UK-based Buyapowa announced today that it has closed a $4.6M round, led by Bright Station Ventures. The funding round will be use primarily to expand beyond the UK into the United States market. Buyapowa offers a very unique take on social-commerce. Rather than turning a Facebook page into storefront, or allowing customers to buy with a #hashtag or “Sold” comment, London-based Buyapowa creates and fosters engagement and, to use a cliché buzzword, incorporates gamification into the online shopping experience.
Co-Buying
Instead of building on tried-and-true methods and forms of social commerce, Buyapowa has a wholly unique approach, which they have dubbed co-buying. They offer six different methods of co-buying, but they all rely on the same concept; the more interaction around a product or service, the cheaper it becomes. These six approaches are:
Price Drop
This is Buyapowa’s original co-buying approach. It is pretty straightforward, yet incredibly effective. A co-buy is launched, and the more people that join, the more the cost of the product or service drops.
Cashback
Again, pretty straightforward. Each time a customer buys a product or service using the cashback method, they will have time window to promote the purchase to their friends. For each friend that makes a purchase, the referrer will receive cashback.
The Tipping Point
Think of the The Tipping Point as a sort-of flash sale. It is, more or less, a time-sensitive offer that only takes place if a given number of shoppers commit to a purchase. It takes a lot of the uncertainty out of the equation as it only opens when a guaranteed number of buyers sign-up.
The Vote
Your buyers vote for the deal that they want to activate, and only those who vote can receive the discount. Also, to drive interaction, the individual that drives the most votes, receives the product/service for free.
Megaphone
The Megaphone method is for those customer who have already purchased a product/service from you. The buying customers compete with one another to drive as many people to the product as possible, with the winner being completely refunded.
Share-More-Get-More
This one is a bit different. Instead of dropping the price of your product/service for interaction, more products are bundled at the same price.
Check out their video for more info:
