By Aimee Chanthadavong

The team that created the discount online department store DealsDirect.com.au has now entered the group buying landscape with the launch of DealMe!.

But founder Paul Greenberg told RetailBiz that DealMe is like no other group buying website.

“We’re not like every other group buying site that is out there. I like their concept but I would argue that our point of difference is that instead of keeping count of the deal, we turn it into the scarcity model of limited quantity and limited time,” he said.

“This is dependant on what the merchants can handle and sometimes they sell too much and lose the ability to provide a good service. It’s all about quality control.”

DealMe! features a capped total number of deals that is available to all subscribers regardless of their home city for a period of 24 hours. It also ensures that vendors receive 90 per cent of payments in seven days, average commission of 20 to 30 per cent and receive payments in full after 30 days.

“I love the theatre of retail because we can say to our customers that we have this capped number of deals for this amount of time and our message is ‘if you snooze you lose’,” Greenberg said.

“Its intentional scarcity, which is basically giving customers 24 hours to buy and that, creates excitement in customers to use social media like Facebook and Twitter to tell their friends about it before the deal runs out.  This also makes sure merchants can provide the customer service and that’s a powerful driver and we’re seeing the benefits.

“Continual improvement to the site is our principle and we’ve launched the site listening to our customers and vendors; that’s the beauty of online retailing, we’re able to listen and survey them, which is how we’ve come up with all of this.”

The site also offers a ‘national deal of the day' that are tier-one national branded products at discounted prices, Greenberg said.

But according to Greenberg, the establishment of DealMe! has only been possible with the existing platform that its DealsDirect business has created.

“It’s the same business in the sense that we are helping the same guys out in providing a product or service to consumers. But it’s just something fresh for us. We see it as a layer of DealsDirect. Now it’s game on because we’ve done the hard work for the last six years with DealsDirect and our customers are also really excited about it,” he said.

“It’s a brilliant channel for merchants of branded products to sell through us because I understand the channel concept but the deals are gone before you can blink.”