GoNabIt.com Brings Online Group Discounts to Arabia

We all love a good discount, and GoNabIt has just brought us an opportunity to get more in the Middle East right from the browser.

The Group Discount model basically offers a discount from a local vendor allowing you to sign up for the purchase if you’re interested. If enough people are interested, the offer goes live and consumers can purchase the coupon until the deadline is reached or it sells out.

This of course encourages buyers to spread the word about their interest a discount to family and friends to get as many buyers as possible to seal the deal, leveraging what is known as Social e-Commerce. The websites integration with social networking platforms like Facebook and Twitter is critical to its success, allowing for collective action to create a discount on a product that wouldn’t be possible otherwise.

The business draws from “magnifying value and power through collective action” which according to GoNabIt’s founder Dan Stuart is “one of the great benefits of the internet” today.

The Group Discount model has been getting a lot of attention world wide with sites such as Groupon and Living Social which post one deal a day from a local business. Available in 28 cities Groupon has sold more than 1 million discount coupons, saving consumers a total of $46.7 million.

The trend of online shopping clubs has been gaining popularity in the Middle East also, with high end clubs like Jabbar’s Sukar.com and Fashionation.me especially in the UAE and specifically Dubai where GoNabIt is currently providing for, yet as it’s website shows it plans on covering Abu Dhabi, Amman, Beirut, Cairo, Doha, Dubai, Jeddah, Kuwait City and Riyadh in the near future.

The online business that launched yesterday has been getting a lot of attention for many of reasons, mainly because of the rich background of it’s founder Dan Stuart, formerly the Chief Possibility Officer at Bayt.com which he held for a mere 4 months before he left the region’s online employment giant after a 2 year run to start GoNabIt.

GoNabit is backed by initial funding led by Bayt.com, making Bayt.com majority owner and at the same time enabling GoNabit to leverage the well-established regional scale, local knowledge, and experience of the Bayt.com platform and leadership. “The Bayt.com investment is key for us,” said Stuart. “Talk about a serious kick-start to GoNabit: we’ve got fantastic support to launch a great online business from an organization that has done it successfully and with longevity.”

We believe the idea is great but would be even better if it allowed users to create their own deals instead of merely presenting discounts and waiting for those interested to hop on board.