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Groupon Soft-Launches “Groupon Stores”

October 22nd, 2010

Today, Groupon soft-launched “Groupon Stores,” a new merchant service that allows business to white-label Groupon for their own daily deals.  From what we can see, it’s only available in a couple cities now, including Chicago.  From their website:

“Groupon Stores is a place where your favorite, local businesses can sign up, create a store page, and post deals at anytime for you to see. Welcome to the future of Groupon.”

picture-57

This is an exciting development for the Chicago-based startup, which has dominated the daily deal space since it launched in 2008.

The potential of this new program is obvious: the new merchant program will allow stores to create their own Groupon deals, which would presumably be purchased through the Groupon system, growing the network and enabling more targeted, localized deals.

We were excited to see Groupon co-founder and director Brad Keywell at midVenturesLAUNCH, where he spoke about entrepreneurship in the Midwest and the future of startup capital here. Check out the video of Brad’s keynote here.

We’ll post updates as we find out more.

groupon

Posted by Meagan Lopez
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  • http://blog.yipit.com/2010/10/groupon-reveals-its-future-will-be-self-serve/ Groupon Reveals Its Future Will Be Self-Serve | Yipit Blog

    [...] to midVentures, a Chicago-based consultancy, for pointing this out on their blog. Heard anything else interesting? Comment below or call us out on Twitter:@yipit. [...]

  • http://www.centernetworks.com/groupon-launches-groupon-stores Groupon Launches Groupon Stores – Is This Groupon 2.0?

    [...] Brian Mayer at MV Technology Partners noticed something new on the Groupon Chicago (their homebase) market. In the graphic below, you can [...]

  • http://www.couponmarketer.com David Flash

    Thanks for this news! Look forward to seeing how this plays out. It could be explosive for them, crowdsourcing deals directly from business owners…making a Groupon as easy to run as a facebook ad. I wonder if they’ll have any screening in place to keep out shady businesses…seems like they would have to w/ the Groupon brand attached to the service.

  • http://www.screenwerk.com/2010/10/24/groupon-launches-its-own-places-product-groupon-stores/ Groupon Launches Its Own ‘Places’ Product: Groupon Stores

    [...] Jim Moran picked up on a post from MV Technology partners that “outed” a new offering from Groupon: “Groupon [...]

  • John

    Do you know if businesses can use the Tip Model with these types of deals?

  • http://links.com Rich

    As I predicted in discussions with friends and colleagues, the Groupon model is broken and now merchants are merely advertising coupons via their Groupon’s mailing list. The problems with Groupon were many fold:

    1) The model did not encourage repeat business. It did quite the opposite as it trained patrons to wait for the next deal where ever it might be.

    2) Most businesses ended up losing money. The biggest winners were those who had distressed inventories (e.g. theaters) that they wanted to get rid of quickly.

    3) There was no business or technology moat which left Groupon open to competition from anyone who had a large, targeted mailing list and foot soldiers who could find deals.

  • http://www.washingpondventures.com Alicia

    Good scoop mV!!

  • http://www.groupbuying101.co.uk/2010/10/23/groupon-reveals-its-future-lies-in-self-serve/ Groupon Reveals Its Future Lies In Self-Serve | Group Buying 101

    [...] to midVentures, a Chicago-based consultancy, for pointing this out on their blog. Heard anything else interesting? Comment below or call us out on Twitter:@yipit. [...]

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