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Bownty raises $1.1 million for further expansion

Bownty just raised $1.1 million, and is seeing significant growth across several European markets as consumers flock to sites curating and organizing the vast amount of deals.

Bownty is not the only aggregator of daily deals that has raised a large amount of money. Yipit did the same in June 2011 and has since been very successful. Therefore, Bownty’s recent investment adds further credibility to the bet that aggregating deals is the long term winner in this space, as it has been in many similar markets.

- This investment definitely proves that the daily deals market is not dead. We know that there has been a lot of skepticism about the future of the business recently, but we think this investment proves our claim that Bownty, as a deal aggregator, delivers much more value to the consumers, compared to just a single deal site. We gather and offer everything under one roof, which is much more valuable to the consumers considering their busy everyday lives, says Steffen W. Frølund, Founder and CEO of Bownty.

Further development and more opportunities
Bownty is planning to use the investment on further development of the product and to increase consumer awareness. The investment comes from the largest Danish early stage venture capital fund, SEED Capital and Accelerace Invest, a combined startup accelerator and investment program. David Ventzel from Accelerace Invest believes that the deal aggregator can become a very lucrative business for the investors and he is looking forward to seeing the positive results Bownty will deliver in the future.

- We did not hesitate about our investment in Bownty as we are convinced that the company can continue to deliver high growth rates and attractive financial returns. Bownty has found a systematic and scalable business model with a structured and data driven market approach. The fast expansion of Bownty from Denmark to UK, France, Spain and Germany further supports our belief that Bownty is among the future main facilitators of online2offline commerce, says David Ventzel, Senior Management Consultant at Accelerace.

Read more at Techcrunch – http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/04/bownty/

Deal Wallet

I’m proud to announce the newest service in the Bownty family. The Deal Wallet.

We all know the feeling when a voucher goes unused. It’s a waste. Not only is the money lost for me as a consumer, but the restaurant, or local merchant, also misses out when I don’t bring my additional business. I’m also less inclined to buy another deal unless I’m 100% confident I’ll actually use it this time. There’s nobody who wins when a voucher goes unsued.

Unreedemed vouchers, or breakage as it has been called, should belong to the past. So here comes our Deal Wallet.

In short the Deal Wallet keeps track of all you bought deals, and notifies you before the deal expires. Your purchased vouchers will automatically be added your Wallet. This works (even historically) with a lot of our deal site partners. If a purchase is not automatically added to your Deal Wallet, you can easily add it with one or two clicks from a list of your recently shown deals.

Voila. Happier restaurants. And bigger smiles for the members of Bownty.

We’ve by the way made the service available for all users who connect with Facebook in order to verify identities.

To make things a little more fun, we’ve also added a bunch of deals to the Deal Wallet of a random selection of the first Deal Wallet users. So hurry up and see if there’s one for you? http://bownty.com/dealwallet

Cheers,
Steffen

Deal-branchen afholder topmøde

D. 5.-6. marts afholdes det årlige europæiske topmøde for deal-branchen, eDeal Summit 2013, i London. Mødet er indtil videre det eneste officielle topmøde for deal-virksomheder i Europa og har til formål at skabe kontakter mellem de største aktører på det europæiske deal-marked og give dem mulighed for at udveksle viden og erfaring.

Efter sidste års succes med DD. Summit Europe 2012, afholdes nu det andet topmøde i deal-branchen, denne gang under navnet eDeal Summit 2013. Topmødet har til formål at samle alle nøglespillerne indenfor deal-branchen, for at give dem mulighed for at dele erfaring og viden.

Til mødet vil nogle af de største spillere inden for deal-branchen afholde foredrag og workshops og der vil blive networket på kryds og tværs blandt forretningsfolk indenfor deal-branchen. De emner, der vil blive fokuseret på, er blandt andet teknologi, kommunikation med brugerne, brand-vækst, loyalitet og sociale medier.

Omkring 800 forretningsfolk vil deltage i mødet, som afholdes i London og strækker sig over to dage. En af deltagerne er Steffen W. Frølund, der er CEO og co-founder hos danske Bownty, som er den største deal-aggregator i Danmark (en hjemmeside, der samler alle deals på én hjemmeside). Frølund udtaler sig meget begejstret omkring mødet:

”Deal-branchen er en branche for sig selv, og derfor er det også nødvendigt med nogle fælles arrangementer til at fremme den interne kommunikation i branchen. Vi har gennem flere år haft brug for den slags sammenhold i deal-branchen, hvor jævnbyrdige forretningsfolk får mulighed for at udveksle ideer og erfaringer”.

Men The eDeal Association, som afholder topmødet, er ikke kun til for at fremme ideudveksling. Foreningen blev startet op med et formål om at skabe et fælles regelsæt for hvordan handlen med online deals skal foregå, for at kunne sikre både forbrugere og virksomheder en fair handel. Derfor binder alle de virksomheder, der er medlem af foreningen, sig til nogle fælles regelsæt, såsom krav om detaljerede produktbeskrivelser og serviceinformationer for forbrugerne, præcise regler for fortroligheden af personlige oplysninger samt en klar politik for salgsproceduren, hvor både forbrugere og virksomheder skal være indforståede.

”The eDeal Association har gjort det nemmere for Bownty at stille en garanti for at alle de deals, der vises på Bowntys hjemmeside, lever op til en hvis standart. På den måde øger det vores troværdighed”, siger Frølund.

Hvis du vil vide mere om The eDeal Association, kan du læse mere på foreningens hjemmeside.