Groupon Turns Into Nimble

Groupon wasn't exactly the same, but now it's becoming Nimble.

Oie. If only.

Many of my friends who know about my former startup Nimble and are aware of the massive growth of Groupon give me a conciliatory pat on the back when they see me.

Nimble, that I founded in 2004 allowed any local business to sell it's inventory at a discount in real time. And it worked.

(Of course we were tiny compared to Groupon and I made many typical startup mistakes. Mainly, that I didn't have the right team in place.)

Now, Groupon is actually starting to copy Nimble: CNN Article

...a new mobile application that the company hopes will change when and how society chooses to eat, shop and play.

The application, known as Groupon Now, is remarkably and elegantly simple, yet it's a radical departure from Groupon's current deal-a-day business model. When a user opens up the smartphone app, he or she will be presented with just two buttons: "I'm hungry" and "I'm bored."

Clicking either button will open up a list of time-specific daily deals, based on his or her location.

The familiar $10 coupons for $20 worth of food are still there, but they're not one-time offers. Instead, businesses can choose when they want these deals to be available.

Say a restaurant is incredibly busy on Saturdays but could use more business on Wednesdays. With Groupon Now, that business can fill its seats during slow business days using time-specific deals.

That's the beauty of Groupon Now: local businesses have never really had a simple way to manage their perishable inventory, especially labor and food. Why waste those resources during slow periods when you can bring savings-savvy consumers through the doors with a highly targeted Groupon deal?

"For merchants, the daily deal is like teeth whitening, and Groupon Now is like brushing your teeth. It can be an everyday thing to keep your business going," Groupon founder and CEO Andrew Mason told Bloomberg Businessweek in an extensive interview on the new product.

The daily deals company has been on a tear recently -- in fact it is the fastest growing company in history -- but it faces stiff competition from companies with increasing muscle.

Oh, this kills me.

If only...

Read this post on: Medical Spas & Groupon

Scalability

Products scale quite nicely than you.
Services? Not so much.

While I'm beating the bushes 24/7 at Sendside, I've got some systems in place around launching products that's working quite well, and it's all built on the premise that incremental value is scalable only around products, not services.

I think I know something about this. After all, I was a painter for about 20 years. Artists have perhaps the poorest business model there is. Painting is a huge time investment and you'll need some serious inventory with no assurance that what you're doing will sell. At least to start.

One of my epiphanies came when I entered the limited edition print market. Suddenly I was painting a single painting, but selling it thousands of times. (Incedentally this does drive up the price of the original which is also nice.)

But before I wax too philosophic, let me come back to my point. Products scale. So my crack team organized under my medical spa site at Medical Spa MD is busy creating value by leveraging our expertise to take specific products to market.

Last year we launched a new site that ships wholesale Botox worldwide. In the next month we're launching three new services: Teeth whitening, medical outsourcing, and do it yourself SEO. There are about eight other products, services, and partherships lined up behind those. And that's just for Medical Spa MD.

I've got designs on the artist, painter, headshot photography and actor markets in NY and LA since I've got some experience there as well. While I'm not quite at the four-hour work week with these sidelines, I'm probably close to eight... and I work on weekends.

Of course I couldn't do this myself. I have a team that reside in various locations around the world; California, New York, India... And they do the heavy lifting. I'm just around to provide direction, and to pay the bills. Fortunately, with scale comes profitability.

Shine Teeth Whitening

We've launched another Select Partner for Medical Spa MD. Shine Teeth Whitening

Shine provides professional teeth whitening services to medical offices while creating jobs for single moms, musicians, artists, and others who don’t fit well in the traditional 8-5 corporate world.

Shine's technicians are trained by licensed dentists to create custom fit trays for teeth whitening at a fraction of the cost of obtaining those services from traditional dental office suppliers.

This teeth whitening service for physicians joins other Medspa MD partners like Medical Spa RX, a site that imports wholesale Botox and Restylane from Canada.

Medical Spa Training Manuals & eBooks

Medical Spa MD is now publishing training manuals and books for laser clinics, plastic surgery centers and dermatology clinics.

These medspa eBooks are designed specifically for medical estheticians, cosmetic laser and IPL technicians and front desk staff, to provide a consistant environment for new hires and keep the staff informed the latest cosmetic treatments.

It's part of an evolving plan to be able to monitize the huge community of plastic surgeons, dermatologists, laser clinics and medical spas that are part of the community at Medical Spa MD. There are more than 4,000 members and around a million and a half targeted page views, most of which are from physicians (although non-physician numbers are growing).

Medical Spa MD is a community I started a few years ago and I think it demonstrates how effective you can be if you have information that is not generally available, and know how to build and motivate an online community. Medical Spa MD will never make me rich, but it's an asset that accrues increasing value over time and more than pays for itself with new opportunities.

Medical Spa RX is the sister site to Medical Spa MD and allows these same dermatologists, plastic surgeons and laser clinics to buy wholesale Botox, Juvederm, Restylane and Dysport from Canada and distribute it world wide.

But perhaps the greatest value of Medical Spa MD is simply the trust and goodwill we've grown among physicians. Medical Spa MD's influence and reach is very long, as attested to the numerous leagal threats, phone calls from lawyers, and cease and desist letters we've received.