Andrew,

What a great pick-me-up after a long week to read your take on our site. I’m glad you like it and I’m flattered you chose us as one of the sites you review. I understand your suggestions, and will take a look at those elements with a fresh eye. We’re continuing to improve the site as each day passes, so please stop by again in the future. Thanks again for the vote of confidence. If you ever want to consider making that virtual investment a real one, let me know. Your bio would suggest you’d be a great person to have giving us additional counsel. All the best!

Doug Worple
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Doug

Thanks for your comment…I have just about resurfaced from banging my head on the desk after seeing 3Luxe…it was one of those moments that happens all too often ~ ‘Why didn’t I think of a highly demographically segmented product search engine?”.  I mean really!  It’s so obvious when you think about it.  So come on folks, before 3Luxe – who can really lay claim to creating a product search engine that specifically and tightly targeted a specific demographic of consumer?  And No, tech geek is not a demographic before folks start jumping up and down about CNet and that ilk.

Again, good luck to 3Luxe! Stay in touch and let me know if there is any way at all I or the Advisor Garage site can support you as you take the discriminating consumer market by storm!

Andrew

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3Luxe.com is a product search engine with a difference…other search engines use algorithms, numbers and fractions as the cogs and wheels to regurgitate a whole string of very near misses to everyone that plugs in a search phrase. 3Luxe uses no algorithms or numbers…it more relies on the taste and interpretive skills of its founder and pooled review site results to determine the top 3 products currently available.

Like Flash floor cleaner and hundreds of P&G commercials, draw a line down the middle of your computer screen and compare and contrast – on one side you have a big complicated machine delivering a homogenized gloop of product results to anyone that asks and on the other side of the screen, the three best products in any given category according to the 3Luxe founders.

Business Model:

• Advertising from key manufacturers who are ultimately lucky enough to have their product/s in one of the top three results
• Affiliate links with Amazon or Shopzilla et al when people take the next step after the search and review and treacle forward towards purchase
• Google ads (ugh!)

Some Core Functionality/Elements:

• Um…Search!
• 3 Results only of perhaps the most expensive but kick butt products you can find in any given category
• Thumbs up or thumbs down vote for any of the items returned
• A very cool drop down of review results from cnet and others, along with consumer reviews from other sites
• Bookmarking
• Send to friend
• Comment posting for all items

Likes:
Like, Like, Like.  This site is well built, thoughtful, intuitive and not surprising the Worple Brothers have got it right…I say not surprising because Doug Worple, the CEO is another former proctoid that went on to create what looks to be a very cool creative / advertising agency called Barefoot.  Like it or not, the great advertising agencies are helping to shape the tastes and desires of us all…so it is not a shock that by combining their own tastes for items with consumer reviews from multiple sites they are delivering product results that actually seem to be the best 3 luxury items.  I guess my original concern was “What makes these guys able to choose the best three items that I’m going to like?” – but in a sense, better to combine the science of review sites such as cnet with some degree of taste than relying upon the Google number crunchers. This business model opens up a number of now obvious business opportunities i.e. segmented product search engines according to demographics – so now we have the ‘A’ search engine, anyone up for creating the ‘B1′ product search engine?

Dislikes/Suggestions:

• The home page has more of a ‘website’ than a search engine feel.  You could argue that this is so different that going for the minimalist search format is wrong – but the current look and feel of the home page is almost of a templated website.
• Taking a note from P&G brand training – too many fonts, and no clear obvious focus for the eye causes confusion in terms of what are the priorities on the page.  We have caps competing with flowing scripts with more modern fonts, moving photos and all in all its a great concept which, from a design perspective, needs some tweaks.

My Virtual Investment:
With my virtual $1M, I would consider it a luxury if I were able to make a $500K virtual investment in 3Luxe. Good luck Guys!

http://www.3Luxe.com

Interested in other articles about Its Our Movie?

• http://www.coolbusinessideas.com/archives/consumers_seach_engine.html

Andrew

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As never before the ability of online networks has the potential to shape the world.  Tumpang is preparing to take advantage of this dynamic by offering people who come together online the ability to put their joint purchasing power to work.

The Tumpang model is interesting.  Manufacturers are asked to discount their products if Tumpang can guarantee a group purchase of a certain quantity of items.  Then, within their site, they offer the items for sale at the discounted price providing enough people agree to purchase the item at the discounted rate.  As individuals the customers may not be able to get these ‘bulk’ discount prices – as an online mini-purchasing group, they suddenly have more power.

Tumpang is currently focused on the Chinese market…but are making moves to go international.  There are two obvious challenges at this point:

Products are often country specific so although they have international plans, this may not translate well for the mini-groups.  Will a German purchaser be interested in a kettle for the Malaysian market? See my point?

Most of the products on the site at this point seem relatively low quality i.e. Tumpang does not seem to be striking deals with Apple, Panasonic etc but rather more unknown brands. However, as their purchasing power and traction increases this should give them more negotiation strength with the bigger, more popular manufacturers.

So, Tumpang is one to watch.  This crowd purchasing approach could create another shift in online purchasing.

Andrew
Founder -Advisor Garage
http://www.AdvisorGarage.com/community

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I wish I could tell you all about Flixor but I’m not allowed to today.  What I can say is that Flixor is a very cool up and coming company focused on tools that have both consumer appeal but also the potential to revolutionize the advertising industry.  I recommend you go to http://www.Flixor.com, bookmark it and watch as this company moves from stealth to a very compelling young company. If you are a potential angel – reach out and I’ll forward on your contacts – you won’t be disappointed…

Andrew
Founder – Advisor Garage
http://www.AdvisorGarage.com/Community

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For anyone that has read any of the posts on this blog, you’re probably used to seeing a review of the business model of an up and coming young company.  Today’s post is different. It’s a Startup ‘Quick Intro’. My goal is to intersperse the usual type of postings with ‘Quick Intros’. We’ll see what reception these quick intros get!

A friend has been working on a startup called Zaplee.com – so given that I’m particularly excited about the company and it’s opportunity, thought I would do a quick ‘drive by’ about Zaplee.

Zaplee has been working on creating consumer software to provide small and medium sized companies with call center functionality via the Skype service.  This gives Zaplee the capability to offer a other companies call center capabilities without painful and expensive setup costs and processes and like Skype, gives users very low monthly costs for ongoing call center services which have tradtitionally been unreachable by many young companies.

There are many exciting elements to the Zaplee business model but as they are still so ‘fresh’ I’ll need to wait a month or two before getting into details.  Zaplee is currently going through an angel investment round.  This is one of those ‘once in a decade’ opportunities so if there is anyone out there that wants to explore this opportunity…send me an email and I’ll pass it on.

http://www.Zaplee.com

Andrew
Founder – Advisor Garage
http://www.AdvisorGarage.com/community

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Lief Larson here.  One of the founders of Lyro.  Thanks for taking a look.  If we lifted up the skirt on our long-term objectives, that wouldn’t be much fun now would it?

Plaxo is already following us.  We launched web searchable digital business cards before they did.  We had the social aspects before them.  But that doesn’t matter.  We like Plaxo.  We even like Goliath LinkedIn.  Both companies are good at what they do.  We are focused on the small and independent businesses, the entrepreneurs, the consultants who wants to get more out of the web and have better visibility.  Best of all, we’re asking for nothing in return.  If we help you and you find the site useful, you might upgrade.  It’s a pretty simple value proposition.

With regards to messages, our system is primarily open.  The downside to open is that if anyone can message you freely (or you message others freely)  we’d be setting up a system for abuse.  Nobody has time for “hot webcam chicks” when you’re out trying to find new business and opportunity.

I’m glad you’d have a willingness to put a “Virtual $100k” behind us and I’m looking forward to putting that virtual check to good use!

http://lieflarson.lyro.com

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Thanks for the update and feedback Lief!  I really do appreciate your business and it’s business model and agree with almost all your points. The low ‘virtual’ valuation was driven by nothing more than wondering where the market potential was given the two goliaths we’ve discussed.  The irony is that I’ve been working on a site for sometime that is meant to address some of the weaknesses of the ‘blanket’ or everything to everybody approach by Linked In etc.

I’d like to increase the virtual investment to $350K. After all, us little guys have got to stick together.

Good luck and let us know how you get on with your great business: Lyro

http://www.Lyro.com

Andrew
Founder – http://www.AdvisorGarage.com

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