Maybe if you are living under a rock you haven’t heard of GROUPON™. But this two-year-old company just had the chutzpa to reject Google’s $6 billion offer to acquire it.
So what do they do?
They sell coupons for goods and services on the Internet with good writing, a sense of humor, and a cool concept—the deals have a limited time frame and a minimum number of people need to take them before they kick in.
Noah Graff and I heard Andrew Mason, the 29-year-old founder of GROUPON™, at a Wall Street Journal forum on growing your business. We were fascinated by his story and self-effacing demeanor. As he told it, the GROUPON™ idea was not his brainstorm. He was interested in social media and had developed a Web site to attract young people to political meetings. A venture capitalist liked what he was doing and invited him to use the concept of attracting a minimum threshold group for a commercial purpose—i.e. selling discounted goods and services. As Mason recounted it, “he didn’t have anything better to do,” and “somebody was dangling a lot of cash in front of him.” So he went to work on the site with gusto. It caught on like wildfire, and he and his founders realized they had a monster by the tail. Mason started hiring salesmen and building infrastructure immediately, because as great an idea as GROUPON™ was, it was eminently copyable.
Since Noah and I heard Mason speak we have been working on our own version of GROUPON™ for the industrial world, which we call “The Real Deal.” The folks at Trusty-Cook Inc., a manufacturer of wonderful and unique non-marring hammers that replace the primitive lead and bronze hammers, immediately loved the idea and have been working with TMW to bring you the very first Real Deal.
You will find today’s Real Deal on today’s TMW email blast under the blog. You can order your Trusty-Cook Inc. hammers online or by phone for 50% off through 5 p.m. EST. this Friday. Then, consider how you can use the Real Deal concept for your business.
If you think you don’t do discounts, think again. The possibilities are tremendous. After you order your hammers, give our National Sales Manager, Dan Hummel, a call at (630) 715-4318, send him an email at dan@todaysmachiningworld.com, or email Noah Graff at noah@todaysmachiningworld.com.
See how the Real Deal can grow your business.
