GetOnce, an Australian website that quietly launched itself onto the Internet back in 2005 and has puttered along without much fanfare ever since, is set to take off with the imminent launch of a new service.
GetOnce provides a central point for shoppers of CDs, DVDs, computers, games, auctions, experiences, etc. by linking in to various online stores and providing pricing information and availability across a range of stores. For example, shoppers looking for the DVD of “300″ (to hark back to a previous blog entry on this site) will see which online stores offer the product, whether or not it is available, and how much it costs. You can also sort by price, ensuring you get the best deal on the product you want to buy.
It’s a great service, but pretty passive, and not very “Web 2.0″. The exciting thing is that GetOnce is about to take the site to the next level. Users to the site will soon be able to “NameYourPrice”. They will be launching first with the DVDs section of the site, so let me explain how it will work. If I go the site, and I want to buy a copy of “300″ (I don’t know why I actually would, but that’s another story), I type in “300″ into the search field and scan the results. If the price doesn’t suit, I select the item I want to buy and I click on a button “NameYourPrice”. I enter the dollar amount that I am willing to spend to buy the DVD and hit enter.
Imagine that 100 other people have done the same thing as me. Obviously, the “NameYourPrice” amounts will vary for each person, but at the other end, the online stores can go in, look at the cumulative figures for NameYourPrice on the “300″ DVD, and make a decision on whether or not to make these 100 people an offer on the product. Let’s assume the RRP is $29.95, but the majority of the 100 people have named their price at around $20. The retailer can look at its margins on the product, weigh up its options and make an offer to those 100 people. The retailer clicks on the “MakeAnOffer” button, enters the price for which they are willing to sell the DVD and then is bound to sell the item for the offer made to those 100 people. Some of the buyers may have put in a lower amount, but when they see the offer for, say, $20, they figure it’s the best price they are likely to get and accept anyway.
“The great thing about this service is that we know that we are likely to sell a considerable quantity of the product if we offer the right price. While the margins might not be as good as selling the DVD in the normal way, the revenue and overall profit we generate from the quantities we sell in one hit more than makes up for this,” said a spokesperson from leading online retailer EzyDVD.
The service is expected to launch in a matter of weeks. My source confirms that GetOnce has all its major DVD retailers on board, and a concerted marketing campaign will start soon.
