client is a female customer, and they didn’t believe a female customer was interested in our product. Our first Groupon almost two years ago was for iPod integration using FM modulators from Scos- che.
Q: And that went pretty well? Well enough
Focus, dedication and strategy was essential as Alarms, ETC. fostered a business relationship with Chicago-based Groupon.
as our most recent promotion in the Lakeland market, will be approximately $10,000 in raw profit dollars.” At the store level it’s much of the same story. Chuck Wallace, store manager at Alarms, ETC. North Lakeland location, said he was “amazed at the response.” “The nice thing was that basically it was a loss leader, but we
started making good money from the add-ons,” Wallace said. “We were able to upgrade window tints. In other words, we used the promotional line of film and were able to take our customers from that to the higher line, or able to get it done in different shape.” The type of customers who utilize Groupon were “a lot more tech-
savvy,” Wallace said, the people who “are always looking for the deal on the Internet” and may be hesitant to just drop by a shop.
A DIFFERENCE OF OPINION
Jon Lackey of Blvd. Customs, also in Lakeland, Fla., is flat out against Groupon. “I believe they are misleading to the consum- ers and I have seen them and had a couple of friends use them both and say it was a headache,” Lackey wrote in response to a Mobile Electronics’ Facebook post asking retailers to share their thoughts on Groupon. Groupon didn’t respond to Mobile Electronics’ request for comment. Yet another retailer, Los Angeles-based Virgin Mascarenhas, indicated efforts to participate with Groupon and similar sites Voomerang and Bloomspot just outright failed. “All three com- panies never got back to us,” Mascarenhas said, guessing that the disinterest stemmed from the idea that none of the daily deal sites are “geared toward automotive.” A third retailer who responded via Facebook, Luke Fidler of Audio Expert Car Stereo in Clearwater, Fla., says Groupon is just fine by him. “I bought a few Groupons and they’ve all worked perfectly and exactly as advertised,” he said. “You do need
for you try it again? A: We only sold 20 units at that time. However, the FM modulator at the time was the only SKU that I could make the numbers work. Any other SKU that we sell and I’ve reached out to a lot of our manufacturing partners and the vendor part- ners. Any other SKU that we sold, we were just going to lose too much money on.
Q: Can you describe how it works out when
you get the Groupon buyer through your doors? A: That’s the important thing — getting the cus- tomer in the door. Once the customer’s in the door, they’re ours to sell or to lose, just like any other customer. We’ve averaged about a $30 add-on per ticket, and that’s anything from — because this was a window tint promotion — from a glare strip to a customer having some audio equipment that they want tossed in, to a pair of speakers, to up- grading to a more premium product then the basic film that we offered.
Q: Not to mention also becoming familiar with the store … A: Exactly, and this particular Groupon was done with that thought in mind, because its drop, its expiration date on the Groupon, was right before Black Friday of this year. So we’re going to have 250 new customers who are willing to spend mon- ey in our industry, and on one of the products that we offer, walking into our doors months before the holiday shopping season. We limited the window on the redemption on this to only three months to kind of force those customers in our door before the holidays.
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