As parents, we are always challenged and even annoyed to hear our children continue to push us to explain things with the question why.
However, being a serial entrepreneur, I’ve always had a thing for the question why. I find it a great starting point. It creates insights into innovation, entrepreneurship, and what might be a better way of doing things.
Sam Walton and Walmart asked the question of why were specialty and department stores the best way to shop, and whether a chain of discount stores could work better. Since then Walmart had always been innovating and changing to ensure they were the low cost merchandise seller.
Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com, also asked why. Why did retail have to occur in brick and mortar stores? Why wasn’t it possible to create a new distribution platform and retail experience for customers? If Sam Walton was the low cost producer in retail that had physical stores, why couldn’t a new retail concept come about online that offered lots of product choice like Walmart at even lower prices?
We at Flash Purchase looked at daily deal companies and asked the following questions:
- Why do daily deal sites take such a high transaction fee from their merchants?
- Why do daily deals work with individuals and not band them together to create group power?
- Why do daily deal companies limit their offers to mainly service establishments and not hard goods?
- Why do daily deal sites push deals at prospects when prospects aren’t interested in most of the deals they receive by email?
- Why do daily deal sites have such high overhead leading to poor internal economics?
What these questions prompted were “why isn’t” questions:
- Why isn’t anyone offering customers and merchants the ability to create their own deals?
- Why isn’t it possible to create a deal site that is agnostic on product categories?
- Why isn’t it possible to offer deals without geographic limitation?
- Why isn’t it possible to have like-minded consumers band together to create purchasing groups that lead to volume discounts?
- Why isn’t it possible to have consumers and prospects just view the deals they want to view in their category of interest so they aren’t pushed deals they have no interest in?
- Why isn’t possible for groups of consumers to invite sellers to bid on their group’s business?
- Why isn’t possible to create a user-driven platform to lower overhead costs so that merchants can be charged a lower transaction fee and also make the deal company’s economics sustainable?
- Why isn’t possible to create truly win-win commerce?
The “why”/ “why isn’t” approach has led to Flash Purchase, our new ecommerce crowd purchasing and merchant selling platform. We look forward to launching it soon.
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When our founder, Michael Sinsheimer, first spoke with me about his vision for Flash Purchase, I was living in Toledo, Spain. We had an hour long Skype conversation simply about his ideas for this “new and revolutionary buying and selling platform” as he put it. As soon as I heard how well thought out Flash Purchase was, I was hooked. What exactly did he say? Here’s the rundown of what he told me:
-We want to create a new, unique and meaningful ecommerce website.
-We want to empower consumers enabling them to create deals on their own for any type of products without geographic limitation.
-We want to create win-win transactions where both buyers and sellers make gains.
By this time in the conversation I was thinking to myself this would be great… if it were even possible. But he didn’t stop there. This is what he said about how we were going to create and develop Flash Purchase:
-The basis of Flash Purchase is bulk purchasing through collective groups of like-minded consumers.
-Our site will enable a buyer to set a price they want on any product they want.
-The buyer can then share their deal so that everyone can join it.
-Once enough people have joined, the deal will then be appealing to sellers due to the volume it represents.
-Sellers can then come in and bid on the buyer-created deals.
-The winning seller expands their customer base in one transaction as a result.
The appeal of the site was obvious- buyers get discounts and sellers sell products to large amounts of consumers in just one transaction. By this time I could hardly contain my excitement. This was a once in a generation opportunity and I was being asked to be part of it. I couldn’t refuse. I’ve always loved the idea of entrepreneurship and this was its purest form- an ingenious online-based start-up. It only took me a matter of minutes to rearrange my summer so that Flash Purchase was my main priority.
Once I returned from Spain we hit the ground running. I started off doing a lot of research into the e-commerce world finding all I could about the industry we were entering. I then moved on to helping design some of the layout and basic functionality of the website, and worked on finding better ways to promote our site through social media. Now I am focused on connecting with electronics merchants nationwide to spread word of Flash Purchase!
I came on board to Flash Purchase expecting to work only with social media, but it has been much more than that. I guess that is what starting a new business is all about- dealing with adversity and doing as much as you can in as many ways possible. Looking back over the summer I can point to so many learning experiences, ones that will stay with me for a long time.
Looking forward to my work with Flash Purchase in the fall and could not be any more excited.
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Who are we? We are Flash Purchase! We are creative, new and the most buyer-seller friendly site on the Internet and this is our blog. Here you will learn what we are all about, what our industry is all about and explore the ever-changing world of e-commerce. Our blog is designed to show you the here and now of the online shopping industry and exactly how Flash Purchase plans to revolutionize it.
We’ll start out with the basics:
Who are we?
What are we?
- A new way to shop and sell through a proprietary ecommerce site.
- We enable group purchasing to occur socially and allow users to create their own deals or join existing ones.
- We and the users invite sellers to bid on group deals.
- Our group purchasing power and competitive pricing with sellers will lead to great deals for our buyers and our sellers.
- We call this win-win commerce.
Where are we?
- We are anywhere you have Internet access.
Why do we exist?
- We exist solely to get you the best deals.
- Our deals can be on any product and without any geographic limitations.
So what are you waiting for? Follow us on Twitter and “like” us on Facebook and spread the word! But first sign yourself up to hear all the updates as we get ready to launch our full website by clicking here!
