Flubit’s new price checking service now open for online shoppers to find better deals

Flubit, the curiously named consumer site that helps find shoppers find better deals has now launched out of closed beta.

You may remember that Flubit started out as a $5k side project that became a $4 million startup. In May this year the company announced $1.75 million in financing to pivot from what it called ‘messy group buying’ to relaunch in its current state.

The service asks users what they would like to buy, say a TV. Users then provide a link to the best price for the item that they can find, as well as their email address and Flubit returns any better offers it can find.

This allows retailers to sell in volume (at a discount) to targeted, online consumers and Flubit takes from 2.5%-6% in commission. So it brings down the price of shopping if it can find a better deal.

Flubit merchants sign up to list their stock inventory which is checked when consumers add their demand. Flubit then translates the offer for the buyer and the order is fed back to the merchant.

Bertie Stephens, Flubit’s CEO feels  that the search and comparison process for online shoppers can be better streamlined with results that can save them money. “We live in age where people know how to find what they want on the Internet, and how to hunt for good deals. We exist to get even better offers for our users. If you’ve already got what you want in your shopping basket, and when you get to the checkout someone said to you ‘I can give you a better offer on that’, you’d take it, right? We create better offers for people who have already found what they want, but want a better price,” he says.

To date, Flubit has raised a total of $2.75 million. The London-based company was funded by private investors including Pierre Andurand, founder of BlueGold Capital Management and Patrick Perez former CEO of Neuron Data and Blaze Software.

Through re-opening its service today after pivoting, Flubit is reactivating 35,000 existing accounts from its previous platform. The beta test phase saw 70% of users making demands continue on to purchase those items. The company says that around 10% was saved on each product during testing and 15% of users who made a purchase returned to demand something new within a month.

For those who have the patience to wait for a better offer, Flubit provides an interesting way to make possible savings. For merchants it is another channel for possible sales. Let’s hope that both parties are willing to head to another site to double-check their research while shopping online.

Image credit: Danorth1