[JanezStupar]

I have a question.

Since the coupon magic/mania started (everybody and their dog is doing a coupon site). Has there appeared a site/service that disrupts this whole model?

What I mean is - the Service Providers are getting really a shitty value out of GRPN other daily deal sites. Initially GRPN needed loads of cash to get their sales people on the streets and logistics behind this were pretty massive.

But today, I see this market as completely commoditized. Everybody and his dog knows of the daily deal sites. Lately I haven't really met anybody who is doing some kind of services who doesn't know of daily deal sites (and I'm from Slovenia).

So here is my question - is there a sort of service that would take a one time fee/subscription for service providers and let them run their own daily deals.

This way you cut out the middleman and the (expensive) sales people and this would even offer sufficient value to the service providers.

[jaxn]

Why would you need fewer sales people to sell this model than to sell Groupon? Restaurant and retail shop owners are not the easiest group to get ahold of, and they are suffering from pitch fatigue as everyone and their brother tries to sell them their daily deal service (that does have some theoretical differentiator).

[JanezStupar]

For one, when your trying to disrupt something doing more of the same everyone is doing is probably not the right way to do it.

Service providers talk, they talk to their customers they talk to their competition - otherwise they provide a shitty service, which doesn't bring in much money, which gets you out of business.

Imagine this conversation:

Provider Alice: Hey I just got my first daily deal out the door. Hope it recuperates the steep cost in the long term.

Provider Bob: Cool, where did you do it?

Provider Alice: Groupon Clone X! Because...

Provider Bob: Nice, I do all my deals on Disruptive service Y, which costs me only a fraction of the Groupon Clone X.

Provider Alice: Motherfucker...

What I'm trying to say is that this market is a race to the bottom and will probably enter the schoolbooks as an example of a dead-end business opportunity.

[sunchild]

I think the question boils down to this: Who will be the first to offer merchants a more favorable cut than 50/50? Or who will offer to let the merchants hold the cash? It's an inevitable race to zero for the coupon providers.

[rplnt]

Just recently, I saw a daily deal to get your own daily deal site. It was either Slovakia or Czech Republic, not sure. So basically yeah, this market is THAT bad.