.
“Every week, I get at least two phone calls from venture capitalists and private-equity representatives who’ve seen news about tech startups here,” said Fred Hoch, president of the Illinois Technology Association. “They want to know what else is going on in this market.”
Shave foresees the discount hysteria ending much like the telecom-expansion frenzy of the late 1990s: A culling to seven to eight major players within the next three years.
“It’s the result of rapid technological change, a whole new marketing opportunity, successful players having to execute successfully on a variety of sales channels, and then profit-margin compression,” he said.
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