Type of site | Electronic Commerce |
---|---|
Available in | English |
Owner | Gilt Groupe |
URL | www.buywithme.com |
Commercial | Yes |
Registration | None |
Launched | May, 2009 |
Current status | Defunct |
BuyWithMe was a social e-commerce company that was known as the first competitor to group buying website Groupon. Launched in Boston and then later based in New York City, BuyWithMe allowed consumers to leverage group buying power to get discounts with local merchants online.
BuyWithMe launched in May 2009 and was acquired by Gilt Groupe in November 2011, [1] It was absorbed into Gilt Groupe's Gilt City daily deals division. [2]
In a similar manner to Groupon (except that their deals always lasted a week), BuyWithMe introduced at least one new deal every day. The deal was emailed to all local BuyWithMe subscribers, made available on the company's website, and distributed through a network of group buying media partnerships (including Boston.com, owned by The New York Times ). The deal only completed if a minimum number of consumers signed up, therefore assuring the merchant a minimum return. [3]
Initially founded by a group of local Boston-area friends, including Andrew Moss [4] and Seth Rosen. [5] In 2009 BuyWithMe raised $5.5M; [6] and then 2010, BuyWithMe was funded with $36.5M by venture capital firms Matrix Partners, Bain Capital Ventures, and Pinnacle Ventures. BuyWithMe's first market was Boston, with San Diego and Washington, DC following. [7] By October 2009, BuyWithMe served nine markets and its major competitor was Groupon. [8] BuyWithMe had partners such as Foursquare. [9] In January, the company appointed Jim Crowley as CEO. [10] In June 2011, the company was pursuing a significant push into loyalty with an acquisition of a card-linked offer company. [11] The sale to Gilt Groupe came as Crowley struggled to raise venture capital. [12]
The BuyWithMe founding team went on to other businesses, including Booster by Custom Ink. [13]
Travelocity.com is an online travel agency owned by the American Expedia Group. It has 12.4 million monthly unique visitors, making it the third most popular website owned by Expedia Group, after Expedia.com and Hotels.com.
Group buying, also known as collective buying, offers products and services at significantly reduced prices on the condition that a minimum number of buyers would make the purchase. Origins of group buying can be traced to China, where it is known as Tuán Gòu, or team buying.
Loyalty marketing is a marketing strategy in which a company focuses on growing and retaining existing customers through incentives. Branding, product marketing, and loyalty marketing all form part of the customer proposition – the subjective assessment by the customer of whether to purchase a brand or not based on the integrated combination of the value they receive from each of these marketing disciplines.
Deal-of-the-day is an ecommerce business model in which a website offers a single product for sale for a period of 24 to 36 hours. Potential customers register as members of the deal-a-day websites and receive online offers and invitations by email or social networks.
Kevin P. Ryan is an American investor and entrepreneur who has founded several New York–based businesses, including Gilt Groupe, Business Insider and MongoDB. Ryan helped grow DoubleClick from 1996 to 2005, first as president and later as CEO. Ryan continues to found and invest in companies through AlleyCorp, a venture capital firm he founded with Dwight Merriman in 2008. He holds a B.A. from Yale University and an M.B.A. from INSEAD.
Eric Paul Lefkofsky is an American billionaire businessman. He is the founder of Tempus, and the co-founder of Groupon, Echo Global Logistics (ECHO), InnerWorkings (INWK), and Mediaocean. As of June 2024, he is also a co-managing partner of Chicago-based venture capital firm Lightbank. As of October 2021, his net worth was estimated at US$4.1 billion.
One Equity Partners is a private equity firm with over $10 billion in assets under management which primarily deals with the industrial, healthcare and technology sectors in North America and Europe. One Equity Partners was the merchant banking arm of JPMorgan Chase, focused on leveraged buyout and growth capital investments in middle-market companies. Formed by Bank One in 2001, the group has offices in New York City, Chicago, Sao Paulo, Vienna, Hong Kong and Frankfurt.
Groupon, Inc. is an American global e-commerce marketplace connecting subscribers with local merchants by offering activities, travel, goods and services in 13 countries. Based in Chicago, Groupon was launched there in November 2008, launching soon after in Boston, New York City and Toronto. By October 2010, Groupon was available in 150 cities in North America and 100 cities in Europe, Asia and South America, and had 35 million registered users. By the end of March 2015, Groupon served more than 500 cities worldwide, nearly 48.1 million active customers and featured more than 425,000 active deals globally in 48 countries.
Gilt is an American online shopping launched in 2007. On January 7, 2016, The company was sold to Hudson's Bay Company for approximately $250 million. Prior to the Hudson's Bay acquisition, sales were exceeding growth projections but the firm had not been profitable yet. On June 4, 2018, Boston, Massachusetts-based Rue La La acquired Gilt from Hudson's Bay.
LivingSocial is an online marketplace that allows its registered users to buy and share things to do in their city. Formerly headquartered in Washington, D.C., LivingSocial had roughly 70 million members around the world in 2013. The company shrank from a peak of 4,500 employees in 2011 to about 200 in 2016. LivingSocial was purchased by Groupon in 2016.
Bread Financial Holdings, Inc. is an American publicly-traded provider of loyalty and marketing services, such as private label credit cards, coalition loyalty programs, and direct marketing, derived from the capture and analysis of transaction-rich data.
Maveron is an American venture capital firm that invests in consumer-only and early-stage companies, with offices in Seattle, Washington and San Francisco, California. The firm was co-founded by Dan Levitan and former Starbucks chief executive Howard Schultz in 1998.
Upserve, originally Swipely, provides a restaurant management platform which allows independent full-service restaurants to run and manage their entire business. The Platform is made up of restaurant-specific point of sale (POS) software, payments, and analytics, online ordering, loyalty, and marketing tools designed specifically for restaurants. At the center of the Upserve Platform is the cloud-based Upserve POS, a point of sale system that Upserve acquired from Groupon in 2016.
Headline, formerly e.ventures and BV Capital, is a global and data-driven venture capital firm investing across stages and sectors, from Direct-to-consumer to Deep tech and Software. It was founded in 1998 in Santa Barbara, California and has since grown to invest in four different regions worldwide: United States, Europe, Asia and Latin America. The firm has its headquarters in San Francisco, California, with additional offices in Berlin and Hamburg, Germany; Paris, France; London, United Kingdom; Tokyo, Japan; Taipei, Taiwan and Sao Paulo, Brazil.
TechStyle Fashion Group, formerly JustFab Inc., is an online, membership fashion retailer that has a portfolio of five direct-to-consumer brands including JustFab, FabKids, ShoeDazzle, Savage X Fenty, and Fabletics. Its brands carries selections of shoes, handbags, jewelry, lingerie, activewear, and denim. It offers a personalized shopping experience based on members' indicated fashion preferences. As of 2019 the company has over 5 million paying VIP members, earning revenues of $800 million.
9flats is an online marketplace enabling people to lease or rent short-term lodging. The company does not own any lodging; it is merely a broker and receives commissions from both guests and hosts in conjunction with every booking.
Antonio Rodriguez is a serial entrepreneur and venture capitalist.
Michele Romanow is a Canadian tech entrepreneur, television personality, board director and venture capitalist. She co-founded Clearbanc, a Toronto based provider of revenue sharing solutions to fund new online businesses, and other e-businesses, and made the list of 100 Most Powerful Women in Canada in 2015. She was named as one of the Forbes Top 20 Most Disruptive "Millennials on a Mission" in 2013 and Canadian Innovation Awards’ Angel Investor of the Year in 2018. Romanow joined the cast of CBC’s Dragons' Den in Season 10.
Alexandra Wilkis Wilson is an American entrepreneur and investor who co-founded the companies the Gilt Groupe, GlamSquad, and Fitz. She is currently co-founder and Managing Partner at Clerisy, a consumer-focused growth equity fund.
Prodege, LLC is an American online marketing, consumer polling, and market research company based in El Segundo, California. The company develops consumer rewards and polling programs under various brands including Swagbucks, MyPoints, InboxDollars, CouponCause, Tada, Ysense, Upromise, and Pollfish.