Right folks, just when you thought the group buying industry in South Africa had a clear path till the end of 2011, along comes LivingSocial, the second biggest group buying site in the world. I mentioned before in a post that they have their own trademark and have their domain in South Africa, and now they’ve started advertising with Google PPC and Facebook:
Currently their site leads a subscriber from Cape Town to their Sydney page, though, and that shows a somewhat uncoordinated launch – I was expecting a deal from LivingSocial waiting for me. Perhaps they have deals coming soon, and maybe they are merely creating some buzz before they launch in a bigger sense later?
Still, being in the industry, one does not hear about LivingSocial – no small business has mentioned their name, no salespeople have been seen online and nothing really forward has been mentioned overseas. The hints have been subtle, until now that is. (Update: Job advert posted one month ago.)
So why is this such a big deal in the group buying industry? Well, have a look at this graph to see that they almost have as much traffic as Groupon, which is slowly suffering more and more leading up to their (now already infamous) IPO. LivingSocial themselves are rumoured to be doing an IPO in the not too distant future.
Another reason to perk up your eyebrows and have another look is this deal, which is perhaps the largest single sale in the history of the Internet – done via Amazon on LivingSocial’s site.
It would seem that them entering South Africa is going to follow one of two routes: Either they have bought a group buying site and will launch through them, or otherwise they are just garnering subscribers and building their own branch of LivingSocial here in SA.
The group buying market here in South Africa is quite far down the road, so can they really enter now, even if they are so big? What do you think – do they have a future here, having entered the market so late?
