Groupon, Which Has Lost 99.4% of Its Value Since Its IPO, Names a New CEO (techcrunch.com) 25
An anonymous reader shares a report: A dozen years ago, Groupon shot to fame popularizing the online group buying format, confidently rejecting a $6 billion acquisition offer from Google and instead going public with a $17.8 billion market cap. The company today says it has 14 million active users, but almost consistently for the last decade, its financial position has been in a slow decline -- with stagnation in its core business model, little success in efforts to diversify, declining revenues and ongoing losses. And today comes the latest chapter in that story. The Chicago-based company, which today has a market cap of just $103 million (a drop of 99.4% from its public market debut), has appointed Dusan Senkypl, a current board member, as interim CEO. Senkypl will run the company... out of the Czech Republic. His appointment is effective immediately, the company said in a statement today. He replaces Kedar Deshpande, who had been Groupon's CEO for just 15 months.
Groupon is for people who have money. (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Nobody has any money any more.
Groupon's founders do. Prior to their IPO in 2011 Groupon paid out $940 million to the company's 3 founders ( 85% of the venture capital they had raised).
Built their business on desperation... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
They were the payday loan equivalent for small biz.
It bridged a few back to healthier times most the vast majority just dug the hole deeper. Good riddance.
Google must be kicking themselves... (Score:5, Funny)
Customer acquisition (Score:4, Insightful)
Obviously if you are trying to sell $10 cupcakes, you customer base is not those who will wait in line for a free cupcake. And you will be in debt for months. But I think there were a lot of retailers who could have leveraged the service.
That's because word quickly got around (Score:2)
I remember years ago I made heavy use of restaurant.com deals to get super cheap food. So much so a couple of the places stopped taking the coupo
Stupid idea - no surprise (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
much like Waze - another one of the stupidest apps ever created.
Ok I'll bite. Why is Waze stupid?
Built on the backs of others... (Score:5, Interesting)
Groupon killed itself with a business that rewarded only Groupon. As a former merchant who used Groupon I can say these things:
1. Groupon never delivered repeat business or repeat customers. People who use Groupons aren't looking for THAT THING only at a discount... they are looking for WHATEVER if the timing is right. Free Saturday morning? What shall we do. I know, hot air balloon ride, never to do it again, and you can tell your friends on social media but the Groupon has expired.
2. The Groupon [coupon] expired because the merchant is working to the bone, delivering the minimalist ride, giving a large portion of the profit to Groupon [company] so there's no future there.
3. The customer got "an experience". It's not the best because Groupon makes the most of its profit on the higher ticket items and the merchant makes less... so no win to offer that higher ticket item. That's a loss for the customer and a loss for the customer.
So long, Groupon, you sold the leftovers from the kitchen at a price higher than diners were paying through the front door, but paid very little for your trashburgers. As a result nobody now wants to sell to you or buy from you.
Re: (Score:2)
1. Groupon was never meant to deliver repeat business. They offered a margin-related method for customer engagement that left it up to the vendor for upselling, or repeat business. To paraphrase Steve Jobs 'you're holding it wrong'
2. Also, you're holding it wrong. Again. If you're using groupon to sell normal, high-margin high-effort services without upselling then you missed the point.
3. See 1 and 2 above. If you somehow expected groupon to take a 50% cut off your every sale and your normal business t
Re: Built on the backs of others... (Score:2)
They should wait for the Google CEO (Score:3)
Used it, No longer even think about it. (Score:3)
I am a Boomer.
I used Groupon, in the beginning, to get deals at restaurants that I was going to visit anyway. So, all the restaurant got was reduced income. They figured that out and stop using Groupon. Now, its local offerings are very limited and useless to me.
Re: (Score:2)
Groupon was the generations-newer version of 'preview day' or a 'soft open' for restaurants. I remember places that had a grand opening on a friday but often they'd do a few days prior of 'invitee-only' opening where the food was free. I vividly remember waiting on an hours-long line for some buffet place doing this.
Makes me miss the pre-interwebs days where local community spread this stuff vs people coming for a one-off freebie that doesn't actually build anything.
Ahh...how things are "better these days
They need to expand their market (Score:3)
Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Denmark just combined their purchased of F-35s into a bulk buy. Also, officials in the United States, Europe and elsewhere have also begun discussing plans to build a kind of buyersâ(TM) club for critical minerals.
Groupon for fighter jets. (Groupon for Gripen?) Another for lithium and cobalt. If these aren't opportunities for Groupon, I don't know what is.
Wrong locus of concern (Score:1)
I'm more concerned about whoever is still at Google that had the power to offer 6B for this dumpsterfire.
Re: (Score:2)
It was a good model, ruined but their quest for 'growth'
But I have a coupon (Score:2)
Ok biz model, until they diluted themselves (Score:2)
For those who don't know, groupon's 'fee' was (is?) 50% of the charge.
So your $500 service/item/whatever, discounted to $200, actually nets you $100.
For people in high margin, easy upsell businesses that have a difficult time with customer engagement, it's a godsend. Photography is an easy example. Add a zero to above and you have a wedding photographer for a grand...who has very little overhead. Doing a bunch of cheapy wedding shoots vs not working is a win. If 25% of they buy-up to (also high-margin)
Glad I chose another career (Score:2)
Snatched failure from the jaws of success (Score:1)
Early 2010's, they flew a sales rep from Chicago to visit my friend's restaurant in Palo Alto. Unless they were also doing training or taking in-person meetings, that's a ton of wasted money on flights and personalized sales service for a tiny account.
I'm stunned they still exist (Score:2)
Given that I hadn't heard of them in years, I honestly thought they'd already gone under. Huh. I wonder what other near-dead businesses are still limping along, waiting for someone to put them out of their investors misery?