Local-Commerce Profile: Buildablock
This continues our series of profiles of local-commerce companies. The purpose of these Q&A profiles is to give merchants, marketers and others in the industry a glimpse into what some deal providers out there are doing. These profiles are also meant to offer different outlooks on the future of the local-commerce industry.
This week we’re profiling Buildablock, a company that enables groups of consumers to come together to score a discount on a desired product or service.
Read on to find out how this novel idea sprung up from a snow-removal truck.
Please introduce yourself.
My name is Gary Oberman, president and CEO of Buildablock Corp. I am an entrepreneur, inventor and competitive athlete. I have a strong background in technology and business. I was introduced to the notion of entrepreneurship at the ripe age of 12 delivering newspapers and I have never looked back. As a founder and operator, I have been directly involved in dozens of startups over the years, with my most noteworthy being Budget Conferencing. The company was founded in 2002, and seeded with only $140,000 in startup capital. Within five years, the company did a mid-eight-figure cash-out to an American multinational. I hold numerous patents in the field of streaming 3-D media as well as in other pioneering fields. My passion is innovation and my lifestyle is designed to maximize freedoms away from the common workplace with an emphasis on remote management.
How would you describe Buildablock in one sentence?
Group bidding meets deep discounting.
Tell us about how the company began and how the name was chosen.
The company was established in 2008. The idea was born while observing a snow-removal truck in front of my home. I noticed that it had come to only clean a single driveway and then left the street. I knew my block had numerous snow-removal companies servicing the street, so the notion of “building a block” of buyers came to life. By consolidating the buying power of all the neighbors on a street, the group could leverage improved savings for any service or product in a specific region.
Can you talk about the progress the company has made so far, along with its projections?
The company was able to raise significant dollars to fund its early-stage development. An angel round was completed in less than eight weeks and the company is fully capitalized to complete its soft launch and full launch for Christmas of 2012. We are still in the development stages so it is too soon to tell what our adoption rates will look like in practice, but because of the viral, social nature of the service, we anticipate massive uptake to dovetail with our ad spends planned for Q2 2013.
How is Buildablock different from all the other competitors in the daily-deals space?
There is no competition in the group-bidding space. We are pioneers in that regard and we hold a few patents on the process.
How does Buildablock approach building and maintaining relationships with merchants?
This is an entirely accretive service. Once a merchant sees just how easy the service is to use they will continually respond to the influx of free leads that Buildablock will generate.
How does the negotiation process work?
Spot an item that you like, create a wink, post it for free, wait a week and let the platform advertise your interest item for free. At the end of a week, we will automatically direct the consolidated-bid group’s lead over to the vendor where the product or service was seen. At this point the vendor can either accept the system’s discounted offer or the vendor can counter — two kicks at the can for both the buyer and the seller. Deals can consummate at various price points and minimum group sizes are set by the seller. We generate an e-voucher, which can be redeemed in-store or online.
What is the biggest challenge for Buildablock going forward?
To create an awareness campaign for the sellers. Consumer branding is easy because everyone loves deals. Vendors, on the other hand, need to know that we are out there so when they get email from us inviting them to sell to simultaneous groups of people online, they don’t spam-kill us and actually take the time to open the mail. Once the mail is open the value proposition of the system will do the rest.
What is your take on the future of the daily-deals industry? What are the challenges and opportunities?
That’s a no-brainer. Lead aggregation is the next craze. Consolidating common interest is clearly the future, as evidenced by the explosive growth of Pinterest. All they need is the commerce angle that we figured out and they would have a gold mine on their hands. (Good thing we own the process patent.) The opportunities are tremendous because of the inherent draw for large-scale manufacturers to want to participate in our ecosystem once we have developed sufficient liquidity in it.
Do you have any parting words for merchants, customers and marketers?
Welcome to the only consumer-branded negotiating tool that represents a win-win scenario for everyone in the exchange of products or services. We are here to redefine the way people shop and turn conventional retail upside down.
For more about daily deals, attend our Oct. 25 webinar:
