When choosing Groupon – the popular daily deal web site – to advertise services or products on offer for your business, make sure you won’t be “grouped on”.
That’s exactly what happened to a bakery in London, after their $10 sale for cupcakes normally costing $40 led to a loss of $20,000.
More than eight thousand orders forced the owner to hire more workers to keep up with the demand.
How many local bakers get international coverage in the mainstream media? $20K is a small price for that.
Jeff – Such coverage is useless when it can’t be converted to full price sales 😉
They should have a feature that caps the total number of deals sold, so that this doesn’t happen. Maybe they also priced the deal too agressively.
Still, they may get some extra orders out of it for full price, and return customers who now know about the bakery, plus the publicity of this story might create some regular price customers. That is what Groupon is supposed to be, a loss-leader to promote your business and get it on the map.