Montreal Tech Watch

A new social ecommerce platform

Shoy is a new ecommerce platform that invites visitors to share deals with friends first before getting valuable discounts. What’s interesting is that you get only the discount if friends click on the link… which means visitors need to be creative and spend some time to promote the offer.

Shoy in itself doesn’t sell any products on the site, as it only gives you a coupon or a discount code that you can use to buy the product, either at an online store or a nearby retail store. That means visitors can use the site without the barriers found often online, such as credit card requirements, user registration, address input etc. Quinn Roukema, co-founder of Shoy, says: “We’re creating an extremely low-cost way for business to generate lots of new business while putting them in full control over everything. … Advertising + Marketing is no longer expensive and time-consuming and setting up great social media campaigns is no longer difficult.”

No more community managers!

With that kind of system, you don’t need anymore a full-time community manager, or track twitter for potential customers. You just need to think about a big discount that everyone would want, and if it’s really special, Shoy users will do the work for you. That in itself makes Shoy even more powerful than sites like Groupon, which doesn’t have the social multiplier effect to their daily offers. See the simple video below to see how the system works :

Since it’s the holidays, Shoy has already started their beta in New York City, and they’re “going for the kill in January”, both in Montreal and in NYC. Shoy’s co-founders are Quinn Roukema for the marketing/business side, while Roberto Martinez is the lead developer, who started working on the site in October. The small startup is seed-funded by another successful small company, but Shoy is also looking now for new funding to support expansion efforts.

Shoy: the future of online commerce?

It’s interesting to see how a young team sees how online commerce should be done. Quinn for instance believes that the future lies in Facebook page stores. He states that creating an online store requires some programming and also minimal investment, whereas new tools like Shoy will help businesses announce their product in a very simple way. A few companies like Shopify (or Magento) would disagree with that statement, but those services haven’t really done anything with social e-commerce, apart from Facebook “likes” buttons. Shoy wants to tap into that and offer an online shop for every business out there. How’s that for a big idea?

Obviously, Shoy is in my list of startups to watch in 2012, and with enough work, can become one of the fastest-growing web startups. The only weakness that I see is that since there are no barriers, users could actually spend hours on the site to get a coupon… without actually having the means to buy the final product or the motivation to do so.

• Visit Shoy
• Launch a campaign for your business with Shoy