The all-new Save22 – Click to enlarge.
Scanning barcodes in-store and comparing the best prices sounds like a winning strategy for consumers and retailers. But in reality that isn’t the case. The founder at Save22 Guyi Shen says that the pivot was inspired by an avid user who was caught scanning barcodes at a retailer.
That users wanted to share a deal on Save22 but was stopped by the store manager, her phone in hand, despite explaining that sharing deals on Save22 may bring more sales to store. To learn more about why she was stopped, Guyi met with the store’s CEO. The CEO explained that even though he understands that Save22 could help to improve sales he was reluctant to support the app. He believes that the shopper’s retail experience is not just about the lowest price. It also turns out that many other retailers are having the same thoughts. Guyi said in an email:
His thoughts are not unique, the majority of retailers felt the same way, we found it hard to scale the company with retailers in a love-hate relationship with us. We had to find a way to have retailers advocate the shopping experience we created for consumers.
So we decided to digitize a retailers’ print promotions and catalogs that are normally only found in-store, and make them searchable and location aware online.
The new Save22 launched today in Singapore and the Philippines (pictured above). I gave it a couple of searches and it works pretty well. Thanks to Save22, I know there’s a Colgate toothpaste promotion at Guardian and also a Tiger beer promotion in Sheng Siong in Singapore.
The closest similar price search service would be the numerous price comparison sites like Kakaku’s PricePrice, Rocket Internet’s PricePanda, Priceza, Telunjuk, and PriceArea. Though these are specifically product price search sites and are not promotion based, so people could use a number of such sites.
Prior to this pivot, Save22 recently raised $400,000 from Crystal Horse Investments, Nuffnang, Strategia Ventures, and Little Lights Capital.
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